I like the JRE. I like that he listens to everyone and engages with them. The world could do with more of that rather than this tribalism shit.
On one of his recent podcasts, he supports fox news keeping it's guests from specific no-no topics because they don't want to loose their credibility.
The irony, obviously, being that Joe should also keep his guests and himself away from certain no-no topics. That's the thing though. Joe doesn't see himself as a credible news source, a voice of a movement, or any of those other things because accuse him of. It's mainly just him hanging out with his buddies smoke'n (sometimes literally) and joke'n.
That's the entertaining and appeal of the show.
Edit
It's my fault for grouping them into the same sentence, but I didn't claim (or mean to) that his show is just junk entertainment because it's just people talking. My claim is that's the appeal of the format.
He obviously has credible and knowledgeable guests on his show. I said Joe doesn't see himself as a news source or a voice of a movement. Martial arts, working out, and DMT, however, yes he probably thinks of himself as someone to take advice from there.
I think this hits at the heart of the issue though - you don't get to, as a public figure, decide whether or not you are "the voice of a movement". In mass media today, influencers and other people of note who don't have advanced degrees should be doing their research - from credible sources - so they're not spouting inaccuracies and falsehoods to their followers.
Joe Rogan doesn't need to do these things if he's just "hanging out with his buddies smoke'n" but he also doesn't have an obligation to have provocateurs and hacks like robert malone or ben shapiro on his show. He does it because he knows his fanbase will listen to it, ingest the information, and then speak it as fact to their friends and family - and THAT is where the danger comes in. Furthermore, he also knows that parts of his fanbase will go wild to see their fringe views espoused by a guest on their favorite podcast, without Joe challenging them to back their claims up with facts. I'm sure he also knows that his listeners skew young and male, and impressionable young men have been radicalized to a dangerous degree on the internet. Having the same views on his podcast as conspiracy theory sites, for example, will undoubtedly make it easier for the bad actors running these sites to radicalize JRE listeners (who will then, of course, become a part of the fanbase that loves when their theories are given time on his show in some perverse feedback loop).
He has also inked a deal with the largest music streaming service in the world for more money than any of us will see in our entire lives - at that point I don't think you can even say he's just "hanging out" any more. It's facetious at best, and wilfully negligent at worst, to assume that no one thinks of him as an authority figure, because even if he's playing the everyman character his guests profess to be authority figures in their fields. If he doesn't seriously challenge their false claims or ask for evidence from credible sources, he's doing his listeners a disservice.
I don't trust Joe Rogan any more than I do any news media about the pandemic. The media has made countless mistakes, he's made his own mistakes, but at least Joe Rogan is willing to somewhat own his mistakes while the media never has. For that reason, I don't care.
Also, on that note, "provocateurs and hacks"? The journal Nature, about as authoritative as you can get, has this to say about Malone:
"In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it. Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to 'treat RNA as a drug'. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism."
So, he did (according to Nature) help invent mRNA, but he's a hack because he disagrees with the "scientific consensus" or something. Reasonable minds can differ on that.
It’s curious that you pit Joe Rogan singularly against “the media”. Joe Rogan has owned up to mistakes but the entirety of “the media” never has? Nobody in the media has ever owned up to a mistake? Joe Rogan is not a member of the media? What is the definition of the media here? People you dislike/disagree with?
In the US, the "media" is slang for the news. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, talking head news commentators, so forth. All the ones that supposedly don't spread misinformation. Except for FOX from the CNN and MSNBC viewers perspective, and CNN and MSNBC from the FOX viewers perspective.
> Except for FOX from the CNN and MSNBC viewers perspective, and CNN and MSNBC from the FOX viewers perspective.
Outside perspective: They're clearly all heavily pushing agendas that are only very thinly veiled as news, in between the actual news.
The US hardly has any objective reporting because any attempt at doing so has to weather a lot of shit from every direction and because such reporting just doesn't do as well. The left-leaning and "centrist" news love to lie by omission (just look at the Rittenhouse trial: nobody who actually saw the full trial would have been surprised by the result), while the right-leaning news tend to exaggerate and outright make shit up (for examples look no further than reporting on the BLM protests). Both do a fair amount of cherry-picking what to report on.
It's like people don't actually want news, but instead want to have their views confirmed. The only places on this globe that manage to actually have some semi-objective TV news do so because it is ingrained in their very culture to value those and because of unconditional (government) funding. And even there news have issues - because it's still only people deciding what to report on and how.
Having programmes that the whole political spectrum can watch goes a long way towards having a dialogue and finding common ground.
In any event this deplatforming needs to stop. It's just about the most effective way to polarize a society by forcing everyone on separate platforms.
There's also a lot of dodgy terminology too, like Trump "putting children in cages" which is a "right-style" (think of the children) provocation not dissimilar to anti-Semitic or witch-hunting misrepresentations.
Washington Post did, but didn't do any broad announcement - but rather, worked on silently rewriting history for anyone who went back and looked. CNN and MSNBC have never admitted errors.
> CNN chief Tom Johnson said in an on-air statement that CNN alone bears responsibility for the "serious faults" in TV reports and the related article in Time magazine. He said an internal investigation concluded that the claims could not be supported. He apologized to CNN viewers, Time staffers, and American military personnel.
> CNN removed the story and all connecting links to it late Friday, saying the story did not meet its editorial standards. CNN also issued an apology to Scaramucci, who accepted it with a tweet on Saturday. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he wrote. “Moving on.”
> “Last night on this show I discussed information that wasn't ready for reporting,“ O‘Donnell said at the top of his show Wednesday night. “I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source. Had it gone through that process I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.“
> “Tonight we are retracting the story,” he added. “We don‘t know whether the information is inaccurate. But the fact is, we do know it wasn‘t ready for broadcast, and for that I apologize.“
> MSNBC apologized for using “not factually accurate” maps in a segment discussing the violence that has erupted across Israel in recent weeks.
> “MSNBC Live” host Kate Snow acknowledged Monday that her show displayed maps describing present-day Israel as a Palestinian state in 1946, when the area was under British mandate rule. The series of maps shown last Thursday gave the impression that Palestinians had control over all of modern-day Israel and have continuously lost land since.
> “[I]n an attempt to talk about the context for the current turmoil in the Middle East, we showed a series of maps of the changing geography in that region,” Snow said. “We realized after we went off the air the maps were not factually accurate and we regret using them.”
I eagerly await your retraction of that false claim.
The commentator I was replying to was referring to Washington Post admitting that the "Russia Collusion" scandal that went for over a year was corrected silently by them and they admitted it was basically all fraud, but that MSNBC and CNN have made virtually no corrections to this day on that specific issue.
I was not speaking to that MSNBC or CNN has never made corrections broadly-speaking, but rather that they would not back down on a story that is now broadly considered (according to the Washington Post, no right-wing sympathizer) debunked.
Not defending the parent argument, but the biggest difference to me here is that JRE is not claiming any accuracy of his views, but with news outlets the damage is already irreversible when they retract their "information from credible sources".
Joe is a talkshow host. Not part of the press but his guests make the news other stations report on. He is letterman or Tom Green. Are they some form media.. sure.
If you changed the all encompassing word media to press the difference is clear
Joe Rogan has a huge viewership. Him being a "talkshow host" is side-stepping the issue.
I'm sure Tucker Carlson ( who Joe Rogan DWARFS in terms of audience ) would also describe himself as a "talkshow host" ( legally he has to, since his show is for "entertainment value" only. )
Malone did valuable and important research decades ago. But today he is far far far far more famous for being vocally critical of mRNA vaccines, in opposition to the bulk of researchers working today. He has done this without engaging with the scientific community in the ordinary fashion and made a name for himself for being "silenced." That's a hack.
Plenty of scientists do great work in one topic and then also act like hacks at other times.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. Fauci made his political name pushing for a public policy response to AIDS that looks extremely similar to what he's rolled out against covid.
Yet it's been decried ever since as a mistake being based on fear rather than science, pushing stigma on segments of population in the name of compliance, and being so "overly cautious" that the damages (medical and social) far outweighed the benefits, even with its limited implementation.
There are plenty of bright people who convince themselves of something that's crazy and unsupported by evidence. It's classic confirmation bias.
Linus Pauling was one of the founders of molecular biology and spent part of his later life advocating that people megadose vitamin c to cure heart disease, something that could have very well hurt people who chose that over a more evidence-backed treatment.
Steve Jobs tried treating his cancer through juice cleanses until it became too late-stage to treat conventionally.
Malone really should not be given a platform. We know that being unvaccinated can make covid way more severe and puts you at 14x higher risk of death from covid, and there is a huge body of evidence on covid vaccine efficacy from the literal billions of people worldwide who have been vaccinated.
People will almost certainly die because he lends credibility to anti-vaccination arguments.
It doesn't need popularity to make its decrees accepted or even believed: they are by definition the controlling law of the land. Whether you read their opinions or not.
You think government enforceable law is less important or does "less damage" than voluntary viewing an expert with an opinion?
You don't need to trust him, but I think you're making a false equivalency there. The reason Joe Rogan apologizes, is that some of his takes are WILD. The whole thing about the wildfires last year being set by left-wing activists was a truly insane statement, and I have no idea where he found that information or what possessed him to say it on his show.
On the other hand, the media generally doesn't make ridiculous pie-in-the-sky takes. Every once in a while they get it wrong (sometimes dangerously so) but not with anything near the same magnitude or frequency that a comparatively uneducated influencer does. And they do apologize, for small inaccuracies with an editor's note at the bottom and for large inaccuracies with a retraction published in the next edition of the paper. Newspapers HATE printing retractions, and they try very hard never to say something that would require it.
Joe rogan has no such compunctions - in fact, he's on the same playbook as so many influencers and provocateurs before him. If you say enough crazy stuff, and only apologize for the worst of it, people are eventually going to give up trying to get you to denounce any statements you've made which are only mildly crazy. Here's a great example [0] - Joe apparently said you shouldn't worry about taking the vaccine if you're young and healthy, and when he apologized he called himself a moron and said he was talking about OTHER people. That's insane: getting vaccinated regardless of age means a brush with covid is less severe, thus saving you a trip to the hospital - and a hospital bed is saved for someone who actually needs it (covid-related or not).
I empathize with your apathy, but I would strongly urge you to think about the difference between a news corporation that hires professional fact-checkers to confirm their articles and has a two-source policy on news, and a guy who wilfully admits he's a moron before continuing to spout potentially harmful views against vaccinating yourself during a pandemic.
Edit: whoops, you edited your comment after I started to reply to you. I'll make this brief: Robert Malone may have invented mRNA vaccines, but he's still anti-vax and believes the vaccines made from his technology (or some derivative thereof) make covid worse. On his episode of JRE he said something called "mass formation psychosis" existed, and had something to do with COVID(?!?) which is a bald-faced lie. You can be an excellent scientist on the frontier of medical research and still be an idiot who has no business spreading your personal views. If Joe had fact-checked him, his opinions would have folded, but he didn't.
>On his episode of JRE he said something called "mass formation psychosis" existed, and had something to do with COVID(?!?) which is a bald-faced lie.
Mass formation psychosis is a thing that does exist. It just means shared delusion. Psychologists steer clear of religion, but if you are atheist, beliefs in Gods would be a good example.
It basically just means erroneous groupthink. It absolutely has something to do with COVID, but people obviously argue over which side is delusional, or at least more delusional.
North Koreans believe that running the fan at night will make you sick and might kill you.
It's all a govt delusion to reduce power consumption at night, including blackouts in the name of "public safety".
Not picking on them, because Americans have way more delusional thinking when it comes to things like food safety, but its hard to use a delusion as an example/ proof to the deluded that... they're deluded.
>>On his episode of JRE he said something called "mass formation psychosis" existed, and had something to do with COVID(?!?) which is a bald-faced lie.
It's not a lie. It's arguably unsubstantiated. The response to COVID, like shutting down schools for two years [1] to the enormous detriment of education [2], has been insane in its disproportionateness, and the claim that a type of mass hysteria is responsible is totally within the realm of the plausible, and the contra is certainly not the kind of clear cut fact that can justify calling the position a "bald-faced lie".
Classifying everything that opposes a particular agenda as the kind of indisputable lie that has no place being aired on any platform, is the path to a totalitarian society that censors views that are out of favor with the establishment.
> Joe apparently said you shouldn't worry about taking the vaccine if you're young and healthy, and when he apologized he called himself a moron and said he was talking about OTHER people. That's insane: getting vaccinated regardless of age means a brush with covid is less severe
What's insane is calling such statements insane when the evidence isn't yet there to reach such a conclusion.
> On the other hand, the media generally doesn't make ridiculous pie-in-the-sky takes.
I have to disagree with this too. A lot of takes on Trump were pretty ridiculous. He's probably among the worst Presidents ever, but the blatant exaggerations during the Trump years were ridiculous.
Where does it say that the accused was a left-wing activist? If we find out he is registered as a republican does it mean it was set by a right-wing activist?
You clearly forgot about Russiagate. The claim that Trump was colluding with Russia was all over the news for over a year with constant coverage every day. The Washington Post has now retracted dozens of articles, rewritten huge parts of stories, and basically admitted it was all a sham.
That was a huge, huge pie-in-the-sky take. The media is absolutely not above their own lunacy. Green Greenwald, the reporter who broke the news about Snowden, agreed that it was "this generation's WMDs in terms of media malfeasance."
> The Washington Post has now retracted dozens of articles, rewritten huge parts of stories, and basically admitted it was all a sham.
To my knowledge it hasn't. I believe they continue to stand by their reporting. It's possible I missed a major retraction but I have no clue why they would have retracted their stories.
Go and Google Matt Taibbi’s summary of all the new articles about Russiagate that were wrong and/or have been retracted. It’s quite lengthy with all the sources.
Most if not all the Russiagate claims have turned out to be false, but more critically, the media who reported them either willfully didn’t bother to validate the information or ran with it knowing it was false.
The best one was the FBI getting a search warrant based on an article by a reporter referencing an FBI source. How’s that for bullshit? Drop an anonymous tip to a reporter then use their article as proof your suspicion is valid.
Your source uses the word "correction" once (in searchable text), #18, about the detail of whether the Republican opposition research into Trump actually hired Steele, when (according to your own source) instead they hired the firm that hired Steele, but he didn't actually join the project until Clinton took over payment. It's good that it got corrected, but it's hardly something significant.
Your source uses the word "warrant" in one section (in searchable text), #12, where the reporting was accurate in that warrants had been issued. Whether the warrant should have been issued is a different question.
You'll note I qualified searchable, because I have no desire to read the entire massive text of bullet points, although I did try to find relevant ones and your best example. I did try to scan it for other corrections (because this site believes in "text in screenshots), and they were all either minor [0] of they were correct reporting [1].
[0] Example: All 17 intelligence agencies didn't say X, only the agency who coordinates information between, oversees and synthesizes their information did (and the big three of CIA, FBI and NSA)
[1] Example: Report on Day X, Government investigating Y. Report on Day X + N, Government investigation into Y turns up Z. Sometimes the Z is "nothing". You know, or the warrant reporting example above.
> You clearly forgot about Russiagate. The claim that Trump was colluding with Russia was all over the news for over a year with constant coverage every day.
That coverage was accurate. There was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
> The Washington Post has now retracted dozens of articles, rewritten huge parts of stories, and basically admitted it was all a sham.
This is false and you provide no evidence for it.
> Green Greenwald, the reporter who broke the news about Snowden, agreed that it was "this generation's WMDs in terms of media malfeasance."
Greenwald is a disgraced journalist turned professional provocateur. I’m not surprised that you have to resort to quoting him to support an argument as ridiculous as “Russiagate was pie-in-the-sky”. You might as well quote Tucker Carlson.
This references two Washington Post articles which have been corrected. The correction was specific to the identity of one source in the famous Steele dossier which made some of the more outlandish and salacious claims in the dossier. There is no other retraction. In particular none of the facts of the dossier are retracted. In any case, the FBI has since conducted their own investigation and published their findings. As far as I know the FBI has not retracted those findings and the press has not retracted any reporting on those findings. So what exactly are you talking about when you mention “dozens of retracted stories”? Where is your evidence?
I regret using the term “disgraced” because it’s hard to assess objectively as you point out, and superfluous to my argument, which is that 1) he is wrong in those quoted tweets, and 2) he is a polarizing figure who is not known for his objectivity and therefore, quoting his factually wrong statement as only evidence does not support the argument presented here.
The President’s son is on record saying he was interested in getting info from Russia. If Trump didn’t collaborate, it wasn’t from lack of interest or effort. It was wrong, but not a pie-in-the-sky take.
There is a huge difference between a candidate "Getting information from Russia" [1] and coordinating on election misinformation campaigns with Russian Intelligence agencies.
Have you reviewed the article you linked? The Steele Dossier was compiled by a British source, and the one claim that's generally agreed on is that the Russian Govt highly favored Trump over Hillary. I'd recommend the summary to get aquatinted, then the subsection "Risk of contamination with Russian disinformation considered"
I have, and I have followed the actual reporting on it; The wikipedia article shows a significant amount of bias. The Dossier was compiled by a British source from hearsay from a Russian Citizen who had contacts in Russian Intelligence. Some directly, but his major source only had the information as hearsay. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/steele-dossier-recko...
He wasn’t “the original inventor”. He’s one of many, many people who worked in the field (very early on) and has subsequently shown that he’s no longer willing to practice science by promoting antivax propaganda and offering patients false hope over ineffective treatments.
Fauci is far more credible because he’s talking about what many hundreds of researchers have confirmed. When he’s talking about vaccines, he’s not just making things up but summarizing peer reviewed studies which have been extensively analyzed. Malone now avoids the scientific process because he knows that his claims aren’t rigorous enough to survive it, and he can profit by telling people that’s censorship rather than admitting inadequacy.
A. He has over a dozen patents on mRNA-related technologies. He was the first person to get the ball rolling, and is credited as the inventor by Nature, so this is not a made-up title.
B. Fauci has had every position on every issue throughout the pandemic. No masks, then masks. No vaccine mandate, then vaccine mandate. Don't mask the children, then mask the children. Don't return to school, return to school, don't return to school. Lockdown for 2 weeks, keep it up for over a year. You might call it science changing. I consider it (as do many Americans at this point) an excuse for a dictator who doesn't know what he is doing to cover up his arbitrary decisions.
He was one of the early researchers, not the only one, and most importantly for this topic he wasn’t involved in the development, testing, or review of the vaccines we’re using. The thousands of people who were have a much better claim than he does, and their work has been extensively peer-reviewed and monitored after mainstream approval. This isn’t some philosophical debate where nobody knows the answer, we can look at vaccine efficacy and safety data from around the world and see that they’re doing a great job.
You’re similarly misrepresenting Fauci’s positions and the degree to which he represented a scientific consensus and how that changed over time as conditions changed (vaccines have been a clear win since the early days; the best way to return to schools safely was not as clear cut and the idea that we had a year long lockdown in the United States is just absurd). If you find batting at strawmen entertaining, have at it, but I don’t see much value.
They perform different roles. A biologist is not necessarily expert in epidemiology/public health, which is really the expertise you need to evaluate the vaccines at scale.
> but he's a hack because he disagrees with the "scientific consensus" or something. Reasonable minds can differ on that.
That's kind of funny, because throughout history the people who were very critical of the scientific consensus (especially those who maintained this position even after lifting themselves up from a lower social status) are the ones who, on average, turned out to be right and either revolutionized that field or had an amazing insight that was a missing puzzle piece.
The mentality of 'scientific consensus says A, therefore B is bogus' does a lot more damage than people realize.Still, to be taken seriously you need to have some sort of proof or a sensible explanation of how you reached that conclusion.Here it's not as much that the guy is an incredible genius and is the only one with that position, but more of the fact that the critical voices almost entirely colluded.(This is de facto "proved" by the latest wave of western articles admitting that the narrative they adopted and pushed was done in an irresponsible fashion.See german press or even american outlets)
> That's kind of funny, because throughout history the people who were very critical of the scientific consensus (especially those who maintained this position even after lifting themselves up from a lower social status) are the ones who, on average, turned out to be right and either revolutionized that field or had an amazing insight that was a missing puzzle piece.
You are saying that on average, those going against scientific consensus are more often right than they are wrong? That sound like a load of bullshit.
I expressed myself poorly because my wording gives room to implied causality.The historical figures did not make revolutionary insights or reshaped human history >because< they were going against the scientific consensus (let's say accepted narrative,thought,etc).Their own brilliance,insights [often gained through isolation by not adhering to a consensus] are the reason they were right, not because of their arrogance.That arrogance comes as a second nature due to the assumed knowledge one has about the domain to make contradictory statements against the consensus.
And quantifying my statement is hard if you assume causality and you don't make distinction between levels of "radical thinking".Because i can give you 5-10 well-known historical figures who fit my description and make me look right, and you can say "here are 10000 conspiracy nuts from YT who make you look wrong".What I meant by 'are the ones who, on average, turned out to be right[...]' is that the more radical/higher level your thinking is, the better chances you are to be right if you made your case for them(again, I mentioned that those people do not change their stance with time,social status,environment).
Accepting scientific consensus >because< it is the consensus and upholding it as an orthodoxy is precisely why there's stagnation in many if not all the fields.And yes, the more radical,incorporating,exploratory you are in your thinking, the higher chances you probably have in being "right", assuming you are actually creating a superset of a scientific domain(i.e innovating) and not merely "go against the wave".To take my point home: 5000 flat earthers from YouTube who are undeniable wrong make my average "wrong" because they are going against the current scientific consensus.Is their thinking radical or incorporates existing knowledge into something more profound?Do they change the thinking about world, is it shockingly different?No, they're just saying the negation of a proposition, mostly based on 'loads of bullshit' without substance or regard to the consensus.We used to think the earth was flat.This is different from, say, "Here is a conjecture which lies at the limits of current knowledge about X[say gravity, or anything].You're all wrong at thinking about X/Y/Z in terms of A, my insight (often new) is better and vastly different."
The main issue here is that from a known understanding, a newer,different idea might seem wrong.It's the duty of the "contrarian" to prove his case.If one stays true to his motives and is not a hack it will serve them well.
Your original comment is simply poor. A better way to phrase it would be something like "a lot of scientific breakthroughs came from people who fought against the concensus" and leave it at that.
My favorite story about scientific consensus is the Wright Brothers. They didn't get credit for heavier than air flight from the Smithsonian until the 1920s. Also, NYT said the same week the Wright brothers flew that heavier than air flight would take millions of years. Should have shut down the bicycle mechanics for misinformation.
> They had offered it to the United States National Museum, as the Smithsonian Institution was then known, in 1910. Officials at the Smithsonian, particularly Charles Walcott, were "anxious to redeem the reputation" of former director, Samuel Langley, who had spent thousands of government dollars trying to invent an airplane which he called an "aerodrome."
> is willing to somewhat own his mistakes while the media never has
Your lack of knowledge about media "owning up" to their mistakes is not evidence they don't. Because they do.
I'm sure most people don't see the difference between actual Journalists (and not necessarily with a degree) and some dude talking crap on a microphone but there is.
> "In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment.
Well, so f what? This is 20% of the work that lead us today
Apparently having done that work (if that was actually his actual work) doesn't prevent him from misrepresenting his work spouting crap 30 years after that.
Best definition for Robert Malone is that "he had as much influence on the vaccine as Graham Bell had on the Lady Gaga's song Telephone"
A sample of some of the patents held by Malone. Note the "Generation of antibodies through lipid mediated DNA delivery" and "Induction of a protective immune response in a mammal by injecting a DNA sequence":
Lipid-mediated polynucleotide administration to deliver a biologically active peptide and to induce a cellular immune response (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, R Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. No. 7,250,404, date of issue: 7/31/07 Cited in 105 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Lipid-mediated polynucleotide administration to reduce likelihood of subject's becoming infected (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,867,195 B1. Date of issue: 3/15/05. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Generation of an immune response to a pathogen (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc and licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,710,035. Date of issue: 3/23/04. Citations: 39 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Expression of exogenous polynucleotide sequences in a vertebrate, mammal, fish, bird or human (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,673,776. Date of issue: 1/6/04. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Methods of delivering a physiologically active polypeptide to a mammal (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,413,942. Date of issue: 7/2/02. (cited in 150 articles). Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Induction of a protective immune response in a mammal by injecting a DNA sequence (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 6,214,804, date of issue: 4/10/01. Cited in 360 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Induction of a protective immune response in a mammal by injecting a DNA sequence (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,589,466. Date of issue: 12/31/96. Cited in 899 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Delivery of exogenous DNA sequences in a mammal (includes mRNA). Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,580,859. Date of issue: 12/3/96. Cited in 1244 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Generation of antibodies through lipid mediated DNA delivery (includes mRNA). P Felgner, JA Wolff, GH Rhodes, Robert W Malone, D Carson. Assigned to Vical, Inc, licensed to Merck. US Pat. Ser. No. 5,703,055. Date of issue: 12/30/97. Cited in 419 articles. Priority Date: 3/21/1989.
Reminder that US patents don't require a working product to be granted. The USPO just takes the money and leaves it to lawyers to defend them. It's common in certain fields to blanket patent inventions before even having looked at their feasibility.
Also all of those are result of the research directed by Felgner, granted to Vical (his own company), and highly hypothetical at the time. Unsurprisingly, most of those, if not all, have expired without putting a product in the market.
mRNA vaccine development has been incredibly incremental and spanning decades. Anyone claiming they're the inventor because they put a few pieces of the puzzle together is incredibly disingenuous.
He got the ball rolling, and is credited as inventor by Nature. We call Thomas Edison the inventor of the lightbulb even though his lightbulb has little to do with modern LED lighting. Similarly, it is not dishonest to call Robert Malone (in Nature's own assessment) the inventor of mRNA technology.
