“You and have Joe Rogan or Neil Young, but not both”

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Kevin M.

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Jan 24, 2022, 9:13:02 PM1/24/22
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Neil Young orders Spotify to remove his music until they get rid of all the anti-vax garbage on the streaming service.

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

Kevin M.

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Jan 31, 2022, 3:44:35 PM1/31/22
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Rogan semi-apologized… claims he’ll book better guests and get better informed on topics he babbles about. I have my doubts.

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Jan 31, 2022, 4:25:20 PM1/31/22
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This is such a stinking pile of bullshit.

A. It is very unlikely that he will do even the almost microscopically small steps he promises to take here.

B. This is not a case of a one man shop inadvertently putting dangerous material out there. He has been told over and over by ,any experts the information is false and dangerous, and has shown glee in disregarding them. If he was inviting Pro Nazi guests (and, I don’t assume that he has not been) and got spanked by Spotify for tanking their share value while they pay him a shit load of cash, it would certainly not be acceptable to vaguely promise to get Nazis who dress better and to invite some non Nazi guests after them.

C. I am not in favor of banning people like Rogan from social media and network sites, unless they meet some specific “shouting fire in a crowded theater” criteria. While there is real choice between Neil and Joni on the one hand and Rogan on the other, I do wish that those speaking out against things like COVID and Voting and Election Misinformation would be more specific and precise when calling for mis-informers to be banned, citing what really must be extreme cases that meet rare criteria.

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Steve Timko

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Feb 3, 2022, 5:51:12 PM2/3/22
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Greg Diener

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Feb 3, 2022, 6:51:25 PM2/3/22
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Shocking that the guy who believes COVID was created in a Chinese Lab sides with the anti-vaxxer.

Greg

Dave Sikula

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Feb 4, 2022, 4:37:44 AM2/4/22
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I used to be a big fan of Stewart, but even in those TDS days, he constantly tried to both-sides almost everything. This is just the latest step in that evolution.

--Dave Sikula

Doug Eastick

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Feb 4, 2022, 8:16:33 AM2/4/22
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Agreed. I've been done with him for quite a while now.


PGage

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Feb 4, 2022, 12:14:51 PM2/4/22
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As I posted earlier, I don’t disagree with JS that much. My main disagreement is with his assessment that Rogan is not an ideologue (perhaps that word is too sophisticated to apply to Rogan).

But I do agree that it is dangerous in a free society to start restricting speech we don’t like - even when we are right. I despise Rogan and Carlson, despised Limbaugh. But they have a right to spew their filth (as I have a right to ignore them).

You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, you can’t make jokes about bombs in an airport, so perhaps there are things you should not be able to say during a deadly pandemic. Let’s specify those things (perhaps something like: “can not present as fact health information found to be seriously harmful to public health “, though even that is probably too broad. Under that, anyone advocating abstinence only sex education would be banned).

Once you identify a criteria, then you don’t rush to ban communicators, their employers warn them of violations, and repeated violations lead to termination.

Kevin M.

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Feb 4, 2022, 1:05:15 PM2/4/22
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On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 9:14 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
As I posted earlier, I don’t disagree with JS that much. My main disagreement is with his assessment that Rogan is not an ideologue (perhaps that word is too sophisticated to apply to Rogan).

But I do agree that it is dangerous in a free society to start restricting speech we don’t like - even when we are right. I despise Rogan and Carlson, despised Limbaugh. But they have a right to spew their filth (as I have a right to ignore them).

We do go round and round on this concept, but Rogan’s speech is not infringed. 

For better or worse, we purport to exist in a free market economy. Neil Young made a personal professional choice to not associate with a company responsible for promoting (in fact paying extra for) speech known/proven to be factually inaccurate, conspiratorial in nature, and potentially harmful if taken seriously. The market also responded. Then the business in question announced changes, the person in question pledged to change. 

It is a rare instance where society prompted a change. Not censorship. Not cancel culture. Nothing was banned. Nobody was woke. Nobody was a snowflake. A market correction occurred. 


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

Jim Ellwanger

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Feb 4, 2022, 1:26:29 PM2/4/22
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By the way, here's a 2012 piece from The Atlantic with the headline "It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote."



PGage

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Feb 4, 2022, 3:56:33 PM2/4/22
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So, it’s true there is no violation of the 1st Amendment at stake. But Free Expression as a value goes deeper than that. Unpopular speech should be protected whenever possible. Spotify banning Joe Rogan today could easily become Disney banning Lin Manuel Miranda in three years.

Kevin M.