Literally nowhere in the quote says that. An important step (if he actually was the main discoverer for those) but not "the inventor". He imagined it (in the same way I can imagine a flying car - but not invent it)
And Nature goes on: "But the path to success was not direct. For many years after Malone’s experiments, which themselves had drawn on the work of other researchers, mRNA was seen as too unstable and expensive to be used as a drug or a vaccine. "
The Atlantic article (which I just read) is literally nothing except an attack on his character, everywhere, instead of his claims or perspectives. It just says he was wrong once about something in Israel, but other than that, it leaves his claims wholly unaddressed and uses a cynical tone related to him for everything, because how dare he have different perspective on something he at least helped invent.
I have almost no respect for media that does attacks on character rather than attacks on ideas.
He also claims children don't have strokes, that basically 100% of them are caused by COVID-19 vaccines, even though strokes are among the most common causes of death of children (that's from his JRE interview).
That information kills children as it may make people disregard the obvious symptoms and fatally delay treatment.
Which claims? The claims that Japan used Ivermectin (already proven false)? Or his other claims that have been debunked thoroughly by more serious people?
Thanks for providing your opinion on the article, it's a good gauge on how his fans see things.
He was vaccine injured by the second dose, and realised something was wrong, unlike the idiots who are like "oh I may have got permanent heart damage but at least I didn't get covid yet".
No contradictions for himself, no. The AV crews hold him up as a poster boy for not getting the vaccine though, citing that he as the 'inventor'* of mRNA says nobody should use mRNA vaccines. I wonder if many of them realise he's vaccinated.
Then if not Joe, who would his audience listen to? Shapiro? The next guy?
You cannot, and shouldn't, sculpt a model of society where anyone who speaks out loud needs to speak with journalistic and scientific integrity. It cannot work; it never has, and it never will. Regimes which try to limit free speech fail, unfailingly.
You should push for more critical listening. The most surefire way to underdevelop your ability for critical thought and listening is to bubble the content you consume to only professional sources, mainstream news, and government spokespeople. So, don't listen to Rogan, or anyone else you disagree with; you're dumber for it. Not because everything he says is right; but because you'll slowly lose the skill of not just taking everything at face value, but thinking critically about why he's wrong, integrating the things said on his show with your own experiences, other media you've consumed, what scientists say, what politicians say, what random hackernews commentors say, and forming a holistic opinion about the world.
Not everyone has that skill; either by choice, accident, or otherwise. And that's the second skill you need to develop: being ok that some people will believe the wrong thing. They'll spread it. People will die; that's what people do. Think on how spectacular our world is; most of it exists in the only time in human history where freedom of speech is so protected; and some choose to desire to throw that precious right away to... save lives? Our collective freedom and values are far, far more important than life; I hope, beyond hope, that they'll outlive me.
Religion has done this world a lot of bad. In fact, many would be surprised with how recently the Vatican's crackdown on freedom of speech led to many scientists being unable to discover the nature of reality; that's what happens when we don't cherish freedom of speech. But, one thing it did do right, and with it one thing many have lost in our society: the collective recognition that there are goals for our species greater than life itself.
When someone says something wrong, or something I disagree with: I cherish your right to say it, here, in this forum. You shouldn't be labeled as disinformation; nor censored with a downvote. We should have a discussion.
How about instead of “we must allow complete free speech, anything else is bad” we go for “sometimes it’s practical to censor”. The world isn’t so black and white.
> provocateurs and hacks like robert malone or ben shapiro on his show... and impressionable young men have been radicalized to a dangerous degree on the internet
Ah yes, Ben Shapiro will radicalize young men to... get married and start a family? I really don't understand the harm from the examples you mentioned. He offers alternative voices that don't get much attention by CNN or NYT. Literally every other media outlet will have the same 5 or 10 same talking heads and officials telling you the science du jour.
Just a couple of years ago the only thing I had ever heard about Ben Shapiro was that he is "crazy." I must admit that I didn't actually follow up on that. I just took it as fact. The truth is that I was living in a very safe, very insular media bubble; consuming news which gave me just one narrow narrative.
Covid struck and I became increasingly disappointed with the information I was receiving. It began conflicting with actual scientific research I was reading. I stepped outside my bubble. Boy is the world a bigger and more interesting place. Ben Shapiro promotes old timey family and economic values. That's it. His views would be mildly left to anyone in the 70s or 80s. Of course, to some, old timey family and economic values make him "literally Hitler." Not to me. I don't agree with most of his values but I also think he has a right to speak and discuss his views. He's clearly not crazy, and the world has space for people who believe in nuclear families and proletarian work ethics.
I'll never again make the mistake of not challenging the information I consume. I am now very suspicious of anyone who tells me that challenging authority is wrong.
He makes this statement in that article: "Any incident of white-cop-on-black-suspect violence must be chalked up to the racist system" -- as an attempt to discredit system racism. Only those on the far right believe this. I don't believe Ben himself believes this, but I do believe that he understands that his target market loves it. It's an absurd statement.
The whole article completely misses what system racism is about and why its a useful construct to eliminate racism. Again, Ben seems like a relatively bright guy who I think probably actually understands it. I think that his financial interest is in not understanding, convoluting it, and selling to a group that is willing to suck this up.
The old timey values group wants us to stop talking about all this race stuff. Blacks have it better now than ever before -- what more do they want?! And don't get them stated on the gays and Muslims. But Shapiro pushes it in a way that outright racists can read it and say, "Hey this respectable guy says what I think -- except he uses Harvard JD words to say it!"
I don't think its hyperbole nearly at all. Maybe the term "far" is a bit hyperbolic. Would it be more accurate to say, "Only those on the right believe this"? To be clear, I'm not saying everyone on the right believes this, but rather of the group that does believe it -- they sit in the right.
Ben Shapiro is, even though I disagree with him on many things, certainly not alt-right. He is very pro-vaccination and condemned January 6th as an ugly day in American history. His advice to people basically is work hard, get married, have a family, and don't be a criminal.
He has stated that black incarceration rate is higher and does not deny it. He does not address too much why the rate is higher (he suspects it is related to the same reasons why the marriage is much lower among black people), but he does not actively deny it in any way.
Maybe he didn't quite follow the same trajectory of radicalization/insanity as the rest of the alt-right, but he was definitely a poster child of the movement at some point. Him claiming to not be doesn't really change anything.
The alt-right a loose collection (with overlaps) of January 6th supporters, anti-vaccination activists, people who believe the election was stolen, white supremacists, and so forth.
Ben Shapiro is pro-vax, does not believe the election was stolen, and has had the FBI arrest alt-right people who made death threats against him multiple times over the years. "Poster child of the movement?" Unless you consider alt-right to be completely the same as far-right, that was never the case. No movement makes death threats against their poster child.
According to Wikipedia [1], the term was coined by American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer and shortened to "alt-right" and popularised by far-right participants of /pol/, the politics board of web forum 4chan.
But anyways, thanks for the link, I wasn't aware that at least wikipedia makes that connection. I've alway heard "alt-right" used as "a vague collection of far right people that fall outside the Republican Party". So they could include white supremacists, but aren't exclusively white supremacists.
> Ah yes, Ben Shapiro will radicalize young men to... get married and start a family?
That's not the bit that people have a problem with, and it's completely disingenuous to frame it that way. They have a problem with his views on transgender people, his views on gay people, his views on same-sex parents, and the views of the people he supports and spreads the agenda of.
Sorry, I made a couple of points in that post, and you're conflating two of them. Ben Shapiro isn't radicalizing anyone, but he's definitely a hack who regularly says controversial things to get into the public eye. In a principled political party he would live on the fringes, like Hasan Piker does for liberals (although that might be a reach, I'm not super familiar with either figure).
> a hack who regularly says controversial things to get into the public eye
This is so easy to say about someone you disagree with. But the other side will say the same about your heroes.
Almost anyone in the public eye will say things to get in the public eye. That's what they are good at. In politics, those things will be by definition controversial to some people. Not to mention the opposing media will purposefully twist what you say into controversial things.
I don't see how Ben shapiro is special in this in any way.
Actually I'd go further and stop citing these XXXmeta.org websites that pop like mushrooms after the rain. It's probably the result of a Python script that pops graphs and tables according to a csv with data from the studies selected.
They do very crude, naive, ad-hoc and cherry picked study selection, and metastudies is one of the most complex and difficult areas to do research on.
On the topic of ivermectin, it certainly displays positive outcomes... in countries with high helminth prevalence. So yeah, treating co-morbidities is certainly better than not treating them, not exactly shocking.
I'm getting strange COVID-speak vibes from your comment.
All that "you don't get to decide", "and that's where danger comes in".
I think the reasoning in your head is actually backwards, and you think that because JRE got Spotify contract he now has to "be doing their research" in fear of losing it. It's all about money, eh?
I'm guessing it's an attempt to poison the well by pointing out that "I want to be able to choose which media I consume" sentiment is often employed by anti-vaxx nutjobs to protest social media censorship.
I am aware of the term, having lived in a former British colony. It's hard to verbalize it. But it was just so sudden and became THE jab not just a jab, and people were talking about it everywhere. It felt very forced and like it came out of a marketing department.
>In mass media today, influencers and other people of note who don't have advanced degrees should be doing their research - from credible sources - so they're not spouting inaccuracies and falsehoods to their followers.
Meh! I would rather listen to people's original perspectives despite of potential inaccuracies, instead of lies fabricated by corporations via highly paid "experts".
> He does it because he knows his fanbase will listen to it, ingest the information, and then speak it as fact to their friends and family
It's very hard to take this seriously, because there's no evidence of it. The guy is an entertainer that built a platform that lets him talk to whoever he wants. There's no narrative being pushed.
If you disagree with someone, you need to get into the arena with them and criticise what they say and debunk it. If someone doesn't agree with Rogan or his guests and believe they are spouting scientific nonsense, then it needs to be challenged, not suppressed.
But because our media is so entrenched the only challenge Rogan gets from conventional media are typical smeer campaigns that look disingenuous and erode trust even further. Vaccine hesitant people are never really addressed adequately by government or by conventional media. Distrust is at an all time high and the power structures of the world have never been so apparent to the every day man.
The solution to all of this is transparency, discussion and health policy that targets the problems rather than blanket policy that ostracises and discriminates.
Suppression will only make the situation worse because all of a sudden we on a slippery slope to totalitarianism where (automated) fact checkers are the primordial source of truth and authority.
Ostracising will only make the situation worse because all of a sudden we have very large portions of the community (upward of 25% in countries like Germany) now feel discriminated against, people cannot get on planes and travel to see loved ones, they cant go the cinema, they cant do basically anything, all because they object to handling of health policy.
Further more politicians like Macron are stoking divisions even further and marginalizing these people by proclaiming they are non-citizens.
Shit, I cant really imagine a better way to fracture western society. In my mind the virus really did win.
"If you disagree with someone, you need to get into the arena with them and criticise what they say and debunk it."
This is the challenge Dennis Prager often offers to young college students in his audience. It is comically grotesque to see a senior professional debater and speaker take joy when he shuts down a young nervous challenger. Sure, you and I can think of quick responses, in the same way when we watch a boxing match and can see where the challenger made a mistake. But in a real life arena most of us would probably take a beating when matched against a pro.
A sincere debate can be had when one is willing to steel-man the other's argument but that's not an option when being right and winning is your opponent's brand.
Debunking makes people believe the thing more favourably. It's the same psychological trick that makes advertising exposure work. If you hear more about something, good or bad, you like it more.
People are not rational beings who will disregard an idea because it is incorrect. The debunking is instead an attack on the person's identity or one of their friends. What you really need to do if you disagree with somebody is befriend and get them to have an emotional attachment to the same ideas you do
> Vaccine hesitant people are never really addressed adequately by government or by conventional media
Maybe to people who only follow crap on facebook and refuse to read "mainstream media" then misrepresent what they show. Mainstream medis is not saying what fb is parroting.
Because this has been ongoing for the most part. But hey it's boring and not written in capital letters so nobody reads it
> then it needs to be challenged, not suppressed.
You've just proven that people don't do that. Thanks. There's no better evidence than your post that people are too stupid to get out of their bubbles
> we have very large portions of the community (upward of 25% in countries like Germany) now feel discriminated against, people cannot get on planes and travel to see loved ones, they cant go the cinema, they cant do basically anything
Of course they can, they just have to stop being idiots. And if they won't do that by themselves the virus will do it for them
> "If you disagree with someone, you need to get into the arena with them and criticise what they say and debunk it"
Unfortunately, it's one-way only. You can't "get into the arena" disagreeing (for example) with the institution same-sex marriage without calls for deplatforming, Facebook bans and (for example) Neil Young trying to get your content removed.
It was a "fringe view" in early 2020 when those of us wore masks despite Fauci and the rest of the pointy heads in DC saying that masks weren't needed, and were possibly harmful. It was a "fringe view" when those of us said we shouldn't invade Iraq, because their was no credible evidence of WMD. It was a "fringe view" (and still is, unfortunately among many) when some of us said that there was no credible evidence of a "Russian attack" on our election in 2016. It was a "fringe view" when some of us insisted that the government was illegally spying on us before Snowden's revelations.
According to modern standards of social media censorship, all of these "fringe views" would very likely lead to getting banned and/or silenced for "misinformation". The fact is that the accuracy of a belief has absolutely no relationship to how widespread that belief is. This is especially true when the government, big tech and their legacy media outlets work together to engineer a consensus view (or the appearance of a consensus view) that hews to their preferred narrative rather than reality.
Alex Jones is an interesting example. I had never really heard anything about him except for the little bits and pieces that make it to CNN. Then I listened to a Joe Rogan interview with him and it convinced me that Jones is literally crazy. Rogan would ask him something and Jones would go ballistic yelling and spewing nonsense.
I've heard criticisms of Rogan for giving people like Jones a platform, but in the end I can't believe it helps Jones. He came off as a lunatic in the show I heard.
Picking 20 seconds out of thousands of hours of your political enemies broadcasts to smear them is the lowest form of propaganda.
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
> impressionable young men have been radicalized to a dangerous degree on the internet. Having the same views on his podcast as conspiracy theory sites, for example, will undoubtedly make it easier for the bad actors running these sites to radicalize JRE listeners
Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
And this cancel culture lockdown mentality is possibly why mid terms are going to rough for the left.
> How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
> Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
I have, he's entertaining. I don't take a single thing seriously. I've spent some time researching on thing he's said, all of it was gross mischaracterizations and exaggerations on any topic. I won't spend any more. I'm not a journalist, that's their job.
> Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
That would be fantastic, go ahead. This isn't idolatry.
> Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
Well, it is through free speech that radicalization does happen, however, nobody is talking about free speech here. because alex jones can still say whatever he wants. (as long as he can pay for libel/slander fines), you can exercise free speech. deplatforming has nothing to do with free speech.
Probably you should make sure Alex Jones didn't do something horrible like call the sandy hook shooting victims "crises actors" leading to mass harassment campaigns and suicides (that he is currently losing lawsuits over) before you decide to defend a random person for no reason.
> That's the thing though. Joe doesn't see himself as a credible news source, a voice of a movement, or any of those other things because accuse him of
When you have an audience numbering in the millions, and have a long term presence (unlike old school radio), you are a news source, whether you like it or not.
And you have a responsibility to be careful with your words, whether you want it or not.
In this age of boundless social media, where what is true, what is false and what is mis-leading is non-existent, it is pertinent for people like JRE to absolutely not go into topic they don't know or knowledgeable about.
I would really like to see him bring on Dr. Fauci, and have a good listen to him.
He recently did a full podcast with CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta. I'd imagine Dr Fauci would be welcomed as well to the show.
Joe's conversation with Dr Sanjay covered a variety of topics (Covid, marijuana policy, CNNs representation of Joe). On all these topics Dr Sanjay was definitely given an opportunity to make his argument - and I believe he probably reached a good number of people through Joe's platform.[1]
It is unfortunate that CNN's unprofessional representation of Joe's personal experience with Covid sucked up so much of the conversation around the episode. Dr Sanjay wasnt a part of this (until after the podcast...) And on the podcast he also took issue with CNN's coverage. Obviously this didn't go well over at CNN and I truly felt bad for Dr Sanjay being publicly steamrolled by the networks own talking heads in the days after. [2]
On their Covid discussion Joe raised some points that he has spoken about in other forums - they shouldn't surprise anyone. Primary among them are how we should account for natural immunity, clarity on the risk of side effects for children versus the risk of Covid, and treatments beyond vaccines (which given how frequently breakthru cases occur should be important conversation for pro/hesitant/anti vax alike).
These are things that Dr Sanjay (or Dr Fauci) should be able to have a meaningful discussion around. Dr Sanjay did a good job in my opinion (and his own opinion [3]) Honestly I think the feedback that talking heads should not speak with authority they don't have is something Don Lemon needs to reflect on. I think there is general disappointment in the mainstream press for not asking challenging questions and that it is related to the growing distrust of the 4th estate. Today's media has soundbytes, cheer leading puffery, and context free gotchas.
But why? Joe Rogan doesn’t publish news. The podcast is in the form of a conversation between two people. He does talk about current events, just as everybody else does when they have a conversation.
He doesn’t make any claim that is show is anything more than two people chatting. If anyone is using JRE as a trusted news source, then they are an idiot. You can’t stop people from being idiots, nor should we attempt to childproof the entire world on their behalf.
That I agree with, but that wasn't what I meant, and judging from anecdata, not everyone can make that distinction. It's easy to be convinced by presentation rather than content.
> Everyone I've ever talked to that listens to JRE thinks what they say on it is generally correct.
"Generally correct" is a much lower bar than "always correct". It might even be a bar that JRE can pass.
Edit: where they're talking about factual matters I mean, not where they talk about aliens, big foot, and other obviously outlandish ideas where they're clearly just shooting the breeze.
While that is true about Joe and the show that doesn't completely paint the whole picture either. Actually it really leaves out the key part of the whole picture.
Irregardless of what Joe says about himself and the show being nothing more than a bunch of idiotic guys talking, the truth of the matter is he does have credible and subject matter experts come on his show and talk and give their viewpoint on their area of expertise.
However when those experts come on and they go against the MSM narrative then the focus becomes about Joe and his silly tactics as a way to dismiss or downplay the counter views for some.
Does he really "Listen to everyone"? Or does he give more of a platform to the more outlandish while not really getting scientists in?
You can claim he giving another side to the "Mainstream media", but does he give in depth interviews with scientists who are little more than quotes in the media? or is he more focused on giving the "Other side"
Eg, he just had that idiot Peterson spouting climate rubbish, has he had credible climate scientists on his show?
Peterson's claims about climate objectively match leading science. You may disagree with him, but what he says is not rubbish. (For credibility, see the studies included in IPCC reports.)
Jordan Peterson is a world-renowned Canadian professor of psychology, clinical psychologist, and bestselling author. He has published over 100 scientific papers. You make a great point about him being an idiot.
If they have salient points that stand up to rigor, then yeah? This is pretty much an appeal-to-authority argument, isn't it?
FWIW, I have no context on the specific claims made by Peterson, but I've increasingly seen a line of logic that suggests you need to have a PhD in a topic in order to think critically about it.
Not sure what analogy I made, but in this case, you can weigh how much you want to consider either opinion:
Sample Weather Channel Guy:
- No history in psychology
- Citing papers that are not highly respected under peer review
Sample Psychologist:
- Has a long history in the field
- Ideally has references available for their own claim
In this case, you'd probably want to err on the side of trusting the second person in the chart. What didn't happen, though, was a complete dismissal of the first person's claim based on credentials alone. If you have to make a decision on something quickly and authority is the only way for you to judge it, then sure, go for it. But appeal-to-authority doesn't belong in open-ended debates.
Joe Rogan isn't as fair and balanced with his guests as you're giving him credit for. He doesn't equally listen to "everyone" or have "everyone" on his show. When was the last time Joe had a pro-vaccine expert on his show to ask them about the real science of vaccines? It doesn't happen.
Edit: Apparently he had Peter Attila on who is pro-vaccine, but that's hardly a leading expert on the topic, and there's still a clear bias in the guests Joe invites to his show.
He had Sanjay Gupta on just a couple of months ago.
Joe Rogan isn’t anti-vaccine. His stance on the Covid-19 vaccine is if you’re older, fat, or with an existing comorbidity you should go get vaccinated. For everyone else it isn’t strictly necessary and shouldn’t be a requirement.
It basically comes down to individualist versus collectivist. If you’re a collectivist you think JRE is spreading misinformation.
> It's mainly just him hanging out with his buddies smoke'n (sometimes literally) and joke'n.
> That's the entertaining and appeal of the show.
Facebook's press releases talk just like that. They also pretend to be "neutral".
But Rogan, Facebook and Spotify made choices with repercussions and consequences. They just don't want to bear responsibility/accountability for those consequences.
Ironic because Fox News has zero credibility. Their prime time anchor Tucker Carlson won against slander charges in court by arguing that he does not state actual facts and instead engages in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. They are clearly a mouthpiece for one of two sides, like other “news” organizations.
And since the beginning of Covid Joe Rogan has stopped being just a dude who hangs out and smokes with his buddies, something I used to love about the show. He is constantly and consistently political, making medical claims and other kinds of claims that are nonsensical. He’s started favoring certain types of guests, and avoiding the friends who call him out.
I used to argue vehemently that free speech can be infringed upon under no circumstance. I still will. But now I see the “other side” more clearly, that is, where is the line when someone has one of the largest platforms in the world and uses it to spread dangerous misinformation? He’s way past just some dude. I have friends who take what he says as gospel, because they want to learn how to be men and Joe is a man’s man. At the same time, he does make good arguments in favor of discourse, hearing different viewpoints, etc. so how do we handle this?
The other American networks are no different. Just yesterday CNN’s Jim Acosta called Virginia under Republican Governor Youngkin a “Soviet-style police state.” I don’t see how that’s better or worse than any of Carlson’s hyperbolic statements. CNN in particular has spread plenty of misinformation, such as in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion or during 2020’s “firey but mostly peaceful” riots.
People have the ability to remember and compare similar statements and events. Double standards applied unfairly tend to get remembered for a very long time. I think the best thing would be to apply even standards across the board for “misinformation”, and tend towards less rather than more censorship.
> CNN host Jim Acosta on Tuesday suggested Virginia was being run like a "Soviet-style police state" under new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
> During a segment on his fill-in primetime show, Acosta, while making the comparison, cited an email tip line set up by Youngkin's administration in which parents can report teachers that teach "divisive" topics to their children, such as critical race theory, while also mocking the way Youngkin dressed.
which is hyperbole about hyperbole. Then you read it from realpolitics:
> CNN's Jim Acosta recognized that the country is divided, and he had someone to blame during a Tuesday segment with Molly Jong Fast.
> "It seems Republican leaders have gone all-in on dividing the country in many ways," Acosta said.
> "I seem to remember Glenn Youngkin campaigning in a fleece vest in Virginia. He was running as a different kind of Republican. I was told there was going to be a vest, not a Soviet-style police state across the Potomac from Washington," he said about the new Virginia governor.
Who spend most of their time quoting what Acosta actually said in one block (while FoxNews shuffles the quotes around so it would fit their narrative). The news is basically trash these days. Of course, once it comes out that the governer basically instituted a tip line to out teachers who might be teaching something construed as critical race theory, all the non-far right wingers are already on board with Acosta's outrage.
Here's how the actual executive order defines "inherently divisive"- seems worth a tip line to me:
>For the purposes of this Executive order “inherently divisive concepts” means advancing any ideas in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including, but not limited to of the following concepts (i) one race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith is inherently superior to another race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith; (ii) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, is racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously, (iii) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, (iv) members of one race, ethnicity, sex or faith cannot and should not attempt to treat others as individuals without respect to race, sex or faith, (v) an individual's moral character is inherently determined by his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, (vi) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, ethnicity, sex or faith, (vii) meritocracy or traits, such as a hard work ethic, are racist or sexist or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.
He appeals to the crowd that seems to think the contrarian stance is always the smarter stance. If the mainstream reports Ivermectin is for horses and doesn't treat covid, they latch onto one half-truth that it's for horses like they cracked the code and use this to undermine the credibility of anyone telling them it's not useful for treating covid even if there are human applications.
I've realized in my conversations with Rogan fans and Fox News fans alike, to them all lies are equal, everyone lies, nothing is true, so they pick the things they like as truths. These people will tell you Joe Rogan is an entertainer not to be listened to, and then spout off a bunch of opinions they got from his show as their reasons for all kinds of decisions.
Saying that Ivermectin is for horses is like saying penicillin is for horses. True, but deliberately deceptive.
They carried out a disinformation campaign using half-truths. They could complain that this tactic is valid because Ivermectin is ineffective for Covid. But they junked their credibility with the horse nonsense.
To be fair to Tucker Carlson... Facebook did the exact same thing but claimed all of their fact checkers under that legal umbrella in their own court case.
> The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.
All media sources hide behind "being just entertainment and not factual opinion" just like the New York Times or MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who, when she was sued for saying OAN is "paid Russian propaganda”, won the case because “The statement could not reasonably be understood to imply an assertion of objective fact, and therefore, did not amount to defamation”[2] even though MSNBC couldn't prove OAN was paid by Russia.
I’d say we should handle it with more speech. All the experts should start their own podcasts where they have their own guests and talk about, among other things, _why_ the things discussed on his show are misinformation. Make each episode at least an hour, and have an actual discussion. They don’t need to smoke weed or anything, but people like rogan because he does still feel like just some guy with a podcast, and mainstream media is less popular than ever because people are sick of being told what to think and not to question things.
That would be infinitely more engaging than a clickbait headline and 3 minutes from an “expert” on CNN/MSNBC/Fox.
> All the experts should start their own podcasts where they have their own guests and talk about, among other things, _why_ the things discussed on his show are misinformation.
Sounds like something an expert in a field would a) not have enough time to do, b) usually lack the charisma to do and c) draw them away from arguably more pertinent tasks, such as research?
I think a better course of action would be to stop believing one can be educated on topics they know nothing about, and without context, purely by passively absorbing information from podcasts.
I don't know if that's feasible. Joe Rogan can have hour-long podcasts because hour-long podcasts are his job. It is not the job of experts to have hour-long podcasts dissecting another podcast-- their jobs are to be experts in whatever their field is in. Dissecting a wrong person may not be helpful if they don't have the equipment, the same following, the polish, the time, or the presentation skill... because its not their job.
Joe Rogan is a useful idiot for grifters who know that he won't seriously challenge them for what they're saying under the guise of "hey it's just fun" and "hey I'm just letting them say their piece." He is a perhaps a good conversationalist for engaging with and listening to his guests, but he is a poor interviewer and, unless he's in on the con, a poor judge of character.
I thought a blog piece on Rolling Stone summed up Rogan decently enough:
"This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity. Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines. "
> This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity
You mean his instinct is to let his guests speak and let the listeners make up their own mind? I wonder why Rogan is so popular.
> Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines.
Rogan has stated openly many times that his guiding ethos is literally to have people on that he finds interesting or wants to learn more about. I've seen nothing to really contradict this. This likely just intersects with controversial and/or popular in some or many cases, but it's disingenuous to then claim that this was the motive all along.
>You mean his instinct is to let his guests speak and let the listeners make up their own mind? I wonder why Rogan is so popular.
If he hosted some kind of a salon with competing views where he never took a stance and just let the conversation unfold that might be the case, but he regularly injects himself and varying degrees of "information" into the conversation to color and steer it. Each guest is in a vacuum where for their time on his show where they're more or less unchallenged and unfettered by reality.
To be clear I don't think his show should be censored, but I think his fans need to be a bit more honest with themselves and others. He makes people feel safe to settle in and listen to bullshit, believe the bullshit, and then say "it's just entertainment, this isn't where I get my opinions - by the way let me fill you in on all my obviously Rogan informed opinions."
> but he regularly injects himself and varying degrees of "information" into the conversation to color and steer it.
Sure, when something requires clarification because it seems inconsistent with his understanding or what's common knowledge. Even an impartial moderator would do that. It still remains the case that his instinct is to let the guests talk, because he invited them there to learn more about them.
That said, Rogan certainly states his own opinions sometimes too, more so and more forcefully on certain topics that he's discussed many times and so he has developed more certainty. I used to watch more of his podcasts a few years ago, and he was much more open and less certain on some topics. Recently he's expressed more certainty on those topics because he's had so many discussions on them that his certainty is higher.
I would certainly welcome more guests with opposing views, but a lot of those people wouldn't go on his podcast simply because he "gives a platform" to their opponents.
> platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines. "
At this stage of the pandemic we know that much of the MSM has done the same thing. I'm triple vaccinated, I have followed this pandemic since late January 2020, at the time when "coronavirus" as a hashtag was seen as a trump-ism and not present on Twitter's front page or wherever it is that they publish their hot hashtags.
Yeah, in a very specific meaning of "listen to everyone", as in he clearly listened to the people advocating Ivermectin to trait covid but not the vaccine, which to me seems like tribalism as such decision is not based on listening to anyone making a bit of sense.
> A few weeks ago, 270 doctors, scientists, healthcare professionals and professors wrote an open letter to Spotify, expressing concern about medical misinformation on Rogan’s podcast.
This is the same defense Jon Stewart always used. "It's a comedy show". I'm not sure whether you're a credible news source absolves you of responsibility of spreading harmful misinformation. He has a huge platform and a huge voice. What he does isn't illegal but it's definitely not the most moral behavior.
The difference is that the Daily Show looked and acted like a traditional news show, which of course, was part of the parody. No one has ever confused the JRE for that.
You must be listening to a completely different JRE. He pretends to speak as an authority on all subjects, occasionally to the point of shouting down guests and not even letting them finish a thought -- usually because Rogan just thought of a good jab and needs to get it in before the guest can finish making their correct point. Made worse that a substantial portion of Rogan's fan base is quite rabid and are well known for harassing guests (sometimes for months after an appearance) simply because Joe disagreed with them.
It's egregiously ignorant to proclaim that his comments aren't taken seriously or don't have real life consequences. You don't get to dole out medical advice as a self-proclaimed expert and then hide behind "it's just entertainment, bro."
I listen to most JRE episodes (I skip the ones where he has his MMA buddies on because I'm not interested) - I don't think I've ever heard him shout anyone down?
Also I've never heard him speak as an authority on anything other than stand-up comedy and MMA. Everything else I hear him ask his guests to clarify, like his recent episode with some skeevy psychologist/tech guy (Dr. Robert Epstein) who wasn't elaborating on dubious claims. At some point the guest was talking about Google "blocking the internet" and said condescendingly "Are you serious? You don't know this?" (my paraphrasing).
Joe just calmly responded with something along the lines of "Even if I do know this, my audience may not, so when I push back on you to elaborate or give more details or proof of a claim, it's not for me specifically". And yea, the guest was just a BS-er talking about big tech censorship, no Google can't block the internet, his claim ended up being about Google search and Chrome specifically.
What! JRE shows are around 2 hours long. Guests have plenty of time to talk even if interrupted. I have seen no other show that provides such an opportunity for guests to finish a thought.
But they do. People defended the show by saying he’ll listen to anyone. The products he endorses and people he has on enjoy gigantic boosts in popularity. Literally nobody is saying, “oh it’s just some dumb show”. A lot of men look to Joe Rogan for guidance. If you don’t see it, you’re not paying attention imo. I used to look to the show for dumb fun, sure, but also to expose me to information about working out, cool activities, cool people to follow like Cameron Hanes and David Goggins, lots of stuff.
If they're similarly guilty of misinformation, those responsible in the media should absolutely face consequences as well. This feels like whataboutism, which doesn't preclude people taking a stand against the JRE podcast.
My take on this this is it has nothing to do with Joe Rogan, Neil Young, or Spotify.
The mainstream media push against podcasting is really a fight to hold for their power.
People who think they have the power to tell people "what's going on" are annoyed that a mere "podcaster" can also do the same nowadays. It's pretty interesting when you start to notice the derogatory tone mainstream-media celebrities use when talking about podcasts. The idea that some rando (in their mind) can just skirt the whole path they suffered through to get where they are, and have enough power to have their say and affect people's mind. People in this group include people like Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Matt Lauer, Jake Tapper, etc...
Those television journalists have it in their mind that they're the authority, and their authority is being challenged now by the fact that a podcaster is becoming more and more of a big-shot.
It's pretty much the same push initially against youtube, social-media, and possibly even the internet, before corporate media managed to find a way to use those tools to their benefit. This also explains the push for monitoring, regulating (aka controlling) what's being said via this medium.
Mainstream media is not just TV "journalism", but also the rapidly deteriorating online/print journalism:
Funny, I associate podcasts with deep, meaningful well researched news coverage. A good example are the Jupiter Broadcasting podcasts [0], I have learned so much. And they actively shy away from knee jerking, meaning that if a news worthy event is still young (and it's just shouting on twitter) they will either report very minimally and let it play out while researching further or not report on it for now. I so appreciate this, it just feels so balanced, I just know that if there is drama, I get a nice explanation about what happened in a coupled of days.
Also, for the Dutch speaking, Nerdland Maandoverzicht [Nerd land month overview]. Brilliant, in depth with scientists who know their stuff and a lot of humor as well. [1]
> The idea that some rando (in their mind) can just skirt the whole path they suffered through to get where they are
Joe Rogan has been on national television since the '90s. He paid his dues too. That fact is a wrench in the works of your argument, as it applies to this specific dispute.
I completely agree. To me the idea that the people in positions of power or authority are principled and really concerned about misinformation - about covid or anything else - is laughable. And that goes for the managers at Spotify, media personalities, celebrities of any kind, etc.
> Those television journalists have it in their mind that they're the authority, and their authority is being challenged now by the fact that a podcaster is becoming more and more of a big-shot.
Same thing is happening in print journalism with substack.
"The mainstream media push against podcasting is really a fight to hold for their power."
So Neil Young represents mainstream media?
As far as I can tell, this was a personal initiative from Neil Young, so your points against the arrogance of mainstream media people might be legit, but with no connection to this case.
I’m only talking about the narrative around the whole “we need to shut Joe up”. I have no interest or idea in why Neil Young himself thought it’d be a good idea to get himself into this, at least in this manner.
Well, aren't we all pawns of some narrative, it's something we all cannot deny. Neil believed in mainstream media so he made his move to "defend" the narrative as a tribal instinct. I think Neil should have invited Joe to a podcast to discuss his grievances, rather than just raise an ultimatum.
Showing an openness to discussion would have been so much better for his case.
Hell yes - there is way too much fanatism in this whole debate and I am frankly quite disappointed with Neil Young's initiative. This is not rocking the free world for me.
>It's pretty interesting when you start to notice the derogatory tone mainstream-media celebrities use when talking about podcasts
It becomes really obvious when the podcaster is a professional analyst for that subject and doing the podcast as a side gig. They'd have the same type of person saying the same thing as a guest but they're being a whiny jerks because said person isn't on their platform answering their cherry picked questions.
Joe Rogan is mainstream media. He’s not some “rando” sticking it to the man. He’s not some guy with a mic and a laptop recording a show and putting it online. He was famous before he started podcasting and he’s getting paid millions of dollars by a corporation to speak exclusively on their platform. The true con in all of this is that Joe Rogan has managed to convince so many people he’s just like them. He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
Going after the listeners' intelligence is petty and arrogant.
I frequently get annoyed at Joe and as an interviewer I think he got worse over time (perhaps ego). But I respect immensely that
- He stands for free speech and freedom of the arts. And has always done so consistently.
- He still comes out often to admit he is wrong or just an idiot on some topic.
- He has never called for the censorship of anyone else, in stark contrast to figures like Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow.
- Finally, he has on a variety of guests, his interview with Bernie Sanders was great, and the first time I understood more nuanced ideas of his politics.
> Going after the listeners' intelligence is petty and arrogant.
I read that differently: it’s not raw intelligence but the self-image of being an intellectual without actually doing the homework — like the people who have various hot takes based on some post they read who then start doing the “mainstream science is wrong about …” dance with the voice of authority but no actual understanding of the field. We’ve seen that a lot during the pandemic with various claims about things like HCQ, Ivermectin, vitamin D, etc. where people would a strong position that something worked but really had no expertise in the field to assess those claims.
Rogan is dangerous because he’s an entertainer who needs controversy to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in viewership but a lot of his audience think he’s giving them something more than that.
> Rogan is dangerous because he’s an entertainer who needs controversy to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in viewership but a lot of his audience think he’s giving them something more than that.
By that logic, Neil Young is also dangerous. Technically they're both as dangerous as any other media personality or entertainer with a mic (or platform) and an opinion. You shouldn't be listening to Rogan without questioning, nor should you listen to MSM without questioning. Treating what they say as something that needs to be curtailed is at best patronizing to the millions of people that are in the audience, and autocratic/authoritarian at worst.
Saying that he's specifically dangerous (without highlighting that it's the same for others in MSM) is in fact dangerous because it's cherry picking what fits your biased narrative.
There’s a key difference: Neil Young isn’t dangerous because he’s not portraying himself as someone he’s not. He’s not presenting contrarian hot takes but simply saying that the experts are right on this and we should listen to them.
When you try to dismiss that as a “biased narrative” or “authoritarian” it demonstrates the danger of this intellectual sloppiness: you’re conflating two positions as equally worthy of attention without acknowledging that one of them has near-unanimous consensus among experts and has been extensively validated. Trying to “both sides this without accounting for that weight is making you less informed, not more.
Interesting point of view. So why are you labeling what the experts that Rogan brings on as "presenting contrarian hot takes"? Is it just because they're different from what another group of experts are saying? What gives one expert-group the right to say something more than what some other experts-group?
Then again if you read my comment carefully, you can see that I'm not "dismissing" what Neil himself is saying/doing, but what the comment I'm replying to did, which is labeling one thing as dangerous and the other as not. Which IMO is dangerous for the opinion holder themselves because it eradicates any chance of self-inspection.
I'd really like you to specify as clearly and concisely as possibly why you think the two positions are not equally worthy of my attention:
- A) the experts that are pro something
- B) the experts that are against something
Is it just the "near-unanimous consensus" as you put it? How is it near-unanimous? and who's consensus is it? And does consensus make things unquestionable? Not exactly clear on what you're trying to say.
Or are you saying that the people Rogan brings on are not experts? Or were experts and not anymore? If so, please provide some examples.
It’s that they’re not experts at all. For example, Malone was involved in the earliest days of mRNA research in the 1980s. He’s not an expert on what other people subsequently did over the next 3 decades and his endorsement of medications which don’t work and the antivax movement shows that he’s no longer willing to meet the standards of being a scientist.
Now, that might be a sad, slightly comical end to a career if it was something harmless — similar to how, say, the creationists would latch onto one guy with a Ph.D in something science-related to say there was a controversy — but it’s medical malpractice at a time when thousands of people are dying daily and vaccination lowers that number by at least an order of magnitude.
To say that "Malone was involved in the earliest days of mRNA research in the 1980s" is an understatement to say the least really.
Malone is the discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection [1] and architect of mRNA vaccine platform (check the 9 patents he holds) [2].
Please don't take what I'm saying here as an attack on you personally, but what makes you capable of saying that he's not an expert on "what other people subsequently did over the next 3 decades". And what sort of credentials you personally have to say that whatever medication he's endorsing "don’t work", or that "he’s no longer willing to meet the standards of being a scientist". What are those standards? Is it that he's not part of the consensus you're speaking of?
With that being said, I'm absolutely NOT saying that he is right and the others are wrong either. But to pretend that he's dangerous and others are not just because he doesn't bias in the direction you like is not a good reason really to dismiss it, or to want to brand whatever show he gets hosted on as "dangerous" for doing so. He has as much right to say his mind as others. He's no more dangerous than Anthony Fauci or any other expert involved.
Where was his involvement in the development or testing of the vaccines we’re actually using? The extensive safety and efficacy reviews which were conducted in multiple countries prior to authorization? The ongoing review since then?
That’s what matters when discussing his expertise on the subject of the COVID vaccine. It doesn’t matter how great he might have been at one of the many parts of the scientific process which got us here, what matters is the topic we’re actually discussing. Scientists are not like you see in the movies: nobody is an expert at everything and they’re not perfect, either — that’s why the process is built around adversarial review since everyone makes mistakes. Linus Pauling was a Nobel laureate and by all accounts a brilliant researcher but that didn’t mean he was right about vitamin megadoses.
> Where was Fauci during the development of the vaccine?
This is such a weird question because the answer is obvious, he was working in a leading role as the head of a government agency who has to be involved with/aware of what is going on with the vaccine.
Fauci is not claiming that his views are based on being an inventor of the technology. He’s saying that he’s read the papers by the many scientists involved and is basing his advice on that heavily-reviewed work. Malone could submit his claims to the same process but he knows that they’d never hold up to examination.
It’s fine to criticize that, but you should be even handed and also acknowledge that establishment experts and captured mainstream institutions have tried very hard with deceptive tactics to hide any possibility (I said possibility… I didn’t say fact) that the people dying daily you are concerned about are dying from a virus released by a lab leak in a system managed by what would seem to be your preferred experts. The possibility is there and it should not be deflected from with deception and talking points.
In other words you are so concerned about the credibility of one person, but you don’t seem to care that the entire field has compromised its own credibility by the behavior of its leading figures and key institutions.
What is "antivax"? He was vaccinated against covid! And afaik doesn't question vaccination in general, he just has raised concerns about the MRNA Covid vaccines because of the Spike Protein. His concerns may be disproportionate and not necessarily what I'd prioritize during a global pandemic but saying he has blood on his hands and calling for censorship seems outrageous...
He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety and speaking at antivax events. He doesn’t need to believe what he’s saying - plenty of people find it profitable not to - but that’s irrelevant because his public statements have the same impact whether or not he believes them.
> He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety
Like what? From your Atlantic piece this seems to be the closest to a false claim and its pretty underwhelming. These pieces read more like I should be upset because he appears is in the same sentence as Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys than the actual content of what he has said.
"Malone may keep company with vaccine skeptics, but he insists he is not one himself. His objections to the Pfizer and Moderna shots have to do mostly with their expedited approval process and with the government’s system for tracking adverse reactions. Speaking as a doctor, he would probably recommend their use only for those at highest risk from COVID-19. Everyone else should be wary" [1]
> and speaking at antivax events.
The one linked in your second article is an Anti-Vaccine Mandate event, which is not the same thing as being anti vaccine. It's possible to appreciate the benefits of vaccines and simultaneous think the government shouldn't force everyone to take one.
Curious about your thoughts regarding misinformation like, "only 1% of patients get addicted". In a single year that line killed more people under thirty than under thirty unvaccinated to covid will ever die. And it was propagated by expert consensus.
Consensus among experts hasn't meant anything more than protection of the ruling class. See Wright brothers and even vaccination for other examples.
Assuming you are talking about Oxycontin, the problem there was that there was no expert consensus - in fact there was no information at all on addictiveness - but the FDA still allowed that language to be used in the promotional literature. The guy who approved it ended up working for Purdue a few months after leaving the FDA.
The story of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family definitely exposes issues with the FDA, but I'm not sure it's a good example of expert consensus getting it wrong. (Not to say that expert consensus is always right.)
Doctors were parroting the line and prescribing the drug anyway. Despite their perception as experts apparently a lot of them never bothered to cross check the alleged study with their common sense and previous training.
He’s literally virtue signaling trying to cancel another entertainers contract. It’s very authoritarian and bent towards a biased narrative. Maybe that’s not the words I would have used myself but I completely catch the meaning.
How is Neil Young adding any value to the world by this action? Do you really see Joe as a threat to something? What is it?
It's not “virtue signaling” to say that someone should not use their platform to foment deadly misinformation. Rogan isn't talking about sports, or debating whether someone's music is better than another artist's, he's giving weight to people who are pedaling advice which will reliably harm people.
It's especially interesting to see you attack the scientific consensus as a “biased narrative” because that's what you are actually trying to promote. The scientific process isn't perfect but it includes a lot of effort to avoid bias, starting with how things like experiments are designed and conducted. Claiming that someone else's politically-motivated position deserves equal weight is revealing that the problem here isn't bias but rather that it's not biased in the direction you would like.
I think the point of the 1st amendment is that to distinguish speech is to apply bias - good or bad… the outcome of such action is selecting winners and losers and a path to oppression.
This is a very inaccurate understanding of the first amendment and freedom of speech in general. The first amendment prevents the government from restricting speech – King George cannot have cops quiet you in the town square — but it doesn't say anything about someone having the right to an audience or that anyone has an obligation to promote everyone else's speech — and, of course, if it did, Rogan certainly wouldn't meet that standard since he selects his guests based on what he thinks the audience will like rather than some attempt to present a full spectrum of opinions.
No, the difference is opposite from what you say: Neil Young is the one portraying himself as something he is not: a person who supports freedom.
While Joe Rogan frequently calls himself an idiot (meaning it in the sense that we are all idiots about certain topics, but especially him since he often covers topics that are new to him) while bringing in smart people with opposing views and learning from them.
One of these people is representing himself more honestly than the other, and it’s not who you think.
And there is and should be no rule that all discussions of important topics need to be academically rigorous as defined by you.
The best way to beat Neil Young is to be more popular than him. He's failed at this before. He wrote a song called Southern Man which got some airplay, but Lyrnyrd Skynyrd wrote a response that ended up being far, far more popular ("southern man don't need him anyhow") and ultimately Neil Young ended up regretting his original song because he realized it was condescending.
https://www.countryliving.com/life/entertainment/a43715/swee...
I'm sympathetic to Neil on this one but he's just signalling to his tribe and won't have an impact on anybody else.
How is he more dangerous than corporate media interests?
Also, this usage of the word danger puts a bad taste in my mouth. I really struggle to agree that a podcaster is dangerous, even to the public good, just by his exercise of free speech.
Exactly, it's this sort of fear-mongering that is exactly dangerous.
I've talked with a lot of people who enjoy JRE and other skeptical podcasts, not one of them thinks of themselves as more-intellectual or superior to others who don't.
I disagree with blanket opposition to GMOs — there is legitimate concern about adequate regulation — but the stakes are far lower: thousands of people are dying every day from COVID-19 and vaccination lowers that rate by at least an order of magnitude, while nobody will die because they choose not to eat GMO[1]. I think there’s a really big distinction between having an opinion on a topic which does not have a simple consensus and offering comprehensively-disproven medical advice at a time when the daily death toll is measured in thousands and illness is causing widespread economic disruption.
1. Yes, I’m aware of the value of GMOs for improving crop yield. That’s important, likely necessary to mitigate the impact of climate change, but it’s not a direct cause of death like a virus and most of the food insecurity in the world traces back to politics rather than an absolute shortage.
Yearly hunger deaths are nearly double Covid deaths.
One of the major issues with hunger is that you can not just ship food from a place that has it to a place that doesn't, that ends up wiping out local farmers and creating more food instability.
GMO are the best way to create crops that are drought and insect resistant. This is huge in bot resisting the effects of global warming and also reducing the amount of pesticides we use.
The idea that we can have food that is better for us and the environment and yet there are people that do their best to prevent it's use is insane.
Again, I don’t oppose GMOs (as you might note from the examples in my comment) but it’s the height of sophistry to claim that they’d solve this problem as effectively as vaccines reduce the risks from the virus actively circulating now. The latter is a direct causal relationship, the former is one factor affecting one of multiple overlapping problems.
You're comparing two different types of situation: the first is a direct casual relationship: if you get infected with the COVID-19 virus, you are less likely to infect others and are an order of magnitude less likely to die from it if you've been vaccinated — and that's a non-hypothetical situation with how widespread it is and the strain this has placed on the healthcare system, impacting patients with completely unrelated needs.
In contrast, the link between GMOs and food insecurity is nowhere near that simple. If you are starving because you are a member of an ethnic group which is not in power, GMOs won't do a thing. If you are starving because you don't own your farmland and the owner charges too much in rent, GMOs won't change that dynamic. If you are starving because you lack adequate water or have contaminated farmland, GMOs may or may not help enough to make a difference. If you are starving because insects or fungus destroy your crops, GMOs might help if you can afford the seeds but not if, say, they help by letting the crops survive if you spread pesticides which you can't afford. If you are starving because your lack of access to birth control means that you (as was common throughout human history) have more children than your farmland can feed, GMOs probably won't help enough to change your life. If you are starving because other economic conditions force you to sell too much of your crop to pay for other things like shelter, clothing, medicine, etc. GMOs won't really help, either. If you have any of these problems and the company which made the GMOs won't sell you seeds at an affordable price, well, guess what?
That's not saying that GMOs don't have a useful place — as you might note, I described them as necessary for the impacts of climate change on agriculture — but unlike COVID there isn't a single problem and it's not something which can be fixed with a cheap, infrequent action. The problems GMOs help with are only part of a complex set of overlapping problems and they don't solve anything as much as they help manage it — American farmers jumped on Roundup-resistant crops for obvious reasons but it wasn't a game changer for them because the benefits are partially canceled by the ongoing cost of buying seed and pesticides.
Young has been foolish and reactionary in his songs plenty of times. "Let's impeach the president" is not exactly lyrical nuance. That doesn't make Rogan better. He also doesn't have an army of fans who insist up and down that he is actually a proponent of reasoned analysis and listening to expertise.
I’m not saying that Young has all of the answers, only that in this case it’s good advice to go with the medical consensus when there’s an easy way to prevent thousands of deaths daily.
> This is why "masks don't work" was truth from Fauci but wrong with Rand Paul said so about cloth masks.
This only works because you’re misrepresenting the claims: we always knew that masks worked but it was initially unclear how effective they were and widespread shortages lead to reasonable questions about reserving them for the highest risk jobs, not to mention avoiding people unnecessarily exposing themselves because they thought wearing a mask was safe. Remember, it still wasn’t clear exactly how COVID spread and it was quite plausible that someone might have, say, worn a mask but gotten infected by a droplet on their skin. There was also, as you might recall, considerable political pressure from the White House muddying the waters, too.
What’s tellingly different is what happened as the data became clear and the supply situation improved: Fauci wasn’t afraid to update what he said based on the evidence but the right-wingers you’re relying on repeatedly switched from one wrong thing to another because their goal was being politically correct rather than actually correct.
I’ve seen people on the left furious at Fauci for his errors. I’ve seen people on the left flabbergasted that the lab leak theory was initially dismissed and we all went along with it.
What is happening is that you have one side who expects to get it wrong sometimes: the left. And then you have the right, where getting it wrong is not allowed.
Don't you find it ironic that you are posting a comment about how people were flabbergasted that the lab leak theory was dismissed and banned from discussion, on a thread about someone being dismissed, and calls for his ban from discussion are coming from those same people who banned lab leak discussion?
So by your logic every media member, fauci, and even the president is dangerous. They made a lot of serious claims that the data showed were completely false. Here are just a couple.
Masks aren't effective
You wont need more than 2 vaccinations
There are 0 side effects
You cannot get covid if you are vaccinated
You cannot get hospitalized from covid if you are vaccinated
You cannot die from covid if you are vaccinated
There will never be vaccine mandate
Covid natural immunity is worse than the vaccine
All these things were false when they said them and are still false today. Furthermore at the time they were said the actual data said the opposite.