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Feb 4, 2022, 4:22:26 PM2/4/22
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On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:56 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
So, it’s true there is no violation of the 1st Amendment at stake. But Free Expression as a value goes deeper than that. Unpopular speech should be protected whenever possible. Spotify banning Joe Rogan today could easily become Disney banning Lin Manuel Miranda in three years.

Spotify didn’t ban Joe Rogan, and even if they did, a company is free to react to public criticism. They are free to host/pay whomever they want to, and they are free to stop paying whomever they want to… or they were when Rogan was based in California… I don’t know whether Texas is an at-will state. Free expression includes criticism of free speech, and that’s what happened here. Neil Young used his freedom of speech to influence an outcome. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Feb 4, 2022, 4:54:44 PM2/4/22
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Again, right. Spotify is free to ban Rogan or not, Neil and Joni are free to demand either Rogan gets banned or they take down their music, you and I are free to support or boycott Spotify depending on whatever.

I’m not talking about what is legal, I’m talking about what is good. I am arguing that those who support a free society *ought* to defend the expression of unpopular speech (that does not meet certain criteria of danger).

Of course, as you say, others are free to disagree with me.

David Bruggeman

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Feb 4, 2022, 5:43:56 PM2/4/22
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I think this position, while admirable, faces a big uphill battle.  The ability of companies to police the conduct of those who work for them in the conduct of that work has, to my knowledge, never been seriously contested in this country from a free speech perspective.  Where it has been fought has been in areas of discrimination based on race, sex, marital status, pregnancy and other factors.  And those fights were relatively recent, and not easy for the positions that prevailed.

I think this is one of many examples where the American perspective on capitalism triumphs over any aspirations it has regarding free expression.  If one's free speech affects a company's bottom line (directly or indirectly), and that individual has some kind of economic relationship with that company, the relationship will be adjusted or ended.

Yes, advocacy directed at these companies is also free expression, but it is done because those expressing their viewpoint expect the money matters more than any principle.  While those who coined the phrase 'marketplace of ideas' had something else in mind, today it's about how the ideas influence the dollars in the market.

David

Kevin M.

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Feb 4, 2022, 11:36:00 PM2/4/22
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On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 2:43 PM 'David Bruggeman' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I think this position, while admirable, faces a big uphill battle.  The ability of companies to police the conduct of those who work for them in the conduct of that work has, to my knowledge, never been seriously contested in this country from a free speech perspective.  Where it has been fought has been in areas of discrimination based on race, sex, marital status, pregnancy and other factors.  And those fights were relatively recent, and not easy for the positions that prevailed.

I think this is one of many examples where the American perspective on capitalism triumphs over any aspirations it has regarding free expression.  If one's free speech affects a company's bottom line (directly or indirectly), and that individual has some kind of economic relationship with that company, the relationship will be adjusted or ended.

Yes, advocacy directed at these companies is also free expression, but it is done because those expressing their viewpoint expect the money matters more than any principle.  While those who coined the phrase 'marketplace of ideas' had something else in mind, today it's about how the ideas influence the dollars in the market.

I would add that, historically, American society/culture almost exclusively advances only when there is economic incentive to do so. Slavery didn’t end because it was immoral… it was always immoral. Women didn’t get the right to vote because they suddenly became equal to men. We are now faced with the economic reality that disinformation is profitable (hardly a new concept, but propaganda purely for profit is less common than political propaganda). Until companies and individuals feel economic pressure to stop deliberately spreading lies, they won’t stop. I liken it to Big Tobacco being forced to concede the health risks of smoking. Joe Rogan is Big Tobacco. 


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Feb 5, 2022, 3:42:17 AM2/5/22
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So I am under no illusion that Spotify has stood by Rogan out of a principled commitment to the values of free expression. They are doing it to make money obviously. 

Also, I don’t think the analogy between Joe Rogan and disinformation on the one hand and things like Big Tobacco or slavery on the other is accurate.

The ability to express opinion is the essence of what it means to live in a free society. The correctness of these opinions is irrelevant to the right to express them. Some opinions are not allowed, not because they are incorrect, but because their expression is itself a direct danger. This is probably true of some things in Rogan’s show (I wouldn’t know). What we need is not a campaign to ban specific people we don’t like, but an effort to articulate specific criteria that identify harmful messages, and then use these criteria to target and eliminate them. We have done this with things like child pornography. We tolerate pornography, but not when it contains children or encourages sex with children. These regulations are far from perfect, but are a reasonable effort to both protect against a real harm and protect unpopular speech.

It is now illegal to have slaves, which required the death of a million Americans. But it is not illegal to express support for slavery, or to tell lies about slavery. 

Kevin M.