Seems to me they way more dangerous than Rogan as they are supposed to be sources of trust to the American people but instead are just making up stuff to fit their political narrative. IMO if these so called sources of trust didn't straight up lie to the public for 2 years, Rogan would not be able to sway so many people.
Yeah, the problem is not intelligence, but the fact that he simply is uneducated, and does not have the skills of critical thinking, deduction and scientific method. Yet he poses as one, gets involved in debates and makes claims of which he is just not qualified at all. He is dangerous because he inspires people to have strong opinions and reach conclusions about things they are not qualified to assess.
Assuming you're talking about Rogan here, and not one of his guests. He doesn't pose as anything, certainly not as an expert on topics that he's not. So everything besides MMA. Seems to me that you've never listened to his show. He never debates scientists or academics on their areas of expertise. He asks questions.
And your final line about him being dangerous because he inspires people to have opinions about things they are not qualified to assess... Utter garbage. First of all, you don't know anything about his audience, their qualifications and their opinions and conclusions. Second, this line of thinking would extend to all media. Here, let me give you a contemporary example:
- Masks aren't necessary, just wash your hands
- Wear masks
- Closing schools is good
- Closing schools is bad
- The vaccine stops the spread
- Don't need masks if you're vaxxed
- The vaccine was never meant to stop the spread, sorry you interpreted it that way - Fauci's own words (how many people died because we were told that the vaxxed don't have to worry about infecting anyone any more?)
- Wear masks even though you're vaxxed
- Get the Vax to save others even though it doesn't stop the spread
The mainstream media has been a pile of hot garbage and endless contradictions during the pandemic. You're expected to just take everything they say at face value and "trust the science". That right there is what's truly dangerous.
The media and government should be honest and explain that "the science" is far from conclusive, rapidly evolving, and that there are many unknowns. Instead, they of course assume that everyone is a moron and must be told what to do.
The idea that Rogan is dangerous because some morons may do whatever a guest tells them to do is full of hypocrisy. That, and neither Rogan nor his guests actually tell anyone what to do. But they may inspire people to ask questions and dig deeper. And the fact that this is so frowned upon in this day in age, is the tragedy of our time.
That’s much weaker than your original claim that it was mandatory for the entire country, and that story about requesting approval is a year old. If you read the recent information I gave you, note that this approval has not happened.
No, it showed that one guy a year ago said it could be considered. His peers did not agree and year later it's still not approved because the evidence simply doesn't show it having any effect outside of a few flawed studies which have not held up to examination.
You didn’t debunk the 200 members of congress using ivermectin, you didn’t debunk the history of ivermectins use for coronaviruses and you describe chair of Tokyo Medical Association as “some dude”. You didn’t debunk the other poster mentioning New Jersey’s use of ivermectin either.
Haruo Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, proposed emergency use of drugs mainly to prevent the severity of home caregivers in order to respond to the spread of the new coronavirus. He emphasized that antiparasitic drug "Ivermectin" should be administered to people infected with coronavirus because it has shown the effect of preventing severity overseas.
In addition to Ivermectin, the country called for approval for the use of the steroid-based anti-inflammatory drug "dexamethathone". The Ozaki clan said, "(both) there are few side effects. I want the country to consider treatment at the level of the family doctor."
Ivermectin and dexamethasone are prescribed in Japan. However, it has not been approved as a treatment for corona. As of the 8th, there are about 1,600 home recuperators in Tokyo, and about 1,600 people are "adjusted" without deciding where to be hospitalized. It is also a challenge to respond to sudden changes in the condition of home caregivers with mild and asymptomatic patients.
Mr. Ozaki emphasized the number of new cases per day in Tokyo that "removing it to about 100 people is the way to improve the situation from April to June". On the 9th, 412 new cases were confirmed in Tokyo.
No it's not. Joe Rogan's content is objectively stupid. He somehow manages to amass an audience while entertaining some of the dumbest thoughts I've ever heard. He gives experts and charlatans the same platform, and treats them as though they're equally experienced or qualified.
Refusing to have Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, on your show to say pseudo-intellectual nonsense like "climate doesn't exist" is not censorship, it's just basic editorial sense. Rogan somehow fools people into thinking this lack of sense is a virtue.
Noting that someone is using a rhetorical tactic vs engaging with the argument shows me nothing other than that you will not or cannot engage with the argument. Try again.
I don't need to discredit anyone, he said it himself.
Personally I think Joe Rogan can be very entertaining, but he needs to stop spouting conspiratorial nonsense like it's equally valid information.
And if you want to claim logical fallacies, Rogan is constantly committing them himself! Post hoc ergo propter hoc, hasty generalizations, slippery slopes, circular arguments, appeals to false authority... his show is a complete circus of fallacies.
Now who's pulling out a strawman? I didn't say Peterson shouldn't be able to speak, I said Joe Rogan is a moron for giving him a platform to do so.
Maybe I can't put together an argument, but what the hell are you out here doing? Defending the valor of a self-proclaimed idiot and the guy that thinks "there's no such thing as climate."
>Defending the valor of a self-proclaimed idiot and the guy that thinks "there's no such thing as climate."
Nope, this is your problem and most likely the reason you're having a hard time grasping the issue at hand.
I'm defending the right to speak without the fascist woke mob trying to silence it. I suggest you do some critical thinking and figure out why this is such an important thing in western society. This right applies to ALL or it applies to no one.
I don't watch John Oliver's show, but I don't need to... I can pretty confidently say things like:
* John Oliver hasn't told anyone that ivermectin is 99% effective but big pharma doesn't want you to know about it.
* John Oliver hasn't told young people that "I wouldn't get vaccinated"
* John Oliver hasn't blamed a white nationalist rally on the "feds"
* John Oliver didn't have a psychologist on his show to talk about how "there's no such thing as climate"
It has a lot to do with your comment... it's not an appeal to authority when the guy himself says he's a moron and no one should follow his advice. When he says something like that it leaves no choice but to listen to authority because he's clearly stated that he is not authoritative.
We're not talking a single authority here either... hundreds of doctors, including epidemiologists, have complained about Rogan's covid rhetoric... a subject he quite literally has no knowledge about.
You can't waive away all authority as a logical fallacy, often it refers to a false authority or a lack or corroboration. This isn't one of those subjects.
I didn't say anything about his "right," I said if Rogan had any sense Jordan Peterson wouldn't be coming around to tell a few million people that "there's no such thing as climate."
It's not a subjective dislike of anyone. Peterson said "there's no such thing as climate." I'm not even aware of a context that exists where that wouldn't be a stupid thing to say...
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Joe is first and foremost an entertainer, just like Neil Young. People should be able to make up their own minds about what they listen to. Joe Rogan has said controversial things that aren't true, but so has Neil Young. Neither side should be trying to force the other to not be heard. That's how we end up in an echo chamber. Allowing both sides to speak gives people the option to form opinions on their own, and hopefully that pushes them to investigate the actual truth (let's not pretend that either Joe or Neil are scientists and take their word at face value).
What is it that he has to make up for? His guests cover a pretty broad spectrum. This is a genuine question because I haven't actually heard him push anti-vaccine sentiments, unless expressing an opinion is what you define as pushing. Or maybe he's gone beyond expressing opinions and is now seen as some kind of authority on the subject?
That really has more to do with a vocal minority that worship Joe Rogan, than what Joe himself has pushed. Any celebrity is going to have a group that takes what they've heard and blows it out of proportion.
> He’s not some “rando” sticking it to the man. He’s not some guy with a mic and a laptop recording a show and putting it online.
That's the point. He's not a rando anymore but he absolutely was (at least as a talkshow host). Joe was indeed "some guy with a mic and a laptop recording the show" as you describe (here, check the first episode https://www.facebook.com/JoeRoganClips/videos/the-very-first..., sorry for FB link, but I can't find it anywhere anymore).
> he’s getting paid millions of dollars by a corporation to speak exclusively on their platform
He may be getting paid a lot for his show by Spotify, but he's no corporate media. From what I see he's still as genuine as he was before the exclusive deal. Joe has a family and he made it big, which pissed off the "we tell the population what to believe" crowd.
> He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
What this tells me is that you haven't listened to that show at all. You couldn't be more wrong on this, it's pretty much as far away from that type of BS as it can get. Mainstream media is at this point the horoscope/crystal people.
> He may be getting paid a lot for his show by Spotify, but he's no corporate media.
It is really very hard to think of a more exact description of "corporate media" than a media that gets funded by the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars by a corporation for the rights.
I think what people mean by corporate media is media which serves corporate interests. As in, fluffing up Big Tech or Big Oil or Big Pharma. Any media organization with employees is necessarily a corporation, right? So by your definition, all media is corporate media, tautologically.
Joe Rogan has _never_ been a rando. He started off as a massively popular MMA commentator. Anyone that's followed fighting sports any time between the 90s and 2010 has a giant chance of having heard him. Don't prop him up as a self-made man who rose up from nowhere.
That makes him a rando for the majority of people just like me, those who are not interested in or follow MMA.
The point I was making is not whether he’s really a rando or not, TV journalists sure think he is, because according to them he shouldn’t get a seat on the table.
I'd probably agree with that, depending on the reason for gathering around the table.
If the topic is professional fighting or podcasting, he belongs there. If the topic is immigration policy or foreign affairs, he probably shouldn't be invited.
Is there anybody who deserves a seat at every table or, conversely, at no tables?
Your point wasn't lost, just poorly reasoned. Joe Rogan is mainstream media, has decades of experience in broadcasting and a multi-million dollar broadcasting deal. He's not an outsider.
"TV journalists" criticize him for spreading misinformation.
> He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
I quite disagree. But say thats true, so what? Whether he's some rando or not, we should be able to choose who we want to listen to. Shout out to the "muh private company" peeps. I know you're out there
Why do you consider him mainstream, because he has a million+ viewers?
>He’s horoscopes and crystals for people who think they’re intellectuals.
In all honesty, I think you're proving the point that online hatred needs to be curbed before it becomes overwhelmingly destructive to society. Who are these people who so obviously wrongly think of themselves as intellectuals, in your mind, when they really are nothing of the sort? ALL of Joe Rogans listeners, or just the ones opposed to government-enforced medical procedures?
> The true con in all of this is ..
.. is that its possible to espouse hatred (calling Joe Rogan a con, people 'think they are intellectuals', etc.) for an out-group and not be called to task over the reasoning behind that hatred.
Do you hate Joe Rogan because he's mainstream, or because he espouses a view that is not mainstream while appearing to be a mainstream media personality? How is it possible to hold both positions?
Personally, I am not pro-Joe Rogan, I enjoy his podcasts but don't agree with his personality and find his views on some things utterly intolerable, but I am anti-hate speech, which we have seen has allowed the commitment and further justification of so many actual crimes in Americas' socio-political environment recently. Surely there comes a time in every American's mind where they need to balance the strength of their states freedom-granting instruments (the Bill of Rights) with their desire to tone-police the cultures they don't like into oblivion... isn't this how the Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Syria/Yemen mess got started in the first place - Americans deciding they don't like the voices of some out-group?
>Do you hate Joe Rogan because he's mainstream, or because he espouses a view that is not mainstream while appearing to be a mainstream media personality
It's that he is mainstream and provably wrong most of the times he opens his mouth, and barely any opposition is ever allowed onto the podcast. It is an actual example of an "ideological echo chamber", unlike most of the times a conservative proclaims it.
Mainstream media is quite often provably wrong too, but yet not held up to the same standards (unless you're 'a conservative' with a "cancel CNN!" t-shirt) .. so when they come for Joe Rogan, and you say nothing, who will be there to protect you when they come for CNN/MSNBC/NYT?
Essentially, you are saying you despise Joe Rogan because he's mainstream, pretending not to be, and mis-informing, while also pretending not to .. so does this begin a new era in the American socio-political landscape where news is no longer going to be used to propagandize an entire country, and 'mainstream media' is going to be held to much, much higher levels of truthful standards than ever before?
Because its going to be great to see the disinformation inherent in the modern American media landscape be replaced with actual truth-telling. Like, a lot of us who don't live in that bubble are going to be very relieved to see the truth being told, for a change, about such things as Ukraine, Yemen, and so on ..
Or do we only care about Joe Rogan because he impacts the lives of fellow American citizens?
>he is mainstream and provably wrong most of the times he opens his mouth
I mean, this is your stated opinion.
But he's not mainstream or we'd be seeing his show on the televisions in the airport - instead he's only available on special platforms that have to be sought out .. and your opinion that he is wrong most of the time is also specious.
But lets assume that both of these points of view are 'true': now that it is okay to start cancelling 'mainstream shows' because of the disinformation they spread, do you support the winding down of CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and the New York Times - who have each been found guilty of spreading disinformation multiple times in their history?
The issue is, at what point is 'your side' more informative than 'the other side'? When it becomes mainstream? When it has the approval of known, entrenched establishment entities who stand to profit a great deal from their disinformation campaigns (as is the case with CNN/MSNBC/etc.)?
Mostly, I just want to understand why cancelling mainstream shows should stop at Joe Rogan, in your mind.
I'd LOVE to see CNN and Rachel Maddow - and Tucker Carlson, too - get cancelled in my lifetime over their quite clearly profit-motivated propaganda activities .. so if that is the inevitable end result of the "Cancel Joe Rogan Movement", then - sorry Joe - I'm in.
Mainstream for millennials and gen z - maybe even gen X. He’s probably not mainstream for boomers.
Because your definition of mainstream is incredibly narrow. In the age of the Internet, mostly boomers and some gen X are watching TV. I don’t watch what’s on any tv anywhere. I haven’t used TV in the traditional sense in over a decade and that’s very common in my demographic. To me - those “news” networks spread as much disinformation as Joe Rogan does. (Which is to say - a lot and practically all the time)
Stop. I'm not even in the US. I give very few shits about what you think I think is good or bad journalism, or what political pundits I'd defend. Takes my words as they are and please, shut up.
Yes - he wasn’t just some fluke but had near-unanimous support from both elected Republicans and the most important right-wing media sources like Fox.
Rogan isn’t that mainstream but he’s influential enough that you can tell what he’s covered recently by all of the people talking about it. Whatever he used to be, he’s mainstream now.
> Yes - he wasn’t just some fluke but had near-unanimous support from both elected Republicans and the most important right-wing media sources like Fox.
That depends on how far back you go. 2005, sure, but by the time he was running he was pretty much in tune with the tone on Fox; most of the remaining moderate Republicans were purged as part of the post-9/11 turn towards previously extreme positions. A lot of the shock came from people who didn’t follow the right-wing media that closely and hadn’t realized how normalized those positions had become.
I take it you were watching a lot of fox news back then? Or is that just what you "heard"? Because I was watching Fox news back then, and you are absolutely incorrect.
That's my recollection as well. I didn't watch FOX or anything conservative really, but the highlights that I sometimes came across were all pushing Bush and maybe a couple of other candidates here and there.
What a bizarre comment. He most definitely did do it in hopes of forcing Spotify to drop Rogan. Appearing on the same streaming platform as Rogan costs him nothing (neither financial nor moral). Nobody believes that he and Rogan share beliefs just because they're both on Spotify.
If his principles are that he won't be streamed on the same app as somebody he disagrees with, that's seriously pathetic. He's literally the polar opposite of the coexist bumper sticker.
The other comment said it best. Also, note that Young has dropped out of Spotify before. He made a hue and cry about its audio quality, dropped out, launched his own music player, it didn't do very well, and then he came back.
I feel like he just wanted an excuse to leave, to be very honest, so he could promote competitors that encourage high-quality streaming.
Yes, the title of the article is misleading. It's not Spotify that is removing Neil Young, it's Neil Young removing his music from Spotify as a protest against them hosting Joe Rogan.
It's kind of annoying to me that Spotify went all in with podcasts (in the name of "growth"?), and promotes them so heavily. That's really different from music. Do people really decide to subscribe to Spotify because of podcasts? Would they change providers if Joe Rogan was on another service? I doubt it.
It's because they can get better margins from podcasts. Personally I want music and no podcasts but I understand the business pressures that have caused this.
Yea, he just blackmailed a platform to censor fellow content creator. Perfectly fine principled gentleman. Because that's how we all should do with each other, and the peace would come upon us
With great power comes great responsibility. You don't see spiderman ripping in pieces that reporter who harassed him, and if you did, it would be a completely diff character. You don't abuse your power to punish people you disagree with. It's evil. Call it whatever you like, what this guy did is very very bad
Let me lay down some parallels here: reporter posting fake news, damaging reputation of good people. Actually causing tangible harm to innocents by his bad reporting. Spiderman was given powers to be his judge, jury, and executioner, but he chose to not use them in that manner. Because you can not exercise your power on people just because you can, and because they piss you off. It is morally reprehensible. Good people don't hit somebody like a ton of bricks just because they don't like what this somebody said. You must learn to coexist with people you disagree with. You can't just bully the others to make them exclude people you don't like.
Look: if you think you have a case, ask Joe to invite you to a program, and argue your point. I don't think he is of the anchors who would argue with you in bad faith. I am pretty sure that if Neil actually had something valid to say in favor of his position, that road was and likely still is available to him. He just preferred to strike below belt, because he thought he could get away with it. It also demonstrates that he likely does not have a valid point he can present and defend in a fair debate.
I am not particularly fond of Joe Rogan, but I respect Rogan's principles a lot more than Neil Young. Neil Young wanted to make a political statement and the media ran with it to try to pressure Spotify into breaking a large multi-million dollar contract. Neil Young's music on Spotify is prob worth very little. I'd be surprised if Neil Young was making a $2k/mo from Spotify. Neil Young had very little to lose by making this political statement to help the media, which I'm guessing he prob got some money from the attention of pro-vax people that wanted to try to censor Rogan and thought by supporting Young that they were going to be able to have any pull.
At least 6 million monthly listens at $0.00331 per listen is about $20k per month, so you're off by an order of magnitude. Still not terrible for a wild guess based on nothing. My numbers may be wrong for all kinds of reasons. Young himself apparently said it's 60% of his streaming revenue.
>Neil Young had very little to lose by making this political statement to help the media, which I'm guessing he prob got some money from the attention of pro-vax people that wanted to try to censor Rogan and thought by supporting Young that they were going to be able to have any pull.
> He was a big supporter of the Iraq war, even making a song "Let's Roll".
“Let's roll” was released in 2002, and was very explicitly about the passengers of United 93 and the story constructed from the available information from that flight of the passengers fighting back against the hijackers after becoming aware of the earlier attacks. Neither the timing nor the lyrics nor anything else about it supports the idea that it is about the 2003 Iraq War.
As I recall, that song came out in the days following 9/11, and was based on the account of Todd Beamer and others who fought back on United 93. It was not about support for the Iraq or Afghanistan wars.
I could be mistaken, but I don't think Neil Young ever came out in support of the wars. He spoke out plenty against the Iraq war, including the song "Living With War".
"Let's Roll" was adopted as a Bush slogan at the time. The lyrics also talk about going where evil hides and rooting them out.
He clearly supported the administration. I replied to another comment in this thread with sourced quotes.
The vast majority of Americans were of the same mind as Neil, and they all eventually turned against the administration when it was clear what was going on.
Please tell me that you don't consider the later appropriation of "Let's Roll" to somehow mean that people like Neil Young had committed the original sin of supporting the wars. By that logic, is Todd Beamer guilty of the same?
It's startling the ease and quickness with which some people will see a way ascribe some perceived right-wing guilt to someone like Neil Young. I'm not a fan of Young, and my politics are very different than his, but I certainly won't lay blame at his feet for being too right-wing or supporting wars, as this was never the case.
This is so far off base it strains credulity. Charitibly I'll ask for citations.
Young's 2006 album "Living With War" was specifically critical of the Bush administration and the Iraq war.
"Let's Roll" was a Bush slogan when Neil released that song.
If you read my comment carefully, I said he "eventually came around", i.e. the 2006 album.
I specifically remember him being on TV supporting war in the middle east. I found some quotes to corroborate my memory:
"Many artists also seemed to take unpredictable positions as spokespeople. Neil Young shocked his audience at the 2001 People for the American
Way gala, at which he received a Spirit of Liberty Lifetime Achievement
Award, when he endorsed administration policy by saying that “we’re
going to have to relinquish some of our freedoms for a short period of
time.” [1]
"We're going to do the job, and then we're going to get back to being who we are." [2]
But somehow my comment gets flagged, because everyone can't believe that their hero made a mistake, which over 90% of the US population made by the way.
But neither of those quotes are about actually going to war. If we read both of your cited sources, there's nothing in context before, during or after each quote that says war is what he was referencing. Rather, he was speaking each time about giving up our freedoms for a bit and then getting back to where we were; think additional security screening at airports, not being allowed to bring water bottles on a plane, beefed up security presences elsewhere, etc.. He's very specifically talking about civil liberties, not war.
Do you have an actual quote where he talks about war itself?
Edit: So, both of your links reference the exact same event that Neil Young spoke at, the People for the American Way gala in 2001. The timing of this event is key. The second article you cited was published on 12/13/2001, and says Neil Young claimed that "Bush's anti-terrorism measures were necessary". The PATRIOT Act had just gone into effect on 10/26/2001[1], but we didn't go to Iraq until 2003.
It's terribly obvious that Young discussing Americans giving up certain freedoms temporarily is in regards to a law that was just passed that stripped away certain levels of freedom. I'm not sure how sending troops to Iraq two years later would have stripped away freedoms from citizens domestically. I'm also not sure how Neil Young - a famously anti-war individual - would be speaking out in support of a war that wouldn't happen for another two years without ever actually saying anything about fighting, military, "war", etc.
Edit 2: Even USA Today confirmed this way back when[2]...
>Not long after recording the song "Let's Roll," a tribute to passengers who apparently fought back against hijackers on doomed United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, Young came out publicly in support of the U.S. Patriot Act.
>The legislation, which gave law enforcement authorities broad new powers aimed at bolstering the administration's war on terror, was harshly criticized by some as threatening Americans' civil liberties.
>But at a December 2001 ceremony accepting an award from the free-speech advocacy group People For the American Way, Young said he believed the measure was necessary, though he urged the audience to ensure that its more controversial provisions were only temporary.
Your bias is predictable. I actually lean left and do support peoples choice, just not mandates. I am not a big fan of Joe Rogan, but you can believe whatever helps you sleep at night. You can think I'm a racist Nazi Trump supporter if it helps you build images in your mind of what you think people that have different thoughts of you must be like.
Staying away from the tribalism this seems to be devolving into, I think this is quite telling. Neil Young’s music is some of the most important of the last century. He might not be getting K-Pop levels of streams but his music is incredibly important regardless. Spotify has chosen a podcast over this (for obvious financial reasons). This tells you a lot about the importance Spotify puts on music (in case it wasn’t already obvious with how aggressively they shove podcasts in your face). If you care about music, it might be time to move elsewhere.
It not aggressive or unprovoked - it’s principled. Neil Young is supporting the hundreds of doctors who have previously pointed to the fact that Joe Rogan is creating controversy, for profit, that endangers his listeners (and the people who live in a society with them, since we’re talking about COVID misinformation).
Rogan isn't creating the controversy, media outlets reporting on Rogan are. They also frequently stir up controversy for clicks. Are you not equally skeptical of their profit motive?
I'm with the anti-GMO crowd for the monopolistic concerns on top of the effing-with nature concerns. GMOs are (probably) not dangerous like asbestos, but they are by no means safe and a good idea.
All evidence to the contrary I suppose. So is it safe to label you anti-science and conclude you and Young are endangering people with death and disability because GMO-enhanced crops can feed more people and satisfy nutritional deficiencies? This strikes me as very much the same sort of disagreement over what are clear facts on one side, and what some would consider unwarranted paranoia on the other.
Maybe people should just be allowed to have these conversations because the paranoid serve a useful purpose.
Meanwhile, my Release Radar playlist has about 30% songs that are unavailable and the home screen is full of recommendations for podcasts I don't care about.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Preferably with a decent selection of obscure metal. I'd like to try some other paid sevices before reverting to piracy.
I don’t actually use it, but my understanding is that it doesn’t. There’s an Android app, at the very least.
I just know that MOG’s selling point for a long while was it’s huge metal library and license set; I see no reason for that to have been lost through its MOG->Beats->Apple Music transition.
Spotify cares about music? Then why is it displaying front and center podcast shows that I have zero interest in above and ahead of the music that I go to Spotify for?
It's fine that they've decided to pivot to being a podcast company with a sideline in music - apparently that's where the money is, and it's a free market. But if they're going to take a political position by signing exclusive contracts with and heavily promoting podcast hosts, they've lost all claim to be a neutral party, and can't expect artists - and customers - to remain with them.
> Then why is it displaying front and center podcast shows that I have zero interest in above and ahead of the music that I go to Spotify for?
Tangent, but this is actually obnoxious. I never seem to get the “new releases for you” on my home screen anymore, but every-time I open the app I see I slew of podcasts I don’t give a damn about despite me slipping through maybe one podcast episode in my entire account history.
> Spotify clearly cares about music - hence the entire history of the company & product.
Spotify clearly cares about the money they can make managing music rights.
If they cared about *music* their playlists would be curated by humans. If they cared about music they'd be working to increase musician payout across the board, rather than push it down as low as possible like any other business expense. If they cared about music, they'd be creating opportunities to make, share and enjoy music: instead what they focus on is engagement, sponsorship and rights management.
Its not rude to stand up against a creator spewing blatant and dangerous mis-information. It would have been one thing if Roe Rogan was just a regular podcast availiable on Spotify and other places, but its a Spotify exclusive with Spotify promoting him as one of their headliners and paying him millions of dollars. Good on Young for drawing a line in the sand and choose where his music is availiable.
Good you guys are agreeing. I'm not sure what banning books has to do with anything. Nobody is "banning" Joe Rogan, he can make all the podcasts he wants. My issue with Spotify and Rogan is that my premium membership is directly funding him. If this was just another ad-supported podcast, available on Spotify, Apple podcasts etc - no problem, but it isn't. This is the core of the matter, not banning him.
I pay for a full family premium plan, and I am very confident that the majority of premium Spotify customers either support Rogan or are indifferent in this issue.
You decide whether you want to continue paying your premium plan. Spotify will acquire the content it believes is best for all users. You do not control their decisions just because you pay the subscription.
Blatant and dangerous misinformation? You're gonna have to back those bold claims up, otherwise what's stopping us from claiming that you are the culprit and should be gulag'd?
You have no idea what you're talking about, which is what's so fucked up about this whole situation. This is all a dystopian cliche. Opinions are not misinformation, and looking at opposing evidence and arguments is not misinformation. It never was, and never will be. The only people who ever claimed such things are historically disgraced totalitarians.
Misinformation comes from states and organizations with ulterior motives who twist and hide the truth for their own gain. It's about power.
Crying out about how "dangerous" it is to have a real discussion that you don't like is ridiculously absurd. Are you saying adults are too stupid to think for themselves, or should not be allowed to take calculated risks? Do you have some kind of proof that having discussions is bad for individuals and/or communities in some way?
On a quick glance at the 1st one: Joe says "healthy young people" don't need the vaccine, but the claim debunked is "young people" don't need the vaccine. Why can't they address what he actually said?
They can't address what he actually said for the same reason anyone likes to refute a strawman argument instead of addressing the real argument.
I think the officials are so afraid that any discussion of nuance [1] would frighten people away from the vaccines that they simply avoid talking about it entirely, and sometimes call to outright suppress any such discussions as "misinformation" and label these people as "anti-vaxx".
> I said to explain how this is misinformation and dangerous, not show me episodes you don't like.
prohobo, you may wish to read the links for concrete answers to your request. The how is answered very directly, especially considering the bottom three links are all fact-checking sites that explain the how and the why.
I've read the articles: none of them explain how this is dangerous, and none of them have a compelling case that Joe Rogan or his guests intentionally lie to their audience.
What they do is make arguments against their points, many of which aren't verifiable or are just opinions.
I'm all for removing things that are empirically and logically "dangerous misinformation", but we have to actually prove it empirically and logically first. Can you do that?
There is no evidence that Rogan's opinions are either dangerous, or considered "information" by most people. Beware overusing this term or it will lose all meaning.
Proving something incorrect is proving proving the negative. That’s not how people engage in good faith argumentation.
I’ll add, a traditional definition of “incorrect information” would primarily focus on factual accuracy over motivation.
Why is it necessary to prove intentionality to prove incorrectness?
All of this is before we acknowledge that you will never accept something as proven false, as proven intentional, or as proven harmful.
Your standard is meaningless because it’s both incoherent and unmeetable.
It’s also characteristic of arguments like this and why the ‘bullshit asymmetry’ concept exists. Trying to meet it is a distraction that simply serves to give your argument credibility because people engage with it in trying (hopelessly) to meet your asymmetric epistemically standards.
What are you talking about? If you claim something is dangerous and want it removed, you better have god damn compelling evidence of the "danger".
Explain what the danger is, and how it is manifesting.
And intentionality is absolutely relevant to this, considering we are essentially judging a conversation between two people. Does the same conversation in a bar constitute misinformation? When does it go from conversation to declaration? When does opinion become misinformation?
I'm not currently interested in whether what they're saying is true or not, I'm interested in whether it can be considered misinformation in spirit of the meaning of the word. If their intention is to discuss something sincerely, then it's not misinformation - it's opinion.
No where in the declaration do I see the term "hospital capacity".
One criticism, amongst many:
> David Naylor, co-chair of the Government of Canada's COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, told the National Post: "Obviously, the Great Barrington fix will excite the minimizers who pretend COVID-19 is not much worse than the flu and enliven the libertarians who object to public health measures on principle … So be it: they've been offside all along."[5] Naylor also pointed out that a study published in August in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine examined Sweden's "no-lockdown" policy's effect on herd immunity among the Swedish population, finding it did not improve herd immunity despite higher rates of hospitalization and death than in neighbouring countries.[5][56] According to Naylor, the policy advocated by signatories of the declaration would never be the "controlled demographic burn that some zealots imagine", and because of exponential growth of infections would lead to a situation where "with masses of people sick in their 40s and 50s; hospitals will be over-run and deaths will skyrocket as they did in Italy and New York".[5] With the prospect of a vaccine available within months [of the October 2020 statement], Naylor questioned the logic of the Great Barrington strategy, asking: "Why on earth should we rush to embrace a reckless prescription for a demographically-selective national 'chickenpox party' involving a dangerous pathogen?"[5]
That might be an argument you'd like to take to a proper debate. What we're arguing about is whether having such a debate constitutes "dangerous misinformation".
I'm not sure what should be done about it, but again don't see the relevance of that question. Your argument was that there's value to be had out of such a debate, which there isn't. And that a debate cannot be misinformation, which is again clearly false. Packaging misinformation up as a debate doesn't stop it being misinformation.
While you’re telling the truth, calling someone who is defensive about a tribal identity to which they subscribe that they and their cohorts are all wrong is about as effective as telling an Insane Clown Posse fan that they are listening to bad music. It just gives them an enemy and makes them cling harder.
I have never listen to a episode of JRE, but your link does not list a quote where he spreads misinformation himself. (unless you count a opinion “If you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, 'Should I get vaccinated?' I'll go, 'No.'”)
I suppose the issue is with some of his guests - but I think it is very legit for a podcast to have controversial guests in a free world.
Your post ignores the recent and not-recent history of the company:
- CEO equates musicians "doing well" with musicians creating a lot content quickly ..: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/spotify-ceo-rockers-respond/ - undermines music as an artform for the sake of high profit
- blocking a prominent musician in favor of a talk-show comedian / host. Talk Radio trumping Music.
- purportedly poor-quality recommendation engine
- purportedly large amount of ads per unit of content
There clearly could have been an attempt at compromise. Spotify have removed/not stocked Rogan content before. Spotify will have rules for the content it serves and there could have been a discussion on the robustness of these.
I don't see a reasonable compromise to make here, here's why:
There is nothing wrong with what Rogan has been criticized by Young for; other than many people including Young being ideologically possessed in the opposite direction.
Disagreement is not grounds for censorship.
In any case, it was Young who issued an ultimatum. His music or Joe's podcast, off the platform. There is no room for a compromise there - this is a rude and violent threat.
Not calling Young a terrorist, I'm using the term "don't negotiate with terrorists" loosely - the point is, when two peers in a network end up in a situation where one is making a violent ultimatum about both of them, the moral high ground is automatically biased in favor of the victim of this ultimatum, not the one who threatened it.
The principle of "don't negotiate with terrorists" is applicable far beyond literal terrorism and I think it's exactly the moral calculus necessary for Spotify to reach the conclusion they did. Network members who think they can yield violent ultimatums to control the administrating entity are toxic to all of their peers.
Spotify is not treating Young and Rogan as peers; only one of them has received an exclusive multimillion contract and extensive promotion, and it isn't Young. Spotify have taken an active decision to promote Rogan, and it is entirely correct that they face consequences for that decision.
Not all violence is physical. Violence is what you use to force people to change their behavior. There are many forms. Verbal, psychological, social, economic.
I agree with you that it's not terrorism, however.
Violence is a word that is ambiguous for sure. I would still say that it is a long road from most definitions of violence to Neil Young saying that he will remove his music from Spotify if you let Rogan host his podcast there. I mean most negotiation in some way or another uses force but that does not mean it is violence.
I think your beliefs of what is factual and false regarding COVID are actually the opposite of reality.
You likely think the same of me.
If you could magically be granted "objective" factual understanding, your point would be right, and I would agree with you. But you haven't been, in reality you do not know the facts for certain, neither do any of the 270 doctors/etc who wrote that letter trying to censor Joe, neither does Joe, neither does Robert Malone or any other heterodox intellectual on the topic, and neither does Fauci or any other orthodox intellectual on the topic.
Besides mathematics/logical fundamentals, nobody knows facts for sure. Outside of physics we aren't even quite sure. To pretend that you know the facts, and that you know Joe and his guests are wrong, and that their falsehoods are dangerous --- this is altogether delusional, quite frankly. You may very well be right, but you do not know that you are, you cannot know that you are. The subject matter is too complicated.
My apologies for the harsh words. This is how it is.
---
Edit: and no, I am not being flippant. I am being objective.
Spotify simply hasn't given in to blackmail. If Joe Rogan said he'd leave Spotify if they don't kick Neil Young out and then Neil Young was kicked out they would've chosen a podcast over Neil Young.
Music is their international product. Choosing to support and subsidize talk radio from a position you could only get to with music is not a new plan. If I were a musician I would pull my work before everyone in talk radio wants equal time for their slime.
Spotify didn't choose anything, Neil Young chose to "do justice with his own hands" and punish his listeners. Why didn't he use the 60% lost revenue to fight in Justice to get the misinformation out? Or fund creation of better content for Spotify and else?
Well, they sort of did choose though. I imagine Joe Rogan gets more listener hours than Neil Young does. It is also showing your values for the future if you remove Joe Rogan, whereas Neil Young is basically blackmailing them, in a pretty hysterical way.
I think on both issues Spotify wins. Financially they probably do, and they get to show they don't bow to hysterical artists. That's a good thing in the long run.
Spotify committed to a deal they would have estimated around $1 per year per premium member on exclusive rights to JRE. Neil Young may want to influence their choices in how they mediate social/political discourse that doesn't change the discussion musicians should be having about whether they are the equivalent of films on Netflix. Sidelined for original/exclusive content that inherently has to have a social/political mediation run by Spotify.
Spotify may have won this battle but will lose the war.
Ultimately it's not a question of revenue but whether Spotify has to follow the footsteps of Meta/Facebook and YouTube to moderate content on their platform. This was largely a non-issue before they started their exclusive deals with the likes of Rogan - the onus was on music labels and publishers.
But now Spotify's position as a content platform has been thrust into the spotlight and will likely have to invest in content curation (e.g. algorithms, human raters). Furthermore if other artists follow in Young's footsteps, then this could get quite messy.
Their choice was not between Neil Young and Joe Rogan, but between enabling the freedom of expression or backing down in the face of an outward pressure. If anything, it makes Spotify as a platform more credible.
I couldn't agree more.
In fact if the JRE was pulled over this, I'd certainly be cancelling my subscription. Not that I'd expect it to do anything, but just out of principle.
(I don't really listen to the podcast!)
But you should also expect the consequences if you spreading fake news and lies.
Free speech means that the gov can not put you in jail because of that but private people can punish you for spreading fake news. This is there freedom.
Yes you can cry then that this is cancel culture but every time someone cries about cancel culture usually its because the person said something stupid which people did not like and now want's to take away there freedom of speech.
Broadly agree. Freedom of speech definitely means that people may not want to associate with you any longer.
But 'cancel culture' wouldn't be an issue if that was all - if individual people simply chose to stop associating with the wrong-thinker. Not even if a lot of people did at once.
The problem is that when those people are not individual fellow citizens, but the "Trust & Safety Team" or the "Anti-Evil Team" at $Megacorporation, they don't just stop doing business with you - they can effectively cut you off from most of the rest of the world, whether or not the rest of the world wants it.
Simply put, the problem is that they have too much power. They have the same freedom of association as private citizens, but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
> but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
If Facebook/Google/Amazon/Cloudflare deny your their services you can still always find a new provider (see Gab).
If the government shuts you down, you need to emigrate to start back up.
Sure, its a PIA to re-setup a service meant for AWS not on AWS but that's really the core of AWS's offering. Big Tech is not the grocery store, you will live without twitter, you will not live without food.
The power a corperation has is governed by the Charter that was (now implicitly) granted by the State they're incorperated in. If you think they have too much power in their Charter complain to that state.
The problem with this framing is who decides what is "misinformation"? And is that party incorruptible? Why not let people speak and let the audience decide for themselves. Because they may not decide what you decide?
Fun fact: the 'fire in a crowded theater' example was originally used as an analogy to justify censoring pacifist opposition to the First World War and the military draft.
This doesn't make the example invalid, mind you. But I consider it a warning to be extremely careful and skeptical when equating 'dangerous' speech to immediate physical damage.
if the intention is to spread lies - then I would say no. Otherwise very much yes, because who would be the authority to determine the facts from the fake?
We abolished the power of the inquisition some centuries before, because of bad experience with the concept of holy truth or canon.
Science is an open process, where it is clear that some positions held today, will be abolished in the future, with new data.
Or is the concept to let only certified scientists speak up? Well, that opens up the question, who gets to decide who is one.
I think it is very dangerous to influence that process, with state authority declaring what is right and what is wrong.
And in this specific case it seems to be about an "official" scientist Dr. Malone(who was invited) who might have gone off the rails quite some time ago. But it is still important for people do decide on who to trust, than installing a government institution to do so. Because I do not know molecular biology - but I like to know, that one of the people involved with the invention of mRNA vaccines strongly advises against it. And I can read about it all and then decide for me it is likely mostly tinfoil hat area.
But if the government would activly suppress and censor his opinion - I might think, there is actually more behind.
So multiplying lies and propaganda is free speech?
Jow Rogan is free to talk his nonsense. Amplifying life threatening nonsense is not protecting free speech, it's greed, it's making money over others misfortune.
Rogan et Al. Know they spew nonsense, they don't believe their shit, it's just for the lolz. They are chaos agents enjoying seeing the world crumble while making money of it.
> "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,"
If we banned all the maskers then, and all the antimaskers a few months later, who'd be left?
It's a platform the idea that I would request you not being allowed on the internet because we have different opinions is ludicrous even if in this case rogan isn't my cup of tea.
I'm a Canadian and a Neil Young fan, but to call it some of the most important of the last century is a massive stretch. He's a folk-rock singer songwriter with a gravely voice - he isn't close to the most remarkable artist in his own genre, let alone the entire century.
I think that if Spotify complied with this request, it would set up a dangerous precedent. Next there could be calls left and right to remove all kinds of "objectionable" content (think: that hip hop artist "glorifies violence" — as Twitter puts it — or is sexist/misogynistic).
Why do people care what anyone thinks about politics? Being a famous rock and roller does not exempt one from having a political opinion worthy of consideration or debate. It shouldn't give more credence to one's opinion, but it shouldn't take away from it either.
I think this is correct response. Anything else is start of slippery slope. First okay removing pod-cast. But what next some other big name demands removing some other artist, maybe upcoming competitor? Should they acquiesce to that too? Where would it end? A trust of well-connected artists dictating who can be with them on the same platform?
I think the crux of the issue is not that Spotify carries Rogan's podcast like they do 1000s others. It's that Spotify is paying mountains of $ to Rogan for exclusivity.
Spotify is not a passive party in this, they are actively promoting and contributing money to the generation and promotion of extremely dubious content on their platform.
I wouldn't mind so much if they were just carrying that particular podcast amongst a sea of others, I do question Spotify's ethics as a company that's made a conscious choice to finance misinformation.
Probably nothing more than a difference of opinion, but I'm not keen on supporting a company that cannot be considered neutral any more.
It's not that they are financing it, it makes them tons of money. It's a lot like Fox news hosts railing against mask and vaccine mandates, yet everyone in the building is vaccinated and wearing masks. It's a grift and makes a lot of money on people looking to be outraged or go against 'the man'.
It ends with you becoming Google/Facebook, trying and failing to police everything people say, and all sides hating you. The company is wise to avoid publicly positioning itself as the arbiter of content for as long as it can.
Some of the prohibited episodes were obvious candidates for suppression like Alex Jones but I remember seeing the list and finding a few real headscratchers. Going to guess there were some specific comments in those episodes that an employee didn't like rather than a general opposition to the guest overall. It's unfortunate that Spotify wasn't more transparent about their review process but tech companies seem to be really fond of the notion that rules cannot be made clear because then people the hate might follow them, denying the opportunity to silence them.
May I suggest the platform of...physical media? I know, retrograde! Inconvenient! Etc! But you can rip your media and get back a lot of the convenience, and if you want you can listen to music without involving a screen.
I was never, ever okay with a big company knowing and controlling how, when, and how long I listen to my music. I dabbled, but I found it far more creepy, somehow, than even letting Google host my email (which is far more intimate, after all). So to you I say: come on back, the water is fine.
That doesn’t fill Spotifys niche. I can listen to the music I like a million ways, even pirating if I want, but Spotify suggests new music (even though it’s nowhere near as good as Pandora was when I used it years ago.)
I remember the days when musicians would mention music they like in interviews, me hearing it and then going on a search to find it. Back then I would've thought Spotify to be an improvement on that.
I'd add WFMU (edit: also KXLU) to your list. But I still like to be able to skip songs and change to a whole new playlist/genre/album with basically zero effort or costs if I feel like binging on a genre. Which basically means I'm going to be subscribed to some streaming service. Youtube is a good option.
Not only that, but it's rumored that Rogan negotiated significant creative freedom into the contract. If Spotify were to capitulate to Young's request, they'd most likely be breaking their contract with Rogan. In which case Rogan could just put his podcast back on all the other podcasting platforms again (or even just distribute it from his own website). Young thinking he has any leverage to silence Rogan here is laughable. I suspect he's either senile, extremely narcissistic, or both.
What's laughable is that so many people think Neil Young cares if Spotify carries his music, as if he needs the money or exposure.
He's making a statement that Joe Rogan is polluting our minds. Spotify is promoting and paying Rogan, with an exclusive contract. Will this change anything? We'll see, probably not. But I'm sure Neil Young doesn't care if his music isn't on Spotify, as long as they're funding Rogan's BS.
> He's making a statement that Joe Rogan is polluting our minds.
I'm reminded of a line from The Prophet:
“Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?”
No one's mind is polluted any other way than one's own carelessness. Somehow you've managed to discern that Rogan's information is polluting and manage to survive with a mind that is still capable of good reason - I'm sure you think so. Why do you not credit others with this ability?
I once heard "Advertising doesn't work on me, I'm too smart."
But we're all susceptible to suggestion and sensationalism, and some to a greater degree. The fact that this company is paying him millions, and probably making more, creates a perverse incentive to sustain and promote him and his nonsense.
Again, somehow you are able to discern Rogan's nonsense - how do you do it?
Then we can move on to the fallacy of the infallibility of judgement (which ties in nicely with the quote you provided) that J.S. Mill points out in his arguments against censorship.
No, it’s a straightforward question that I would be eager for you to answer. How do you manage to discern what Rogan outputs as nonsense while managing not to be polluted by it?
If it’s innate that would be interesting but it would be even better for us all if you would share your methods and then we could all benefit.
I would counter that possibly the greatest of all philosophers, Socrates, used this very technique (that now bears his name) to uncover the flaws in someone’s thinking.
I think this is an appropriate way to deal with any ultimatum. It's a much weaker form of "don't negotiate with terrorists". It's in no organizations to embolden people into bullying them into something. I wish we saw more of this.
(As a hedge, most times when I see something principled like this happen, there is some small blowback and instead of letting it pass, the organization capitulates and reverses their decision. We'll see if that happens here)
I agree that it's the right move. It's Spotify telling artists and content creators that it won't be a part of either their political statements or grudges. Imagine a streaming platform where Eminem tells the platform to remove Machine Gun Kelly or else he's removing his content. And once one person pulls it off, a lot of people will try to do the same.
> It's Spotify telling artists and content creators that it won't be a part of either their political statements or grudges.
I realize I'm pulling a quote out of context from your comment, itself a specific reply to another comment. That being said:
This doesn't seem to address what I understand to be the issue. I would draw a distinction between political statements based on differences of opinion/perspective and statements that target misinformation. If one believes that the latter is at play, this distinction is relevant, and the idea is somewhat codified (with some variations) in the free speech, hate speech, and libel laws of many jurisdictions for reasons that seem justifiable to me.
More specifically, I would have a problem with Spotify engaging in specific political disputes between artists on their platform. I wouldn't have a problem with Spotify adapting their terms to target misinformation on their platform, assuming this was done in good faith and enforced reasonably.
No, a free market doesn’t require any statement of preferences, just freedom to buy and sell. Your wallet states your preferences in a free market, not your words.
Stating your preferences online is just practicing free speech.
The posturing in this argument is silly. The other person thinks joe Rogan is being irresponsible and should change. That’s not a violation of your freedom.
> So my options are switching between streaming platforms or having Rogan's podcast censored down to the guests you and Neil Young like?
Because you’re acting like these two “either or” options are being forced on you. The options are 1) misleading and 2) not your only options.
Option #1 - Switching streaming platforms - There are already artists far more popular than Young not on Spotify (https://www.ranker.com/list/musicians-against-spotify/ranker...), like Prince, the Beatles, Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd, etc. If you’ve ever wanted to listen to these all-time artists, you already had to switch platforms, so this is not a new option.
Option #2 - Censorship - Find me a quote where Young says he wants to curate Rogan’s content. You’re leading here. And censorship is way too strong a word. It’s not censorship if the content is (or can be) easily accessible elsewhere. Censorship is the total banning of a piece of content everywhere.
Totally fine to be upset by what Young did, I get that it’s a crappy move, but it doesn’t rise to the level of censorship or inconveniencing you, beyond the tiniest amount.
I like Neil, saw him in concert long ago and have listened to a ton of his music over many decades. Admittedly, hardly any in recent years unless I go on a nostalgia binge for a day or two. He is, or at least was, brilliant.
I agree with him here, mostly. I wish a bunch of other artists would do the same. Censorship is a complex issue, but there is a lot of mass delusion going on recently and a lot of lives lost because of it.
I haven't really listened to Rogan except clips of what he's said on this issue. But I liked him a lot on Newsradio.
It's not like it is going to hurt Neil, he doesn't need the money. I can't see a huge amount of people streaming his music anymore.
That said, if Neil wants to be "pro-science," he should have never pushed his high res music stuff which sure doesn't stand up to double blind testing.
Such things are investigated before they are released, that's the whole point. Thinking that some corporation sticks fish genes into tomatoes and then just gets to sow that wherever they want with no investigation whatsoever is frankly delusional.
So where is the problem? It is not something in realms of scientific discussion. More like with open-source or right to repair. When someone has issue with GMO lot of people assume that it is because of the 'technology' - not the politics.
In a world where competition exists, this is simple - one publisher can carry one author, other publisher can carry others and you just buy the content from the one you prefer.
In a world where everyone defends consolidation into monopolistic platforms and you need to choose which tech platform will own your life this becomes a problematic political issue. At least it's convenient right?
I don't see any evidence that NY was blackmailing Spotify. Wouldn't that require NY to be threatening to release some kind of compromising information about Spotify?
I think we both agree that he did not only make threats, but also follow up on them. Weinstein could also have made arguments that he never threatened any actresses to sleep with him, he was just withholding jobs from the ones who didn't. Call it the way you want, but the guy clearly abused his position
I think mastering is far more important. And I agree other audio formats aren't all great.
But uncompressed CD quality audio is perfectly fine, in terms of resolution, humans can't detect beyond that. Neil's Pono stuff was a waste.... it was MASSIVE datawise for no good reason.
In the time domain, you're absolutely right, Nyquist–Shannon proves that we don't benefit from sampling higher than twice the upper bound of human hearing. Rates like 96kHz or 192kHz are useless for quality (although in specific live situations, they have utility in that the latency would be half or quarter that of typical rates, for a given buffer size in samples).
In the amplitude domain, CD quality (16 bits/sample) is pretty damn great for typical mastered audio (~96dB undithered, ~120dB dithered) but if the audio is unusually dynamic (i.e., loudness is not maximized) like with a symphony orchestra, you might actually turn up your sound system to the point where quantization noise becomes evident in the quietest parts, at which point you absolutely would benefit from more bits per sample (say, 24, yielding ~144dB of range undithered).
So in practice, you're right, CDs are fine; but "humans can't detect beyond that" only truly applies in the frequency domain. We can detect latency (not applicable to playback of recordings) and we can detect quantization noise when cranking up the volume knob.
Meta: I have no idea why someone downvoted you, and gave you an upvote because your explanation is accurate, and unusually well-written, IMHO. Although I'm curious what you mean about "detecting latency". You mean between two sources, for positioning? I'm not sure the relevance of that here.
> You mean between two sources, for positioning? I'm not sure the relevance of that here.
It's only really meaningful in scenarios like a recording studio where the performer is listening to themselves live, in headphones, if the signal undergoing A/D and D/A conversion with some processing in between. It could mean 2ms instead of 8ms, which can be the difference between distracting and not. Not relevant here (I admitted "not applicable") but just an example of where some utility does exist, but the utility is definitely not audible frequency response.
Yeah, FFMPEG famously had a troubled AAC encoder for a long time. It's a bit better since FFMPEG 5.0 was released recently. There is a huge difference between AAC as a codec and the quality of file FFMPEG can generate for it.
I imagine that is how someone who doesn't understand nuance would characterize it.
If you understand why such legal concepts as fraud and defamation exist, you would understand that there is indeed nuance to the concept of freedom of speech.
Heh, I had one of those players as well. A coworker of mine purchased it, didn't use it often and when he decided to use it for biking, it stopped working. In the meantime the company went out of business and he couldn't even get it serviced. So he gave it to me. I did manage to fix it after waiting for spare parts for many weeks.
The reason why it looks like a Toblerone bar is because they decided to use through-hole electrolytic capacitors (because audiophile reasons) and the battery was round too (an 18650 IIRC): http://mikebeauchamp.com/wp-content/gallery/pono-teardown/ca...
The triangular shape and inability to carry it comfortably in jeans pants pockets doomed it from day one. I'm amazed something like this passed the design stage. And first encounter with user testing would have made it crystal clear that the shape was a no-go. Yet it not only got funded but was also mass-produced. It was a massive waste of money.