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Feb 5, 2022, 12:53:53 PM2/5/22
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On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 12:42 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

It is now illegal to have slaves, which required the death of a million Americans. But it is not illegal to express support for slavery, or to tell lies about slavery. 

This is a straw man. Nobody is trying to make Rogan’s words illegal; Young is holding Spotify accountable as a consequence of those words. Rogan was and continues to be free to spread dangerous anti-vax rhetoric. But as a consequence of his speech, people are acting against Spotify as the distributor of his words. This is literally how free speech is supposed to work in America. Legality or illegality don’t enter into it. There is ZERO threat to the First Amendment. God f*cking bless f*cking America. 


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Feb 5, 2022, 2:19:11 PM2/5/22
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Right, and I have noted this several times. I was just going off of your example of making slavery illegal.

In a free society free expression ought to be a core, almost sacred, value. That does not mean there should be no limits on expression, but they ought to be rare and targeted on explicitly dangerous speech. It is possible to specify what kind of health misinformation is dangerous and thus not allowed on one or more platforms, and then use that to manage, with some judgement and flexibility, expression. Spotify has taken steps in that direction, perhaps they can do more, I would be interested in hearing suggestions. It is not necessary to ban an idiot asshole like Joe Rogan to safeguard the public.

Brad Beam

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Feb 5, 2022, 2:50:09 PM2/5/22
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From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of PGage

>In a free society free expression ought to be a core, almost sacred, value. That does not mean there should be no limits on expression, but they ought to be rare and targeted on explicitly dangerous speech. It is possible to specify what kind of health misinformation is dangerous and thus not allowed on one or more platforms, and then use that to manage, with some judgement and flexibility, expression. Spotify has taken steps in that direction, perhaps they can do more, I would be interested in hearing suggestions. It is not necessary to ban an idiot asshole like Joe Rogan to safeguard the public.

 

Not to step on Doug’s toes, but from the Wiki “Freedom of expression in Canada” (in which speech falls under, up North)…

 

Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms establishes the right to freedom of expression, and the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted this right in a very broad fashion. However, section 1 of the Charter establishes that reasonable limits can be placed on the right if those limits are prescribed by law and can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

 

_  _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

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Kevin M.

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Feb 5, 2022, 4:33:43 PM2/5/22
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Hopping on my soapbox one more time: 

Not that I’ll ever get around to finishing the novel I started writing ages ago, but in it I imagine a scenario where an alien race makes contact with us. They are on a long journey from their world to ours. They’ve received all our radio transmissions and TV broadcasts, and before they touch down on Earth, they have some questions. One of them involves our penchant for allowing speech proven to be harmful (i.e. false claims of election fraud which lead to an insurrection where people are killed, or conspiracy theories which lead to fewer people taking life saving vaccinations which leads to people dying). Humanity’s collective reply is akin to the stance of PGage, that free speech is essential and unassailable, and valuable to a democracy. The neutral observing aliens question the value of any society that knowingly allows free speech to kill its citizens. 

Personally, I view speech the same as I view guns, potentially life saving and potentially dangerous, and the founding fathers were flawed in establishing nearly total freedoms for both, and every subsequent administration is flawed in not taking steps to actively correct the problems created by the founders.

I don’t want to ban Rogan; I want to demonetize him. I want to make Rogan liable for the harm he causes. I want to make Spotify liable for contributing to the harm. 

I want doctors to be free to openly talk about the benefits and risks of all forms of medicine with their patients, but when doctors address the public falsely claiming to be an expert (i.e.- that they invented mRNA technology when they quite clearly did not), and their false claims spread unchallenged via a nationwide media network, then the doctor, the broadcaster, and the media outlet should all face severe consequences. 

We are nearing 900,000 dead from Covid in the US. I have college educated friends who believe breathing through a mask is harmful because of crap they hear on podcasts or read on Reddit. I now teach at a school in Orange County, and the “Orange Curtain” is adamant that herd immunity is the only solution to Covid… their hospitals are overrun with the untruth of that belief, but it continues to be openly spread.

I don’t have “Covid fatigue”; I have “Covid denial fatigue.” The illness isn’t the problem, it is the third of our population who refuse to take basic precautions to protect themselves and their neighbors, and who spread lies and disinformation that are the problem. They seek out media to reinforce their baseless opinions and reckless actions, and Joe Rogan and Bill Maher and FoxNews and the Trump cult fill that void because there is money to be made by pandering. 

Take away the potential for profit in the lies… make the lies cost the liars… that’s how to deal with the problem. 


 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Feb 5, 2022, 5:45:21 PM2/5/22
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I would enjoy the chance to read your novel Kevin, so I hope you do finish it. But I don’t need to, as I have had several long conversations over the years with colleagues from European countries like Germany, France and the UK who scoff at what they see as the making of free speech into a fetish by Americans. 