I mean, it plays, and the audio quality was good (doubtful it was due to the reasons they claim, but it was good). But I hated the screen and you're right, the form factor would have never passed a focus group that tried to actually use it.
It was expensive compared to spotify and the file sizes where way larger, since the files where in loseless format, something that is very niche, since most people cant tell the diference beetween a good quality mp3 and other formats.
It went a little further than that. IIRC it was specifically higher quality than the human ear could possibly hear. Young's response to this rational, science-based criticism was just pathetic; actual fact-based reasoning had no chance against his ego.
Excuse me if this latest drama of his makes me roll my eyes.
Let's not forget the hiper expensive player that came together, the Pono. How the Hell was you suposed to put that thing in your pocket with that triangular shape?
Yeah, that's all I immediately think of when I think of Neil Young. Griping about mp3 quality and nonsense no average listener cared about. He's probably very pleased to be off some streaming mumbojumbo site he already hates, and got to put out some positive PR about his 'principles' at the same time. Whatever. Anyone who cares about his music either owns hard copies or finds it on other things like youtube heh
Harvest is still one of my favourite albums of all time. Good on Neil for taking a stand. He doesn’t need the money, and he’s never been enamoured by Spotify.
I have no love for Rogan. But I don’t necessarily think Spotify should remove Rogan. But if Neil doesn’t like the way Spotify operates, removing his music is putting his money where his mouth is in terms of protest, and I respect that.
He had the option to simply leave Spotify and state the reasons why. But instead he chose to make threats about leaving unless someone else was cancelled.
When that didn't work, he moaned about Spotify's poor audio quality on his way out the door, adding something about young people believing everything they hear. I can't see anything respectable in that coarse of action.
Neil Young insulting young people: "Most of the listeners...on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth." [1]
24yo's don't need informational protection by the actions of crusty old rockers.
Neil Young: "...these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on SPOTIFY.... they think everything they hear on SPOTIFY is true."
Ridiculous and condescending. He thinks young people are mindless zombies, dazzled by big tech platform brands, unable to think for themselves.
Neil Young: "unfortunately SPOTIFY continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art. Soon my music will live on in a better place."
He sounds like a grumpy old man, throwing around ultimatums, then burning bridges on his way out when the plan didn't work.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> But yeah, it's the only sane decision not to let one content creator strong arm you into booting other content creators he doesn't like.
One difference is that in the case of Young and most other content creators on Spotify, their content is available all over the place. Spotify pays them royalties based on how many people listen to it on Spotify.
If Young were saying that he didn't want his music on Spotify unless they dropped, say, Nickleback that would just be ridiculous because Spotify isn't doing anything special with Nickleback. They didn't specifically chose to have Nickleback, and if Nickleback gets any money from Spotify it is proportional to how many people choose to listen that way.
With Rogan, Spotify has paid him in advance to make his content exclusively for Spotify. There's a much closer relationship between Rogan and Spotify than between Nickelback and Spotify.
As another comment pointed out, if Taylor Swift or Beyonce joined Neil Young it would really tip the scales. Spotify can't give in to the demands of any one creator, perhaps. But if the right ones got together they could get probably get someone like Joe Rogan booted off the platform
It seems dangerous to be so condoning of censorship. Let people make up their own minds about the validity/importance of the content. The more information that is available the better.
> Several things come into play for Spotify artist payouts like the listener's subscription tier and country of origin, the number of streams a song has, advertising revenue per market, and distribution contracts.
> In a tweet, classical violinist Tasmin Little with 755,000 monthly subscribers has disclosed earning £12.34 ($17) for five to six million streams.
The only way we'll know is if they release the information, and my guess is that neither party will do so publicly. I would guess $2k/mo. but I could be wrong. This is still pretty good considering there are multiple streaming platforms.
Just checking out Neil Young on YouTube Music he has only approx 440k subscribers, vs someone like Jason Mraz with 3.4M. I am guessing that the numbers on Spotify are likely skewed by a bit as well.
Mr. Rogers having an open discussion with a post-WW1 / pre-WW2 Hitler would be fascinating and probably not useless.
The problem starts when Hitler is having discussions with only people who listen to Hitler. Without an interlocutor to say "wait a minute, that's crazy talk and here's why", it's easy to fall into an echo chamber of group-think.
Hitler was a manipulator. He would never come into a discussion with a rational, balanced perspective, or be open to feedback. He wouldn’t even really be speaking with Mr. Rodgers, he’d be using him to talk to disaffected, vulnerable people he can use to further his aims.
I agree that it’s interesting to think about a conversation between the two, but only if Hitler approached the conversation in the same way Mr. Rodgers would and unfortunately from history there’s no indication that would ever happen.
It’s banned in Germany. Not saying it solves the problem, but there are many different shades of free speech and every country I know of has at least some limitations.
You can refer to almost any political talk radio, any hosted segments on cable TV news networks and any opinion piece in the newspaper for starters. Almost no fact checking and incredibly biased, or downright misinformation.
Think about what you’re saying: No open discussion can possibly contain misinformation. That’s certainly not true by any stretch of the imagination. That fact that a statement is made in public doesn’t make it true.
> Think about what you’re saying: No open discussion can possibly contain misinformation.
That is not what I'm saying. I am opposed to the boiling down of a non-establishment discussion podcast to the singular word "misinformation. Just as I'm sure the commenter I replied to would object if I referred to any news source he cited - NYT, WaPo, WSJ, CDC, FDA, etc. - and defined it simply as "misinformation".
The word in and of itself is misinformation, typically meant to steer people away from reading, hearing, and seeing information they don't like. And it shouldn't be tolerated. We as a society need to start fostering open discussion of topics and viewpoints that the establishment and its followers doesn't like or approve of.
> I am opposed to the boiling down of a non-establishment discussion podcast to the singular word "misinformation.
Right, but they are calling some of the specific content misinformation. The fact that it’s an open discussion on a non-establishment podcast is irrelevant to the content being verifiable or reliable or rational.
And no, we don’t need more open discussions about every single viewpoint, regardless of feasibility. Just being anti-establishment doesn’t mean you have something worth saying or sharing. You need to have a little more substance than just doubting the establishment for the sake of doubting the establishment.
If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because you’re a virologist and have a theory that can be tested or a question about the research or development process that the establishment can’t answer adequately, great, let’s get that view out there. If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because doing so gets you attention from Rogan’s ~11M listeners per episode, or because you just want to challenge the establishment then sorry, you’re not adding value to the national conversation.
What were the exact things that Rogan or his guests said that were misinformation? I don't watch him, but the excerpts I watched from the Robert Malone interview weren't misinformation. The guy even seemed to be pro-vax.
Joe rogan claiming that Texas won’t give vaccines to obese elderly white people because he knows one person that was denied. Denies official source.
https://youtu.be/tR0bO1KKl60
Specifically, I think he said that if a 20-year-old healthy person were to ask him if they should get the vaccine, Rogan would say “no”. He then applied the anecdote about his two kids and their experiences to it, which is obviously not very sound justification for the position. To a certain extent it’s understandable that he’d have that position given anecdotal experience, but it wasn’t the right thing to say.
Some of the recent data on the risk factors for myocarditis in young people (particularly males) is, however, at the very least, interesting. I’m not a doctor, biologist or immunologist though, so I don’t have any reason to suggest anything regarding vaccine use in young adults either way.
But neither of those are from the Robert Malone interview? Which is what Neil Young was angry about and what the GP asked for examples of misinformation from.
Lefty McCommunism goes on JRE and says to 200 million people “Texas has a 97% case rate of Ebola and all goods exported from Texas are poison”. Joe doesn’t object. 30% of the people believe him. 60 million customers abandon Texas and thousands of small businesses close.
Is society better off because joe rogan allowed this deplorable person to enter the marketplace of ideas? Or would it have been better if he had challenged the guest to back up the claim, or simply not had the guest on in the first place?
Being able to discuss ideas is good. But why do you need to be able to discuss your fabricated ideas in front of 200 million people at once?
As a follow-on thought experiment, if 60 million customers stop buying from Texas companies, let’s say, from whom do they now end up buying those products? Possibly from some existing mega-corporations, which probably has a net negative on society as a whole, or possibly from small business owners elsewhere —- maybe mainly those that've been somehow disenfranchised by those Texas-based companies in the past. The latter maybe being a net positive for society as a whole.
Not arguing that you’re wrong; just suggesting that a seemingly simple thought experiment in this case is still very complicated on a societal scale. In general I’d argue that facts and truth are most central to productive and well-balanced societies, and combatting non-truth is therefore the most generally useful approach, but widespread discussion of ideas in general is also central.
For some reason these pro censorship people think that by letting someone share an opinion that it is dangerous, not realizing that they are actually making these people more dangerous and others more likely to engage and follow their ideals by censoring them than by letting them share their opinions. A society controlled by fear is one that is easily manipulated and very unstable.
To me censorship is like adding backdoor into encryption. There may be times where it helps, but for the most part is is waiting to be exploited maliciously. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I do not agree with everything I see on the Internet, but I also support individual freedom and choice. People should be allowed to be ignorant if that is what they choose, and rather than get angry I generally just feel empathy for most people.
I think it is best to use logic and reason, it is okay to listen to someone. If they say something that fundamentally conflicts with your personal beliefs then you are allowed to set personal boundaries to not listen to them. If someone is following you around trying to intimidate you and threatening you then you can get a restraining order. If you go out seeking people that oppose your views then demand no one interact with them anymore because they have different opinions, then many times it is you that has the problem and not them.
>If you go out seeking people that oppose your views then demand no one interact with them anymore because they have different opinions, then many times it is you that has the problem and not them.
This framing of "we need to figure out who's wrong/who's weird/who has the problem" is really unhelpful. We should focus on the actual, practical, consequences of our choices and how that changes the world, not obsess over being normal. The practical effects of speaking freely and without challenge on a platform with 200M listeners are disastrous. It doesn't matter if it's weird for me to think that, its still true.
And then he had Bernie Sanders on. Should we disavow Bernie Sanders for speaking to a man who has conversations with horrible people?
Walter Cronkite had a conversation with Fidel Castro and it was broadcast to millions around America. Was that an abomination, spoiling the minds of the impressionable people too weak to think for themselves?
Gavin isn’t left. Or lefty. That is misinformation. 19 years ago Gavin was saying things like:
“Last month, he wrote an article for Patrick Buchanan in The American Conservative boasting of having converted Vice readers to conservatism.
He actually leans much further to the right than the Republican Party. His views are closer to a white supremacist's. ''I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of,'' he said. ''I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life.”[0]
—
When was the Proud Boys purportedly just a joke? Also, 4chan, Vice’s non lefty people like Gavin, have hid behind the cover of “just a joke” for decades.
There are many times where Gavin calls himself, Proud Boys, or others alt-lite/new right. A distinction that means nothing when the people who label themselves as these, are no different than the alt right. I have a very hard time believing Proud Boys was ever created as a joke in good faith and not as cover. Nothing from quick reading shows your take to be true.
Is it not true that Proud Boys was created in 2016 on Taki's Magazine, a far-right/alt-right site?
One thing is clear. Spotify should probably have stuck with music. The special relationship with JRE blurs the lines between publisher and platform and their fates might end up being inextricably tied together for better or worse.
I think removing from their platform whoever Neil Young tells them to would be much more of a special relationship. Do you really think Spotify is inclined to deplatform any podcaster because of threats from an artist? That’d just encourage more and more threats to remove whoever the next artist doesn’t happen to like.
> removing from their platform whoever Neil Young tells them to
they aren't though, and Neil isn't saying they should because he says so, but out of a sense of moral decency, and he simply doesn't want to be associated with them if they're going to be gibing a platform for dangerous nonsense.
It's actually up to Joe to take responsibility for his role as a public service broadcaster (whether he likes it or not) and ensure he moderates his message. He's too big to be an "outsider" "upstart" or "underdog" or whatever it is people think it is that justifies contrarian hot takes.
It's time to step back and realise that he's in a "Free Speech Antitrust" kind of category.
> Because it is not exactly opinion-free and society-building.
What a backwards way of characterising a style of vocal delivery. As I was reading your comment I was listening to the group 'clipping.' deliver the story of an uprising on an interstellar slave ship, the loneliness of the lone survivor drifting in and out of hypersleep for millenia, and the ship's computer realising the hate it had been taught for people with a skin color had no bearing in reality.
The GP talked about a specific person taking specific actions that they think was worth taking a stance against. Is your counter-argument to that highly pointed argument really to talk about everyone using a specific vocal technique?
Criticise a specific artist if they step over the line. Criticise someone like Immortal Technique for his 9/11 conspiracy bullshit and his rampant homophobia, but don't use someone like him to claim that somehow _all of rap_ should be discarded.
What is considered morally decent or “dangerous” nonsense varies wildly from person to person. Why should Spotify apply Neil Young’s set of morals above all others’ to their platform? Because he said so?
Exactly, the justification for silencing people based on threats from artists makes no sense and relies on circular logic :) Hopefully now you understand why being quick to deplatform anyone who is mildly controversial is a bad idea and too morally absolutist. Here’s a better idea: don’t worry so much about speech you don’t like. The connection between them and actions (what actually matter) is weak at best.
Joe Rogan has fuck you money also. Dave Chappelle walked away from a big project because of creative differences. Joe Rogan could do the same if he were forced to.
JRE will roll on regardless of what Spotify does. Neil Young will always be Neil Young.
The only people hurting here are the decision makers of Spotify.
I don't know the degree of editing that Spotify does. If they are only removing episodes, that's different from constraining Joe Rogan in his creative direction.
Note: I may have been wrong about the reasons for Dave Chapelle leaving. If I'm recalling correctly, that was the reason he originally cited when leaving. But more info came out in later interviews. Seems like he just needed a break from the spotlight.
They both have fuck you money. One difference is that Joe Rogan is 54 and makes most of his money from producing new content. Neil Young is 76 and makes most of his money from the music that he has already made. Rogan needs Spotify for his future income. Young, much less so.
Joe Rogan would still be pulling in millions without the Podcast: MMA commentary, stand up comedy tours, and whatever residuals he has. If Spotify let him go, he would just be back on Youtube tomorrow, with arguably a larger audience than he has on spotify, because youtube is free.
> If Spotify let him go, he would just be back on Youtube tomorrow
Sure. But without the remainder of the $100 million that Spotify are paying him. Could he monetise a YouTube channel to that amount over the same time period? Perhaps, but Spotify are currently handling his marketing for him, so I'm sceptical.
I wasn't criticising Rogan, simply pointing out that the situation is different for him and Young - due to their differing ages and the nature of their creative output.
Yeah, I think we can agree that staying on Spotify is likely the most lucrative option for him, but my point is that greed notwithstanding, he's probably got enough money that he would be fine to never earn another cent. Either way, IMO this whole thing is so crazy overblown.
It would only take 34 more artists to have the same demand to make dropping Rogan worth it, which seems doable. I'm glad someone got the ball rolling; Hopefully others take it to the finish line.
Doesn't work like this. Rogan pulls in people for Podcasts. Otherwise even Spotify users are going to go elsewhere for their podcasts (PocketCast, OverCast, Apple, etc..). 34 artists likely aren't going to be deal breakers for most of the customers. Most will just not listen to those 34 artists rather than leave Spotify.
I'll immediately leave Spotify too as a user if Spotify bends to the will of Neil Young (and I'm a NY fan as well).
I imagine there's more listeners like me, and I assume there's no listeners out there that will suddenly start listening to Spotify if they aren't already.
Maybe not. I can't imagine Spotify wanting to set any precedent in this area. Who's to say it would stop with JRE and not end with all of their content creators fighting to platform each other. There is a lot of potential for objections across a broad swath of art.
> Rogan supposedly pulls in 200M monthly listeners while Young's spotify page says he gets 6M per month.
Somewhat pedantic note: this statement seems misleading to me. I think you mean "200M monthly listens", unless you're claiming that 2.5% of the world's population listens to Rogan every month?
According to this Neilsen chart [1] JRE is most watched media at 11 million viewers per show, far ahead of even the number two spot.
JRE does 3-4 shows on a typical week. So:
3.5 / 7 * 30 * 11 = 165m
So the other 35m per month must be groups of people viewing? Not sure how they took measurements or if this is apples to oranges comparison or if the graph is to be trusted [2].
Good point. Spotify uses the term "monthly listeners" and it seems like they do mean unique individuals. That number is 6M for Young, but they don't reveal what it is for Rogan. He's claimed that he gets 200M monthly downloads, so the number of actual listeners is probably smaller.
They had little choice. If you let someone anyone dictate your decisions, others will leverage their power too. Soon, it would descend into who has more clout than whom and the parties shoot at each other in a cross-fire as they race to the bottom. It would be a no-win for Spotify.
I’ve seen popular/powerful people being de-platformed, after much rumble, I once was on the side of those questioning platforms for giving “them” the opportunity to build a strong voice I didn’t want to exist.
It only made things worse, the guys moved underground but their communities kept growing and felt validation in martyrdom, and soon enough they found a new, even stronger voice, and they always find ways to circumvent censorship.
It should not be done because it simply does not work in the long run.
> It should not be done because it simply does not work in the long run.
The phrase "work" here is pretty subjective from case to case. The outcome ultimately is determined by who is getting censored by whom and for what. As a general rule it "works" just as often as it doesn't.
My case here is that censorship can be effective to shut down individuals, but it does not matter because it won’t stop what made that voice powerful, it’s often the opposite.
Is there an issue at all here? A person who owns some stuff decided they didn't like something and left. That is their right. Another person is exercising their free speech. That is also their right, even when some people label it misinformation. There is a lot of drama in this thread, but none worth reading.
Young thinks misinformation leads to vaccine skepticism, but hostile behavior like censorship and mandates are also likely to drive people away and increase distrust of science and government.
Not really. NY was standing up to Spotify's bad decision to broadcast dangerous misinformation, and he was making a protest to try to get them to see sense. Good for him! I hope he sticks to his principles.
Note that "dangerous misinformation" changes entirely based on what the orthodoxy is currently promoting.
Particularly, CNN/MSNBC/NBC/AP all promoted the "masks don't work" lie promoted by the CDC at the start of the pandemic, which likely directly led to deaths.
But if CNN slaughters some grandparents with CDC-backed lies it's water under the bridge compared to Joe Rogan, right?
Your mistake is falsely claiming ivermectin is "dangerous", when it has been an FDA approved drug for humans for decades. When taken in advised doses, the worst ivermectin is is harmless.
So, your rebuttal for CNN and friends literally causing death by anti-mask propaganda in 2020 is a harmless drug? You're going to need more evidence.
How about the City of New York encouraging residents to visit Chinatown when the pandemic ramped up? [1] Seems a lot more dangerous than an FDA approved drug.
Dr Fauci also has made repeated dangerous claims, such as the vaccines being "100% effective at preventing hospitalisation" [2] -- this fabricated lie DESTROYED public confidence in officials.
A recent Decision Desk poll showed only 31% of Americans trust Dr Fauci (likely due to repeated lies), and less than 50% trust the CDC (which lied repeatedly about masks and bungled health advice constantly). Most notably, news media enjoys a pathetic 10% trust among the public. [3]
Can anyone recommend the best alternative to Spotify that still has Neil Young? Ideally with a linux client and the ability to control one device from another device's linked client.
I listen to quite a bit of Neil Young and not-so-much Joe Rogan.
I enjoy Apple Music as it works on my Apple Watch without an iPhone. It holds both uploaded music and streaming additions to my library. I previously used Google Play Music which was an MVP its whole life cycle. The switch to Apple Music was rather easy.
On the Beach is one of my favorite Young albums and its on AM.
I'm making the switch to tidal and I'm really enjoying the high quality audio (I have the hardware to match). And it has Neil Young on there. There are some very, very obscure punk rock albums that aren't on there but I was honestly surprised that Spotify even had them so it's not a deal breaker. Their price tiers match Spotify's so for me it was a 'why didn't I do this ages ago' moment. The move wasn't for one specific reason but more a gathering of many small things that finally made me push through the inertia.
Edit to add that the phone app needs some polish. I've got a few really unusual errors and it's not as slick as the Spotify app. It works but I could easily see less technical users just dropping it because of them. But the web player and desktop apps have been great.
I can not relate. To me, their ui is frustrating, the reccomendations aren't great, and when in offline mode you cannot search for an album, you must use a playlist or your entire library.
I don't understand what motivates a move like this. Is he really that indignant about Joe's views on COVID that he can't sell on the same platform. If so why? Because he cares about public health initiatives that much?
> I don't understand what motivates a move like this
There's been this big shift the last 10 or so years that hasn't got enough attention. People somehow now act like the world has to align to focus all its priorities on exactly what they prioritize, and can't imagine the idea that things matter differently to different people.
The way things previously worked, you didn't have to agree with everything someone else did or said, you just had to get along. Now it's like "if you don't drop everything and take my cause as seriously as I do, you're dead to me"
I had previously thought it was a "me generation" thing, but Neil Young is like 80 so i guess it's a societal shift.
There's been a big shift recently, but the general phenomenon of weird performative stunts isn't new at all. Did you know about the time Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar because he was mad about the government response to a protest in South Dakota? It'd be another story if Young were going around saying that he's gonna try to cancel any artist who stays on Spotify, or that you and I have a moral obligation to quit Spotify, but taking your ball and going home is a very well time-tested protest strategy.
> Did you know about the time Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar because he was mad about the government response to a protest in South Dakota?
He also went on Dick Cavett and made some insane connection between that random protest and the stereotypes of Native Americans in Hollywood movies and tv shows.
Not only that, he traveled back in time to participate in the civil rights movement to gain enough credibility to convince an actress who'd been at the occupation of Alcatraz to accept his Oscar and give a speech connecting Native American stereotypes and that random protest. We're talking serious Back to the Future level shit here.
It's pretty stunning how consistently intense, passionate arguments get sanitized to mere disagreements in the popular imagination. You read about the Cross of Gold speech, where William Jennings Bryan declared that the gold standard is an enemy to humanity and whipped up a mob to cancel anyone who supported it, and it comes across as some kind of polite dispute.
It went way beyond offending their audience. The Dixie Chicks were black listed. This was also a time when people started calling french fries, freedom fries, among other insane "patriotic" things.
hahaha you surely must be joking. what a ridiculous spin! being political & caring about the world is not new. Young has been a strong advocate, loudly held moral stances for probably longer than many many of the readers on HN have been alive[1]. having backbone, a stance, caring: it's not new.
this isnt really that different than asking Young to share a show with someone. our systems and our services have gotten more centralized, more controlled. the connection is not as clear & apparent as sharing a stage. but this is not some new radical new interpersonal cruelty Young has fostered. it's the simple desire to not associate with trash & cruelty, to find better spaces. that's not new. it's just good sense.
we dont all have to follow the same code, but we should not be party to those supporting the despicable. obvious, & anything else anything less in madness.
Pretending that the current brand of "activism" is the same as previous ones is disingenuous, and disrespectful. Previous struggles for rights, for example by women, blacks, and gays, as well as pushing back against "the man" - conformity with the establishment, were important causes, I don't need to dwell on that. The current need for outrage and attention while simultaneously being ultra conformist brand of slacktivism is nothing like that. Neil Young may have been an important part of past struggles, but he's just another establishment shill looking for attention now if this is the kind of hill he's dying on.
> Previous struggles for rights, for example by women, blacks, and gays, as well as pushing back against "the man" - conformity with the establishment, were important causes
Ironically your attitude itself is not new. During the Civil Rights era it was a common meme among the "center" that emancipation was a worthy and noble cause but that ending segregation and Jim Crow was a bridge too far. Hindsight is 20/20...
Yes I've heard that before, but I don't think the comparison makes it impossible that this time is different. It's the shift from fighting for freedom to using more and more obscure perceived slights as a pretext for complaining that makes this time different. The goal is not equality or rights, the goal is securing the status of an elite
> The goal is not equality or rights, the goal is securing the status of an elite
That's kind of an odd take. By the time the dust settles there will be more than a million Americans dead from COVID. The lion's share of them will have been unvaccinated.
I don't think it's radical for someone to believe that they have a social duty to help ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Moreover I don't think there can be any reasonable disagreement that Joe Rogan is in a position of considerable influence to many millions of Americans, and consequently his commentary about vaccines (and COVID treatments) has been the proximate cause of many deaths, perhaps thousands, and I'm pretty sure that history will take a dim view.
Neil Young's actions here are quixotic, certainly, but considering the personal cost he can hardly be accused of failing to walk the talk.
> The lion's share of them will have been unvaccinated.
Most of them died before vaccines were available. So, you aren't wrong but...
> ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Fact checking is not aligned with science, which is a continual process of correction. Remember when fact checkers all jumped in about how masks didn't do any good when that was the official CDC and WHO position? We have known since the 1990s with SARS that masks are effective.
Multiple states are currently making teaching about racism illegal based on whether or not parents subjectively feel "uncomfortable", and half of the country is trying to perform a fascist coup but you want to boil it down to "outrage and attention"?
This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
While this is definitely an anti-CRT bill, it does not make "teaching about racism illegal" in any sense.
> half of the country is trying to perform a fascist coup
> Fascism
> often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Oddly enough, "half of the country" would be approximately a majority. If they are "performing" something, it would basically just be Democracy, though I suspect you're equivocating between a small group of insurrectionists and 175,000,000 people.
> This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
Well, you were at least self prescient if mistimed.
"Military" is by no means the only form a coup can take, and indeed it's just one of the examples in that definition.
This might be the benefit of international distance but it seems to me it is really _unambiguous_ -- based on known facts and no matter which side you come from -- that at the end of 2020 Trump and his DC faction attempted a legislative self-coup:
It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
You do not need to be left-wing, or anti-conservative, to acknowledge the above. You merely have to make an honest appraisal of what we know (not least based on what various Trump-affiliated political actors have openly said).
I will leave it to others to decide whether Trump met the definition of a fascist, but one tech-related episode that strikes me as instructive on the subject is his attempt to force the sale of TikTok to a company of his choosing if they paid what amounted to a kickback levy to the Treasury.
A coup is via a military or other governmental power structure. When it is citizens, it is an insurrection.
You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
You might have the belief that Trump coaxed citizens into raiding a Congressional building. That would be "formenting insurrection".
> It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
If you actually dislike Trump, do not repeat the mistakes of 2016. Don't paint him up as some master Hitler who is one step away from being dictator for life. Don't bring him up in every topic and let him live rent free. The media did that and he got a better PR campaign then he could have ever bought.
He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
> A coup is via a military or other governmental power structure. When it is citizens, it is an insurrection.
Yes, but you're misunderstanding/misrepresenting what is going on if you think the Capitol insurrection is the entirely of the story. The insurrection was _clearly_ provoked as a single component of a self-coup. There's abundant evidence of this; it's really not in doubt.
> You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
The "or such" is attempting more work here than it can pull off. For example, he and people close to him (like Giuliani) attempted to illegally establish a corrupt slate of electors to throw the election. And he attempted to literally intimidate his Vice President into not certifying at all.
Yes, he was dissuaded from some actions. but he was so much closer to pulling it off than you seem to suggest.
> No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
Again, you are suggesting that the activity of citizens is the end of it. It is clearly not. It is a multi-state state-level legislative agenda, heavily co-ordinated.
> He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
You don't seriously think people should believe he did it all on his own and just discount it? It didn't succeed, yes, and he didn't surround himself with the best people, but it was a co-ordinated campaign by many people around him (see the Willard group for example).
In many ways it is still ongoing. If you are content to imagine that Trump and Trumpism are no longer a threat, you are mistaken. Trump may not get to run in person in 2024 (he's clearly dangling this in part so he can claim that his many legal troubles are political persecution), but Trumpism will not be reversed, and minority rule is not off the table.
From a distance, the USA looks increasingly like it is heading towards a very big political reversal from democracy. The GOP certainly won't ever close the lid on everything coming out of Pandora's Box and go back to being a normal political party, and there's no evidence they want to. (They are paying millions of dollars of Trump's legal fees, right now).
> Pretending that the current brand of "activism" is the same as previous ones is disingenuous, and disrespectful.
Young recognizes who is hurting us & is standing apart.
Youcre trivializing what is happening, trying to make it look unimportant. Saying that this malignance isnt as toxic as past ones so we should just quietly hold our noses.
Personally i disagree with your assessment of scale about whats happening. But as important to me is whether society quietly suffers it's toxic, harmful, animosity-based elements, or whether we have a society that actively thinks/cares/promotes goodness & cooperation. It is outrageous that small-minded anti-societal reactionary-ism has winded us so bad, that anti-activism has such a huge banner, garners such animosity against doing good. Rogan is a head wolf, one of the main profiteers selling hardened uncaring individualism & trading misinformation to boost his popularity.
No side here is free from claims of attention seeking or outrage-generation. But one side pretends it's doing something else, one side gets offended when the other side is activist, & it's not the side that seems to be very interested in dealing in peace & coexistence.
It’s more like sharing a shopping mall with them. Merchants don’t endorse each other and may not have many customers in common, yet outsourcing common construction and parking and security is better for all of them.
We didn't have a large, loud faction of conspiracy theorist celebrities and politicians disseminating disinformation about public health in the middle of a pandemic any time in the last 100 years either.
We have always had various false news, conspiracy theorists and outright disbelievers and angry mobs about pandemics, including 1918 [1][2]. None of what we have gone through is new in any meaningful way.
Because its outside of the lived experience of pretty much everyone alive right now. It's not the reaction to the disinformation thats special. Its the circumstances under which people are spreading disinformation that is special. These aren't JFK assassination conspiracy theories. Almost 2000 Americans died yesterday. A lot of them needlessly because a huge segment of society is treating reality as optional.
Oh I certainly agree with the effects, I just don’t think it’s worth excluding the last pandemic where similar things happened (even if it was a while ago). It just seems to be a perpetual problem and when there are consequences for that misinformation spreading we see bad results :(
I think it's more than 2000. Many are dieing from over eating, over drinking, drug addictions, and other bad choices. It's just that we have gotten used to all the other reasons people die.
I don't think the way to deal with people whose opinions we don't like is to pretend they don't exist and forbid those opinions to be discussed.
I don't think that teaches children or society in general a healthy way to deal with different opinions including misinformation and form your own opinions.
I also think the reaction shows or gives the appearance of fear, which itself gives undue power to them. Banning words and phrases and people like some nazi or communist police state makes people sit up and wonder why the regime is so terrified of words and in some ways marvel at their power (and don't give me the "private companies" line, we all know the corrupt government-corporate complex all work for one another).
I would like to live in a society with a healthy disdain for purveyors of lies and misinformation. People like Neil Young standing against the BS on Rogans podcast is an example of free speech in action and civil society at work. The more the better.
If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
> I would like to live in a society with a healthy disdain for purveyors of lies and misinformation.
You say that like it's opposite what I said.
My position is that I don't think censorship and banning of ideas and people is a healthy way to develop that disdain in society.
> If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
There's lots of things to "stand up against". Corporate censorship and other kinds of proxy attacks on anybody who questions certain narratives pushed by the ruling class is a big one even if you sometimes agree with the establishment. They don't have your interests at heart even if they coincidentally appear to align from time to time. One day it is be about vaccines, but another day it will be war with Iraq or intervention in Libya or conflict with China over Taiwan.
Those things certainly don't require that we break societal norms or use them as an excuse for taking any kind of extreme action. There are lots of ways to constructively disagree with things, my point is that we've strayed from those into new territory where complaining and outrage are the end and not the means
There is an interesting and (imo) humbling take I heard about this from a local radio host who was asking the same question ("what motivates somebody to expose their true value?"). In this case, the host brought up that several (all?) of Neil Young's children suffer from medical maladies, which may cause him to be more sensitive to situations that he believes could cause them undue harm. I still disagree with Neil's position and decision, but I found that this really helped humanize him in ways other pundits have missed.
First off, We live in a society not a free for all dystopia. Second, that poster could be one of the 7 million people in America with immune issues or one of the probably 10x that cares about one of their friends or fsmily who has those health issues, but even if not, people being vaccinated helps keep health care costs down for all and could save the posters life if they got in a car accident tomorrow the local ER may already be overwhelmed due to the unvaxxed.
So anyway, thanks for that meaningful addition to the comments.
> First off, We live in a society not a free for all dystopia.
Well, looking at the past two years, I'm not so sure about that. Locking up the whole world in their apartments, fining people for being on the street, locking up playgrounds, banning outside exercise or limiting your "outside" time to 1 hour or allowing you to go no further than 1-3 miles from your home sounds pretty dystopian to me. My mom died of cancer after being ignored for 1 and a half year (in the EU she couldn't get a CT scan for 6 months because the hospital staff didn't want to disinfect the machine after each use) and I was able to see her only in the last 2 weeks of her life after being forced to stay in quarantine for 10 days, even if I had negative PCR tests before travelling, so yeah, let's all pretend we care about people and health, and not about people like you feeling superior and better than everyone else.
It seems like the ultimate form of virtue signaling or a cry for attention. If that is what he wanted, he succeeded. It is all over the news today. Everywhere. Have to commend Spotify for not backing down despite the heap of criticism they have gotten over the past year about Rogan.
This is just a lazy buzzword you can use to shut down other peoples opinions without having to actually engage with them.
It's just "virtue signalling", it's just "PC gone mad", it's just "cancel culture", they're just "crazy SJWs". Notice how none of these things actually have any substance, they're just a way to dismiss someone else and walk away feeling like you've won a pointless argument.
I think it is more virtuous to send honest signals than to be a hypocrite.
Also, "virtue" in these cases usually just means conforming to social pressure and the norms of particularly vociferous factions of society.
Even if you happen to agree with those norms (which are seen as Draconian by many), the sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude probably won't help the cause in the long run.
Engage with peoples points, don't just claim that they're sanctimonious or that there's a lot of them, so you get to ignore them - that's absurd.
A lot of people sharing the same opinion doesn't magically make that opinion less valid, engaging with the world as if there's some great conspiracy against you is counterproductive.
I kinda made the opposite of the that claim in my comment :-) I think a lot of people see the norms "virtue signallers" want to impose as Draconian. I don't think a guy having controversial guests on his podcasts is something many people find intolerable.
Honesty is better than hypocrisy although the two are not mutually exclusive. More often one has to choose between being honest and hypocritical or being dishonest and consistent.
What evidence do you have that this move by Neil Young is anything other than his honest feelings on the subject? A lot of people are sick of Rogan spreading BS. It's not suprising someone like Young would choose to use what little leverage they have to push for him to be removed.
There are people out there who care more about the truth and acknowledge that such a thing exists than giving every crazy person a megaphone.
If we want to live in a circus where people who have no idea what they're talking about get to disseminate lies while thousands of people die preventable deaths every day we've lost our collective minds.
Is he though? He asked them to remove JRE or remove his catalog. He's exercising his choice to remove himself from the platform because he doesn't want to be associated with Spotify and the people they employ.
Supporting censorship would be more along the lines of asking the government to jail Rogan, erasing his content, etc.
Spotify has actually removed certain JRE episodes from the available catalog as a condition of their deal.[1]
He knew what the outcome of what his "ultimatum". He put his personal profits on the line and followed through. This clearly isn't a case of virtue signaling.
> I don't understand what motivates a move like this.
Neil Young was saved from Polio as a child by being one of the early recipients of the Salk vaccine. As someone who is living proof of the effectiveness of vaccines, he likely has very little patience for people who profit off of spreading vaccine misinformation and put his own profits on the line to make the statement. Good for him.
Okay that comment is going to be awkward for you to digest in a moment.
I think you should know that one of the main polio vaccines doesn’t actually prevent you from getting polio, you still get it and can spread it it just doesn’t paralyze you.
And that’s the Salk vaccine, the other vaccine is literally giving people a weakened stain of polio. And it actually causes some paralysis in about 3 in every million so that vaccine isn’t perfect.
It was clear from context he was referring to rates of polio-induced paralysis, in an analogous theoretical scenario that doesn’t quite fit the actual history.
Your comment was interesting, though. I did some additional reading about the history of those vaccines.
Let me clarify: the polio vaccine is effective enough that after getting it, we all get to live our lives exactly the same way we would if polio didn't exist. You don't have to show proof of polio vaccination to keep your job or go in public places, and you don't have to take any other precautions to protect against polio.
Differing dynamics of diseases calling for different measures. We could go down a rabbit hole debating moot points.
The fact is the original comment as phrased was totally wrong, and we could debate the clarification.
Instead let’s just acknowledge that if smallpox were around today and we had a world wide epidemic but we had a vaccine that prevented ill effects in nearly all cases but still allowed transmission, then it’s safe to assume there would be vaccine mandate. That would be different dynamics just like polio. Different dynamic need different responses.
Never in history has there been such a widespread mandate for such a leaky vaccine. Saying there would be in a counterfactual world isn't a strong argument, especially since the smallpox vaccine was effective enough at stopping transmission that we were able to eradicate the disease.
It is not productive to see antivaxxers as rational actors. They are concerned about vaccine breakthrough cases but have no issue ingesting ivermectin, vitamin D or hydroxyquinone?
Even if there was something wrong about mRNA vaccines would it not have been better to campaign for Covaxin or Sputnik to be allowed by the FDA?
I think this is good for music. I don't think people should think of Spotify as the only place that music exists. It's the new (better) "radio", but good art is often to be found in escaping and rejecting constraints, centralization, and default ways to do things. So, I'm glad that Spotify's very nature is bound to piss people like Neil Young off, regardless of the particulars of this case.
Trying to cancel and censor another artist because you disagree with their opinions feels very wrong. But just because I disagree with Neil doesn't mean I want to censor him or take him off Spotify or my playlists... Oh wait. He removed his music from my Spotify playlists.
Why wouldn't Neil just write a song titled "Joe Rogan" and use the Spotify platform to spread his message? I'd respect that.
It's funny that the tone some of the Rogan proponents take seems to turn some of the discussion here sour by being so confrontational, though the negativity towards Rogan is repeatedly backed up by some lackluster proof, and seems similarly ideological.
He's never claimed to be authoritative about anything besides MMA and comedy. He has long form discussions where he expresses opinions. Calling him dangerous because he's willing to discuss important topics with a wide range of people... it's like saying people shouldn't discuss things they aren't experts on in general, maybe? And further, it's saying you have the authority to denote what makes an expert (it's not being an MD, doctors disagree with each other sometimes).
If I'm not a doctor, and suggest some medicinal treatment to a good friend that does more harm than good, am I responsible? I'd argue possibly. If I'm saying I'm an idiot about this topic every couple of hours, I'd argue not. I'm not claiming expertise. Even if I've read some articles and I say as much, my friends know me, I don't posture, I don't know shit. I expect them to be responsible enough to act accordingly.
Broadcasters have some level of responsibility. I don't know how much that should be or how it should be enforced. I think this might need to be done on the individual level, in your own discussions and considerations.
I just think it's silly when people claim to know the truth and try to silence people, even if it seems clear to you what's correct. I think it pushes everyone into their own sides further. We're not at war with each other and we don't want to be. Be chill, question people with honest and positive curiosity, and be friendly. Maybe you'll bring someone to a more reasonable side, or maybe you'll figure out you're being the unreasonable one. Sometimes people don't bite, but if you try you've done your part.
I don't listen to JRE but does Spotify also inject ads on his podcasts? I listened to some other Spotify exclusives and to my surprise (for a paid subscription service), they had injected audio ads. I'm not talking about live reads either but flow interrupting commercial breaks. What's next, break up songs with ads?
Yes there's ads, but they're weird. They're ad reads that Joe does. And when the ads start, the "time duration scrubber" at the bottom of Spotify changes and allows you to just pull the scrubber to the end of the ad read.
So unlike the rest of Spotify's ads (for music) you can skip these ads.
He’s not saying no one can listen to Rogan, that would be restricting freedom.
He’s saying you can listen to Rogan, but it won’t be with me. You are free to choose and rock in the free world with whoever you want. The free world doesn’t entitle you to be able to listen to both men on the same platform.
If that were the case he would have left without issuing an ultimatum. Ultimatums are an attempt to force someone to do something. “Do what I want or else“
Same thing with a boycott. Do you just randomly boycott companies for no reason? No, you do it because you want them to change a policy that you don't like. In this case, Neil doesn't like that Spotify won't censor Rogan. He left to try to force them to do it. He failed.
With a boycott you have to be happy with either result. Either you change and we still do business with you or you don’t change and I take my business elsewhere. Yes, it involves an ultimatum but both results are successful outcomes. The only way you lose is if you are unhappy with the result of your ultimatum and I haven’t heard any indication of that. I think it worked out just fine for both parties. Neil is almost 80 and decades past his prime. I doubt he cares at all about the money, it was always out of principal for him.
I'm not saying he's unhappy. I'm saying the goal of his actions was to reduce freedom. The principle he is following is that of censorship. He left because Spotify refused to capitulate to his demands for censorship. Yes, he is free to do that if he likes. Yes, he may be happy about it. But I do not find supporting censorship to be a noble or worthy cause.
> Young reportedly posted a letter that read: 'They can have Rogan or Young. Not both'
Censorship is saying “You can’t have Rogan, and no one can have Rogan”, but that’s not what he said.
He’s just saying he doesn’t want to be associated with Rogan. They agreed to go their separate ways and everyone’s content is still available for purchase by any willing consumers.
Literally nobody was associating him with Rogan. He's on a platform with millions of artists. Absolutely not one single person in the entire world was thinking "Gee, Neil Young must agree with every single thing that Joe Rogan says, because they're both on Spotify". That is complete nonsense. The only reason to make a threat like this was to attempt to get Rogan dropped from the service.
I'm sure at various times Neil Young's music was sold in Wal-Mart or other stores that also sold music or other media by other people he disagreed with. He never felt the need to pressure any of them into dropping other artists for fear that they would be associated because they're both in the same store.
Imagine for a second that Neil Young had written something like "There's too many gay artists on Spotify. They need to kick off all these gay artists or I'm gonna pull all my music". He might technically be in his rights to do that and pull his music over that, but I doubt anyone would be on here saying how he's just standing up for his principles and exercising his freedom to choose who he does business with. We'd all be saying that it's a shitty thing to do to try to use your clout to silence people you disagree with. That's what he's doing here. The fact that it didn't work doesn't make it any less shitty of a thing to do. The fact that you might also disagree with the person he's trying to silence also doesn't make it right.
> The only reason to make a threat like this was to attempt to get Rogan dropped from the service.
Not true. Young was very willing to pull his own catalog, said as much and then did so willingly and without a fuss. And yes, artists have images to uphold. Music is displayed right next to podcasts on the Spotify Home Screen. It’s totally possible for Spotify to recommend you listen to Neil Young and a Rogan podcast. And it’s really only up to Young what he decides is appropriate for his brand. What seems silly to you might be really important to him.
As for your other examples, this happens all the time in business where someone pulls out of some event or stops selling goods in a store for moral reasons. It’s within their rights. I have no problem with any business refusing to do business with any other business for any legal reason. That’s just the free market.
And no, I wouldn’t berate Young for pulling his products from a store for bogus reasons, I would challenge the reasons themselves, not the act (or threat) of pulling the products.
> And no, I wouldn’t berate Young for pulling his products from a store for bogus reasons, I would challenge the reasons themselves, not the act (or threat) of pulling the products.
And indeed, that is what I've been doing this whole time. I never said he wasn't allowed to pull his music, or that he shouldn't be able to. I've said that his reason for doing so - he wants particular podcasts to be censored - is, as you put it, bogus. That is a shitty thing to want, and it should not be promoted by any means, whether it's pulling your music catalog or anything else.
This is one of the broadest definitions of censorship I’ve ever heard then.
I understand censorship to be the total suppression of content, not a partial restriction of it, or having to view it on one major (similarly priced, similar ease of use) platform instead of another.
> to keep (something) secret : to not allow people to know about or see (something)
I haven’t seen any evidence or quotes from Young that request keeping Rogan’s content secret.
I don’t think it counts as censorship if you say a platform no longer has content that’s available elsewhere. At that point, any content dropped from any platform for any reason would be “censorship” and the word starts to lose it’s original meaning.
> This is one of the broadest definitions of censorship I’ve ever heard then.
It is the correct and commonly used definition of the word.
> I understand censorship to be the total suppression of content, not a partial restriction of it, or having to view it on one major (similarly priced, similar ease of use) platform instead of another.
You understand censorship incorrectly then. For example, every television network employs people called censors whose job it is to decide what content is allowed on the network. If you're making a prime time sitcom for NBC and you try to write in the word "Fuck", the censors will tell you you're not allowed to do that and they will refuse to air it. They will censor the word "Fuck". That is censorship. It doesn't mean that nobody anywhere is ever allowed to utter the word fuck, it means they don't allow it. You can go watch HBO and hear the word fuck, but NBC censors it.
> I haven’t seen any evidence or quotes from Young that request keeping Rogan’s content secret.
He said "You can have Rogan or me but not both". The other option there was "not have Rogan". What do you think that means except remove his programming from Spotify?
> I don’t think it counts as censorship if you say a platform no longer has content that’s available elsewhere.
Again, first of all yes it does mean that. Second of all, Rogan is exclusive with Spotify, so it's not available elsewhere.
In this case what Young is asking to be censored is any discussion of vaccines and Covid that doesn't agree with the official government narrative. This should be a huge red flag. Whenever you're not allowed to question the government that is a sign that something is wrong and a warning of totalitarianism. It doesn't necessarily mean that the government is wrong and that the people asking questions are right, but if you are right and have good intentions you should be able to welcome and address any questions to assuage people's fears and not try to silence them.
Is anybody really all that surprised by this, though? Setting Spotify's deal with JRE aside, removing the show from the platform would set an unenforceable precedent for the majority of podcasts. If we just start banning people for saying things that go against the status quo, what would we even be left with? A handful of NPR shows minus The Moth Radio Hour?
Joe Rogan is a hilariously bad entertainer and an even worse podcast host, but how could this have gone any other way? If Spotify caved, everyone would have gotten the worst of both worlds: people who don't care would have a diminished Spotify experience while every other artist gets a piece of the virtue-signalling pie, and disenfranchised podcast hosts would just go back to RSS and keep distributing their content to the exact same people.
Mmm I’m interested on your reasons for saying that as I think the opposite. He lets the interviewed to talk freely and requests explanations when bullshit claims are made. He never attempts to conduct the interview to follow his way of thinking. It’s a show that surprisingly on these times, doesn’t have an agenda or ideology behind. The show feels like the classic easy going guy from the gym having a innocent conversation with someone who knows about some area.
Overall, I think he is a great interviewer and the only thing I could complain is that sometimes he might brings some wacky people, but hell, I have enjoyed a lot of those too.
> It’s a show that surprisingly on these times, doesn’t have an agenda or ideology behind.
I used to think this, but the more popular JRE has become, the more and more I believe it less. The program is deliberately sold as being "neutral" - hence its popularity. Rogan's ideology is "question everything" and "consider everything" no matter how crazy it is. That's the problem - it's slowly turning into a conspiracy theorist field day and an anti-science field day. And it's not facilitating critical thinkers, it's facilitating anarchy.
Anyone who makes a living in media has some sort of agenda - which is to make money. This is why you'll never have an unbiased source in news. It's just literally impossible because at some level, money is involved. JRE is proof you can never truly provide an objective 3rd party viewpoint on news and current topics.
As an example, I've watched the JRE episode on Alex Jones. It's surprisingly well done for how much a wack job Jones is. Rogan does a great job of dismantling Jones's hyperbole and gets him to be, essentially, genuine. While fascinating to watch, it's setting an odd precedent - no matter how much of a wack job you might be, you can always end up on a show with millions of subscribers. If Jones wasn't given a megaphone, he'd just be some village idiot that everyone would ignore.
If Rogan was more objective, less controversial and bring on less interesting guests, he'd essentially be boring. He's the modern day Howard Stern, where people tune in to see "what will JRE's guests say next!".
I haven't even watched 5% of his episodes, and yet I've seen him call things out a number of times. Sometimes asking his producer to Google stuff to check in real time.
Do you think it is conceivable that what the parent comment is pointing out is found... I dunno, somewhere in the other 95% of Rogan's content that you haven't seen?
Apparently the lookups themselves are a really funky ruse sometimes actually, so it looks like he's fact checking but the source of the fact is like, some random opinion article somewhere.
There is “misinformation”, saying something untrue, then there is straight up spreading lies you know are untrue (Duke rape case), trying to cover it up when exposed and doing it multiple times.
I think the 2nd can permanently destroy credibility.
You can see him using motivated reasoning to defend the talking point he was trying to advance -- a talking point that itself has an obvious agenda behind it.
His opponents aren't arguing he's not entertaining. The argument is that he platforms dangerous misinformation.
Militant extremists, climate change deniers, COVID misinformation, antivaxxers, etc. And he's generally credulous. He had Jordan Peterson in doing climate change denial just the other day.
This misinformation has material negative impact on all our lives. He's like Paltrow's Goop but for men.
And while we have freedom of speech, we also acknowledge as a society that some lies are too dangerous to allow -- that's why fraud, perjury, slander, filing a false report, false advertising, etc. are all illegal. It's just that reality itself can't sue for defamation.
Oh, wait wait wait, no, those people are actually right, it's the ones saying it _is_ happening who are wrong-thinking. Got it. Let me check my notes again; it's the global warming that is definitely happening and cannot be denied, and the great replacement that is definitely not happening and must be denied (or alternatively you can acknowledge it but say it's actually a great thing).
Do you see where I'm getting at? We must debate all those things in a healthy democracy. We can debate whether Russia or the US is right regarding the Ukraine. We can debate immigration. We can debate vaccines. We can debate whether or not it's true that Saddam actually has WMDs and whether it's wise to invade Iraq. We can debate whether or not smoking causes cancer. We can debate whether or not there is actually a risk with asbestos. We should debate all this stuff.
In case my point is not clear in a sarcastic form let me be more explicit: history has shown that we have been wrong about so many things in so many fields (medical, diplomacy, etc.) over the years. And conventional wisdom about certain things can completely flip over time. Thus we should never exclude debate and skepticism.
He says what people want to hear. People like having their sensibilities pandered to, so they tune in and the whole thing turns into a pretty lucrative cycle.
The average person is not stupid, but the average person is irrational about some topic that has high visibility, usually due to tense emotions. I find that this is usually what people are referring to when they say people are "stupid" - not that they aren't clever or don't have good instincts or are low IQ.
Rolling Stone, the publication that lied about Oklahoma ERs over ran by "horse dewormer overdoses" who had a room of gun shot victims that could be seen? (bc you know... Oklahoma rolls hard with those gun shot victims)
Yes, having the reasonable expectation that publications with long histories occasionally get things wrong is definitely an immutable support for authoritarianism...
I don't think an appeal to popularity is a useful or interesting challenge, even on topics so closely related to popularity like this. It's perfectly valid to have an opinion that some piece of entertainment media is "bad" while acknowledging that it is popular. There are plenty of reasons a non-fiction content creator in particular can gain popularity without being good at entertaining. E.g. if he gets guests that are perceived by a large group of people as challenging a status quo that they hate, he may develop a religious-like following among that group, and that certainly is viable outside the context of entertainment value.
For the record, I am coming from the perspective of having listened to very few episodes, but enjoying what I heard.
There's a big difference between "saying things that go against the status quo" and spreading obvious and dangerous misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories.
I don't understand this whole misinformation thing that's appeared in the last couple of years. I've seen a ton of documentaries and listened to music that spreads misinformation. Why is doing it on social media different? I'm asking an honest question. Why can't people just listen to what they want?
Yes misinformation is nothing new. The type of bullshit I see now being promoted now on social media is no different from the bullshit that used to appear in Weekly World News or Nexus Magazine in the 90s.
Hell in "So I Married an Axe Murderer" Mike Myers even does a bit about how his mother reads batshit crazy conspiracy theories and refers to them as "news". Fringe batshit crazy conspiracy theories have always been out there and have always been a space where the far left overlaps with the far right[1].
The problem is that now we have an entire class of politican, forming an increasingly powerful faction in global politics, whose pitch is based on misinformation and it's reinforced by a media network that is increasingly divorced from any sort of regulation or oversight, has the veneer of "news" and the trust that goes with it, but which is just a bunch of sociopaths in equal measures crazy, greedy and stupid, amplifying each other into authenticity.
Social media has enabled this, it would have been impossible to do otherwise.
Yes the writers of Nexus Magazine could publish something and sell it in the newsagent alongside Time Magazine and National Geographic, but what Social Media does is the equivalent of running Nexus Magazine articles inside Time Magazine, or worse it just lets a whole bunch of people who can imitate rational, educated thought create content that too many people fail to differentiate from actual scholarly or journalistic work.
The politicians lend credibility to the shitposters, and the shitposters do the same back. Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Tim Pool, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Ted Cruz, Judge Janine, Laura Ingraham, Peta Credlin, Rowan Dean, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, George Christiansen, Paul Murray, Rita Pahani, Miranda Devine, Adam Creighton, you name, it, they're all the fucking same, all over the world (I've only cited US and Australia because that's what I'm most familiar with but these same cutouts appear throughout global media and politics).
None of them are "telling it like it is", they're just a bunch of big greedy stinking fucking liars, or they're too dumb or too crazy to know that what they're saying is wildly inaccurate.
The unifying thread of this dangerous and insidious political movement is libertarianism, which has pitched itself as anti-authoritarian but which is ultimately the most authoritarian form of government imagineable (essentially feudalism) because "liberty" and "freedom from regulation" mean very, very different things when you're super rich than they do when you're super poor.
The rebellion against "regulation" has turned into a rebellion against "authority" which has in turn lead to a rebellion against ALL expertise, to the point where football players think they should be able to debunk scientists.
I will be curious to see if NY will stay off of Spotify forever, while JRE is there, or if once covid is not the main news story, that NY is back on Spotify.
Why this headline other way around - It should be "Neil Young pulling his music out of Spotify" .. But this doesnt make sense ..Its free speech and opinions . Ex-President had millions of followers and was elected !! would that mean you move out of the country ..
Those of us who live in the US enjoy free speech, which clearly allows types of speech that are considered misinformation. In order for a platform to censor speech that is otherwise legal, they must either do it out of principle (they simply don't like a certain kind of speech) or as a calculated business decision because it's what their customers want.
It turns out a significant number of people who support free speech also want their favorite platforms to not allow speech they don't like. The argument is "this is not free speech, it's misinformation and it's damaging." If there were valid scientific arguments proving that what we call misinformation is actually damaging, that would be a reasonable position. However, so far I have not seen anything that convinced me.
All I've heard are "just so" arguments akin to "TV/videogames cause violence." What if fake news do not change people's minds as much as it may appear? We tend to listen to viewpoints (fake or not) that confirm our beliefs. All the information confirming our beliefs is out there, cannot be removed from the internet, and we will gravitate towards it. If that is true, then we are paying a high price (asking platforms to police speech beyond the law) for little or no benefit.
Edit: downvoter, I would appreciate if it you could explain how you disagree with my comment.
I agree with what you are saying, but I'd say that it's specifically the progressive side that benefits the most from the censorship, even if it may be bad for society as a whole. Plenty of people out there aren't really actually devoted to free speech, they are moreso dedicated to this new totalitarian ideology, and would be happy to throw free speech out the window if it means nobody can rebut their claims. I'd guess that they think it benefits their political goals more than it hurts society. I'd also guess that they are the same people downvoting your comment.
> I'd also guess that they are the same people downvoting your comment.
I've noticed this trend on HackerNews in recent years of downvoting without providing a substantive criticism. I'm curious if HN has plans to curve the upvote/downvote system against tyranny of the masses because it seems the principal of charity is not being respected much more
You're confusing free speech with the American first amendment.
Free speech is an universal principle, probably best expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the US signed):
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I didn't know about this, actually. Nice! I mean that's as clear-cut as it can get, although media might mean format rather than platform, otherwise all moderation is technically a breach of this right: though I suppose if it's in the terms and conditions then all parties must agree to the use of moderation for specific cases.
Of course. What does that have to do with my comment? Spotify wants to carry Joe Rogan, and they also want to carry Neil Young. Neil Young is the one who wants Spotify to choose.
I think many people miss the point - it is a podcast and not a news stream.
Especially in case of JR, what I like about him, he does not have a paper of questions in front of whim, or a guide of some sort in front of him that provides interview scheme and main questions to ask. He obviously has it and keeps the key points in mind to route discussion across the topics he thinks of a most interest with invited guest. But that projects environment of a nice talk, with a friend who stopped by today - we talk, we debate, we drink and smoke and make jokes.
What I personally find a lot in his podcast, due to the incredible diverse guests pool, is points of view, historical facts, ways to think about the same issue I never thought before, some laughs, some tears and move on with some baggage in my head. He always says - do not listen to me, do not repeat what I did, and when he says something guests, who very often, do not have any vested interests of any sort, are free to disagree with him, correct him on his mistakes and it happened multiple times. So if he says something controversial, and guest does not correct him it might be mostly because of
- guest does not know much about it
- does not want to start debate on the subject
- agrees with him
What about Young - I'm sorry for him, he made a mistake. Music is not about right or wrong, music is nice, and it's emotion. If you want that your music "tells" something, preaches a way to see things, so be it.
But what Young did, is the same as I refuse to use Nginx because some pedophile sites use it. Spotify is a platform, for God sake, let it be it.
This all messed up and I don't think there is a way out of this stupid situation, other than something really big, really massively bad happening on the planet, or at least in "developed" world, so it kind of resets priorities in people, to the "normal" (whatever that is, but not definitely this)
> Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth.
> These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information.
> They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.
I believe the crux of the thing lies here, in that second paragraph.
60 years old are the people who believes in TV networks, radios stations and podcasts.
24 years old grew up used to the the fact that “on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog”. Meaning that they know that anyone can say anything on the internet and have a YouTube channel about that, a podcast about that. And that podcast or YouTube channel can look just as a TV news show or a mainstream radio show.
Meaning that they know for a fact that a podcast or a YouTube channel is just someone’s ideas.
That realization actually when further and 24 years old actually understand that a TV show and a radio show also are someone’s ideas, distorted by the need to please advertisers and people who think some things cannot be shown on TV (or the radio).
It’s the 60 years old people that failed to understand those things. They are stuck in the mindset where things shown on a screen (or broadcast in audio) are true and mainstream (as in everyone believed in them).
And they became prey to people (24 years old) who wanted to sell things, win elections or convert them into their cults (ideologies).
So, 60 years old think Spotify should ban joe Rohan. 24 yearly old just don’t listen to it if they don’t like those ideas.
60 years old want to ban some ideas from the world, because they fear that every broadcast idea is true, therefore if those strange and fringe ideas as broadcast, they fear they will become true.
Friends, the earth was moved just below your feet and you didn’t realized that people have always been believing in strange ideas, they just have been restricted out of the TV and radio.
Now that anyone and everyone has its own tv show and radio station, those strange ideas are easily accessible to anyone.
As soon as today’s 24 years old become the world’s 60 years old and the old mindset is gone, things will come back to normal. Meaning: Joe Rogans guests can think whatever they want, I don’t care.
Ultimatums shouldn't be rewarded. They don't allow for compromise or peaceful coexistence. Neil Young should go on JRE and share his views rather than attempt to silence others.
You're not alone, I just avoid it. I'd rather hope to see the same news or topics here and see what people have to say. The Ars comment section is scary and just makes me lose hope in humanity.
I noticed the same. It gives some hard insight into their present audience. I remember when it used to be more tech based and now there is an increasing political tone.
>Much of the left now believes that the flow of information should be centralized and controlled to achieve certain social objectives; the right or freedom to express one’s self — even if you’re dead wrong — is not really seen as important in and of itself. That’s a big reversal from the modern left’s values, at least the left that existed since the New Left came of age in the sixties.
Sounds like a lot of misinformed bleating to me
I mean, he says that Young's changing views simply mirror the changing views of "the left" then spouts some stat about Democrats. Democrats are left of Republicans, but very few leftists consider Democrats to be of the left in the main
It seems to me that both Neil Young and Joe Rogan are good people that are doing what they think is right.
But, in my judgement, they're both making serious mistakes.
Young is making the mistake of trying to summon and/or join a mob to silence someone. And Rogan is making the mistake of not handling his Covid-related conversations with the diligence a pandemic ethically requires.
In neither case do they deserve hatred. The best outcome would be for them, or at least others, to learn from their mistakes.
How is Young trying to silence anyone? He clearly knew the answer to the question of "it's me or Rogan" before he posed it.
He's just making it very clear what his position is on Spotify's tacit support of misinformation and he's taking a financial hit to boot.
Comparing Young to Rogan in this instance is a bit of a stretch. Young might force people to think a bit, Rogan either directly or indirectly, is causing people to distrust the vast majority of experts with some sort of dudebro contrarian outlook - and people will die due to it
That's doesn't seem like an accurate take on what he's doing.
Young is either hoping that other people will follow his lead or knows that it could happen. That's why he made it a big public announcement. Young is very openly trying to pressure Spotify into cancelling Rogan.
Whether Young's mistake here is as big as Rogan's is a very complex question.
What we can know for sure is that trying to cancel people because you disagree with them is an extremely corrosive thing to do in a free and open society. It's a very big mistake.
Rogan outed Mencia as a serial joke thief, which undoubtedly hurt Mencia's career, but I'm not sure that counts as cancellation.
For example, one would not fairly characterize Hannibal Burris as "cancelling" Bill Cosby's career by outing him as a serial rapist.
If Young was outing Rogan I would have no objection. But all of the behavior by Rogan that Young disagrees with happened in public, for anyone to see. Young is not exposing any new information.
Spotify has been advertising their podcasts for a long time, and I have listened to a few of them on the service. I even tried an episode of Joe Rogan and decided I didn't like it, but after that it seemed that Spotify's recommendation algorithm really started pushing the show.
I switched to Tidal, which doesn't have quite as good a selection of artists. They do still have Neil Young.
I honestly hate censorship in all of it's forms. If we start censoring Joe Rogan, how long will it take for them to go after Star Talk and other science podcasts. Joe Rogan introduced me to the Wim Hof method which is a lot of fun even though I don't believe half the supposed benefits. Sure, he's platforming fascists and assholes. But he also platforms people like Andrew Yang.
We aren't children in elementary school. I like being able to hear something and make a decision about what is garbage and what is not. So do a lot of other people. I don't want people to tell me what is "Safe" for me to listen to. Just like I don't want someone to tell me what is safe to read. I want to read Maus. I want to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sometimes I want to listen to Joe Rogan and his guests. I want to listen to the people who shit all over Joe Rogan and his guests.
The shame isn't that Joe Rogan exists. The shame is an abiding ignorance that makes Joe Rogan a household name.
Makes me wonder if Spotify could have created a DMZ between their music and podcasting revenue streams to protect them from one another. Podify for podcasts and Spotify for music. Just a thought....
But seriously, as brilliant of a songwriter and musician he was, it's hard to not suspect he had ulterior motives here. He's been wanting his content off streaming platforms for a while (he's done it before, citing music quality as the supposed reason). This latest stunt vs Rogan/Spotify was a great opportunity for him to earn social brownie points while moving to stream his music on his own platform. Win-win.
He is totally free to do that of course, just as Spotify is free to not be held hostage by his ultimatum.
I wonder if Neil would think about being a guest on Joe's show. I've never listened to Joe Rogan, and I don't know if I've ever heard a Neil Young song, but that seems like it might be the principled thing to do, to explain your position to Joe's audience. And I wonder if Joe would have him on? Would people just expect Joe to talk over Neil or otherwise be rude to him? If that was the expectation, then of course I wouldn't expect Neil to participate.
Rogan would have him on. And he’s a great conversationalist, very polite, so Young would be fine (incidentally that why I cant stand to listen to Rogan… too chill)
And you’ve heard Young’s songs. “Keep on rockin’ in the free world” (?) is a staple.
Young’s no Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) though. Easiest decision for Spotify ever
When's the last time Rogan has eaten anyone alive though? No matter how incredulous or inconsistent their views, he seems quite satisfied to have a good time chatting them up about nothing in particular.
Even if you don’t like it, by the numbers Joe Rogan is far more relevant, today, to any dissemination of news/ideas (and even music) than Neil Young. Fewer people bought Neil’s garbage music player than listen to a throwaway clip of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Objectively, Joe Rogan would have nothing to gain from giving Neil Young air-time, while Neil Young would have everything to gain.
Edit, to add: this is not a comment on the wild conspiracy theories that Joe Rogan entertains.
Probably true today, but I would bet (if you're willing) that thirty years from now more people will be listening to Neil Young's music than old episodes of the JRE. Podcasts are perishable; music recordings and (especially) compositions have no expiration date.
"If you disagree with someone, the only honorable thing to do would be to go on their platform of misinformation to make them more money while they present your position in the most disingenuous way possible."
Come on, you can't be on hacker news and have this poor of critical thinking skills, right?
This is a reddit tier comment and not nearly as clever. This exact idea could be conveyed in more thoughtful way than "you must be an idiot". Unfortunately my own comment is guilty of the same thing, which is to reduce some one else's comment into a more absurd and ridiculous version.
I think the direct parent of this comment is a Digg style comment. Unfortunately, alas, I did exactly what I'm presently complaining about in this very comment.
Surely the title should read "Neil Young requests Sportify remove his own library from the platform after voicing his displeasure with another content creator"
Yeah, it’s two academics who primarily talk critically about content from the so-called “intellectual dark web”. They’re quite entertainingly scathing about some of these figures, especially the Weinstein brothers.
How long has Neil Young been out of touch? This is the most anti-rock, anti-punk, anti-free-thinker move an old rich dude can make. No matter where one stands on the content of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Neil Young’s ideas and actions are basically irrelevant. Neil Young is beyond overrated even though many might say he’s under appreciated. Last thing, before this black text turns transparent… Why does no one talk about the fact that the discussion about “misinformation” basically assumes everyone is a dolt. Also, if everyone is so helplessly stupid, why don’t we ban infomercials for crap products like magnetic socks that “treat arthritis” or pills that make you “lose weight” as misinformation?
Thanks fallacy bot. I was not trying to discredit Neil Young’s “argument.” I was simply stating my opinion that he sucks and it’s funny that he was once a part of a counter culture and and now he’s “fighting” for the “side” that’s already “winning.” If the fallacy manifested in the latter part of my comment I think you missed the forest for the trees.
Im really (negatively) surprised by an artist who is straight up against freedom of speech even if he disagrees with the content.
We're in this weird place where we label anything we disagree with as disinformation. I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan's podcast, but not Joe himself. He brings in interesting and different people and allows them to share their thoughts and experiences without interruption you see on TV or much setup, or most importantly, censorship.
You can disagree with what his guests are saying, or his views, but it's really dangerous to push for deplatforming him or his guests simply because you disagree with their views.
One of the best things about my analog record collection is that the grooves don’t disappear when the artist starts fighting with their label or distributor.
> Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on Spotify are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information.
Hello, 23 but close enough. This is not how I think. Spotify is not the creator of the content, they just host it. Is what Roe Rogan and his guests are saying so awful that you have to bully his host? I must be missing something.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Neil Young removed his music from Spotify? After failing to blackmail them, sure, but he did the removing himself.
I love his music and never listened to Rogan, but this just seems like an attempt to stay relevant, while virtue signalling.
I bet that piece of humble pie taste good for Neil Young. The attempt to silence people because of fear of misinformation is absurd and needs to stop universally. No one has ever crusated against the man who said one and one equals three
The problem is it's the Joe Rogan Experience a show but people are seeing or hoping it's something intellectual but it's not. On every show the topic is Joe Rogan whether people believe that or not.
I saw cotton and I saw black
Tall white mansions and little shacks
Southern man, when will you pay them back?
I heard screamin' and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long? How?
The problem with this kind of requests if you comply with it, then you've set a precedence. Then who knows who else is going to get offended and then start demanding something else to be taken down.
And the worst case scenario in this attention hungry culture how many others will start making demands like this just for more publicity? I can't read minds. I didn't know this artist before this debacle. It certainly brought him a lot of free publicity. How many people are going to start doing the same now given the amount of free publicity?
Neil Young was one of the most gifted songwriters and musicians of the 60s and 70s (and produced popular music since then but not anywhere near that peak, save a brief resurgence in the 90s). If you haven’t listened to him before, “Heart of Gold” was his biggest hit.
Anyway, it’s a huge stretch to say that he’s looking for attention 60 years past his prime, and probably only a few years from his 80th birthday. He’s already made his millions and lives quietly in rural Canada and California.
My guess is that he actually is bothered by Rogan’s content and doesn’t want to be associated with him.
It’s more akin to a boycott than a publicity stunt IMO.
I would like to think this is because Spotify grew a spine and is defending free speech. But I doubt it, given they've removed many of Joe Rogan's episodes. This is probably just a cold hard business decision, since the number of people seeking Neil Young content is likely very low by comparison.
Except that they're creating a political movement that's about as dystopian as one could possibly imagine by convincing people to vote against their economic interests and hand massive power to the already wealthy and corrupt. Libertarianism is the means by with capital captures labour politically, and will be the ruin of the planet.
You're welcome to your own political beliefs. Personally, I'm happy to live in a pluralistic society.
Trying to silence everyone you disagree with seems truly dystopian, but I agree with your distaste for those people. None of them are libertarian; they're extremely socially conservative conspiracy theorists.
I can't imagine being in Australia during COVID and arguing against ideologies of personal freedom, though.
That's because you've been mislead into thinking that something bad is happening in Australia, because of libertarian propaganda propagated by those aforementioned new media dickheads. They are absolutely libertarians, that's what unites them.
What does "woke" have to do with anything I've said? My primary opposition is to libertarianism, which is the philosophy underpinning all said new media dickheads, and what unites them
Feudalism is about the localisation of military and legal aspects of government. Libertarianism is about trying to restrict the power of government. Slavery requires a strong central government to be enforcible. Feudalism and Libertarianism are both anti slavery.
None of the people you have named are libertarian, to be fair. Also, for someone arguing a potential dystopia being brought about but these people, you sound like someone very willing to create your own, by arguing for silencing everyone you disagree with.
It’s not a matter of silencing people I disagree with, it’s a matter of having integrity in publishing. Because the “we all have a right to free speech” argument has been distorted to mean that everyone should have what amounts to modern day prime time access even though they’re a bunch of liars and grifters and, in some case, just kind of stupid.
>> Young, a long-time proponent of high-resolution music files, also wrote that "many other platforms, Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz, to name a few, present my music today in all its High-Resolution glory—the way it is intended to be heard, while unfortunately Spotify continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art."
It is interesting how Young will stand up against spreading misinformation, and continue to make blatantly untrue statements such as this. I wonder if he somehow isn't up to date with the technology, science and research in this field after being involved in it for so long, or if it is a branding decision and some persona to be kept as a public entertainer.
Do you mean that Spotify has same quality, or that there's no perceived difference between Spotify vs other higher bitrate? (Any links to validate?)
Spotify has quality setting in app but from what I've heard it's still lower bitrate than Tidal for example and apparently the diff can be heard. (Although I saw some blog a while ago claiming that quality distortion on Spotify is a side-effect of some DRM/watermarking they do).
Apparently Spotify's 'Very High' means 320 kbps[1]. Tidal uses FLAC, which uses as high a bitrate as is necessary; I've seen flac bitrate as high as 1800 kbps. There is an eternal debate among audiophiles as to whether FLAC makes a difference, and because the debate is about sensory quality, it seems unlikely to ever be settled: even if you say that the variations between the two are below any perceivable threshold, people will say that it causes distortions that are perceivable.
As far as I know, there is no one who can reliably tell apart 320kbps mp3 and FLAC, and I'm CERTAIN that I can't. Here's a website that let's you try: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html fair warning: it's very tedious and it takes a long time.
> As far as I know, there is no one who can reliably tell apart 320kbps mp3 and FLAC, and I'm CERTAIN that I can't.
‘Reliably’, no, it’s accurate to say it’s not possible. It’s occasionally possible given certain samples, though typically only to a fairly well-trained ear. I’ve personally failed double-blind tests against lossless at bitrates as low as 80 kbps (modern encoders are very good). That says also nothing about which sounds better, which is its own subject altogether.
I think it’s fine to advocate for more of a cushion when it comes to encoding and bit rates, even if it’s just a “feel good” thing. Sure, lossless streaming: why not. But Young’s beliefs about digital audio simply don’t jive with reality.
> It’s occasionally possible given certain samples
MP3 in particular has some fundamental problems (even at maximum bitrate) when dealing with short sharp sounds (e.g. castanets), which have been fixed in the subsequent generations of audio codecs such as AAC, Vorbis or Opus.
Now, he's free to have his own opinions, but he hasn't exactly been a defender of science in the past. I agree with his vaccination position here, obviously, but that doesn't mean Spotify erred in their judgment either.
I guess this is one way to get media attention. Probably the increased media coverage from this will help boost sales from other sources to negate loss of Spotify revenue.
How much of a loss can Young leaving be? Nothing against ol' Neil but his relevance is long gone. He's a great artist. He has a right to his opinion. But in terms of "cultural juice" he's heading in to sunset.
I didn't know they were actively standing behind Rogan - I kind of expected they signed him on before he went completely off the deep end and are now just keeping up the status quo.
I used to listen to the podcast a lot before it went to Spotify. While Rogan is a self-admitted "ignorant", it was that aspect that made his interviews interesting and enjoyable. He always had guests of all types and beliefs.
Unfortunately, it seems that the pandemic has thrown him into a conspiracy hole. I think the whole thing started with one of the Weinstein brothers and the ivermectin push and it just went downhill from there...
I remember most of the interviews being Joe bringing in someone to talk about interesting topic (neuroscience, nutrition, mushrooms, astronomy) while Joe sat there saying "woooooo, thats craaaaaazy". That changed when he started interviewing various alt-right talking heads.
You have to ask yourself, did Joe move politically or did you?
because in my experience I have seen the "Alt-Right" be expanded to include a whole host of people that are not what "alt-right" was it was originally described, instead anyone that disagrees with any position of the authoritarian left is now "alt right" also anyone that expresses any support for any person previously called "alt-right" is now themselves "alt-right" by their mere limited association or support..
i could go to COVID as it provides many examples of this, but lets take another hot button issue of the day, Abortion. I am pro-choice 90's style democrat on the topic, I support the idea of "Safe legal and Rare" but if I say the new law out of NJ may be going to far, or that maybe we should not out right celebrate abortions instead viewing it as something tragic that ultimately may be needed and certainly should be outside of the purview of government regulation I am viewed as "Alt-right bigot" for my very centrist and rational position
You have people with very classically liberal positions, libertarian positions, 1990's democrat positions, etc being called "alt-right", including some of the recent guests of JRE
You haven't supplied any context into "any position of the authoritarian left". Who are they and what are their positions that you can't disagree with?
Where to start.. Sex/Gender, Abortion, COVID Public Policy, Tech Censorship, "hate Speech", Who should participate in Female sports, any number of other cultural issues...
Then you have topics like Universal Healthcare, Gun Control, etc etc.
I mean the "context" is literally everything
as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.
> as to "who" is the authoritarian left, hmm lets start with this definition. Blue Checkmarks on Twitters, and.or has Pronouns in the bio of any social media platform, and.or rides alone in a car with mask on.
Welcome to HN in [current year]. You can write any nonsense you want and it’s perfectly fine as long as it goes along with the current zeitgeist of the userbase.
I know plenty of Uber drivers who wear a mask alone while on then way to pickup for conscience, as getting reported for not having it can get you kicked off, but yes surely those people are the authoritarians.
You know what the problem is with spotify and JRE. They not only host it, they push it. I cancelled my Spotify because EVERY SINGLE DAY I'd have to see that pathetic loosers face on my home screen.
This is not about 'free speech' or whatever, it is about a company pushing dangerous content with no way to say 'nah, I'd rather not'. They have zero respect for their users & zero respect for artists.
I'm sure none of this has anything to do with Neil Young having a competitive streaming service named Pono and the huge amounts of publicity that comes along with such a public spat with the most popular Podcaster on the planet (I am a cynic, though):
On one of his recent podcasts, he supports fox news keeping it's guests from specific no-no topics because they don't want to loose their credibility.
The irony, obviously, being that Joe should also keep his guests and himself away from certain no-no topics. That's the thing though. Joe doesn't see himself as a credible news source, a voice of a movement, or any of those other things because accuse him of. It's mainly just him hanging out with his buddies smoke'n (sometimes literally) and joke'n.
That's the entertaining and appeal of the show.
Edit
It's my fault for grouping them into the same sentence, but I didn't claim (or mean to) that his show is just junk entertainment because it's just people talking. My claim is that's the appeal of the format.
He obviously has credible and knowledgeable guests on his show. I said Joe doesn't see himself as a news source or a voice of a movement. Martial arts, working out, and DMT, however, yes he probably thinks of himself as someone to take advice from there.