I proudly own the fetishizing of free expression. In my experience causes and people I care about are more likely to be in the minority, and what Freud (following Ibsen) liked to call the “Compact Majority” more often than not uses its power harshly and stupidly.  We are all safer when everyone is able to express themselves.

I take second place to nobody in my rage against vaccine denial (it would be hard to work for a hospital and not be outraged and sickened by it). I deal with the consequences every day. Literally I find myself weeping uncontrollably several times a week. I am writing this from self quarantine in my home, waiting one more day to test myself after an exposure 2 days ago and pretty severe symptoms in the last 24 hours. 900,000 Americans have been killed by COVID, still about 2500 per day. COVID is a bitch and fuck those who are making it harder to protect the most vulnerable.

As I have repeatedly noted here, I am not a free speech absolutist -  there obviously are limits. The debate we are having here is not really about free speech ( I assume you favor free speech, and I also assume that you know I favor reasonable protections). The debate is over the nature of those limits. Whether formal or informal, restriction of free speech in my view should be limited, and targeted specifically to messages that can be shown to directly cause serious harm, not aimed against people we don’t like. 

If I had the chance to have dinner with Neil Young, I would suggest to him that rather than calling for Rogan to be banned from Spotify, he propose specific guidelines that all speech and music on Spotify should follow (e.g. 1. Do not misrepresent qualifications; 2. Do not advocate treatments which have not been supported; 3. Do not misrepresent the evidence about treatments that have been supported). These guidelines then apply to everyone equally, not just Joe Rogan. Critics of vaccines could still say “I wouldn’t get vaccinated because we still don’t know enough about their long term consequences”, but if a Podcaster repeatedly spreads the message that Vaccines increase infant mortality, or cause heart attacks, or alter your DNA, they would be first suspended and then, if repeated, removed.

I guess that proposal would be harder to fit in a Tweet, but I think it would be more consistent with core values.

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 at 1:33 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

.
Hopping on my soapbox one more time: 

Not that I’ll ever get around to finishing the novel I started writing ages ago, but in it I imagine a scenario where an alien race makes contact with us. They are on a long journey from their world to ours. They’ve received all our radio transmissions and TV broadcasts, and before they touch down on Earth, they have some questions. One of them involves our penchant for allowing speech proven to be harmful (i.e. false claims of election fraud which lead to an insurrection where people are killed, or conspiracy theories which lead to fewer people taking life saving vaccinations which leads to people dying). Humanity’s collective reply is akin to the stance of PGage, that free speech is essential and unassailable, and valuable to a democracy. The neutral observing aliens question the value of any society that knowingly allows free speech to kill its citizens. 

Personally, I view speech the same as I view guns, potentially life saving and potentially dangerous, and the founding fathers were flawed in establishing nearly total freedoms for both, and every subsequent administration is flawed in not taking steps to actively correct the problems created by the founders.

I don’t want to ban Rogan; I want to demonetize him. I want to make Rogan liable for the harm he causes. I want to make Spotify liable for contributing to the harm. 

I want doctors to be free to openly talk about the benefits and risks of all forms of medicine with their patients, but when doctors address the public falsely claiming to be an expert (i.e.- that they invented mRNA technology when they quite clearly did not), and their false claims spread unchallenged via a nationwide media network, then the doctor, the broadcaster, and the media outlet should all face severe consequences. 

We are nearing 900,000 dead from Covid in the US. I have college educated friends who believe breathing through a mask is harmful because of crap they hear on podcasts or read on Reddit. I now teach at a school in Orange County, and the “Orange Curtain” is adamant that herd immunity is the only solution to Covid… their hospitals are overrun with the untruth of that belief, but it continues to be openly spread.

I don’t have “Covid fatigue”; I have “Covid denial fatigue.” The illness isn’t the problem, it is the third of our population who refuse to take basic precautions to protect themselves and their neighbors, and who spread lies and disinformation that are the problem. They seek out media to reinforce their baseless opinions and reckless actions, and Joe Rogan and Bill Maher and FoxNews and the Trump cult fill that void because there is money to be made by pandering. 

Take away the potential for profit in the lies… make the lies cost the liars… that’s how to deal with the problem. 


 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

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David Bruggeman

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Feb 5, 2022, 6:20:19 PM2/5/22
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Unless it can be shown that any company providing this kind of service would either make money from this approach or not lose money/subscribers from this approach, it won't happen absent laws or regulations.  These companies have proven consistently that they are either unwilling or unable to police themselves.

I'll suggest that the fetishization of capitalism in this country devalues considerations of free expression. (The expansion of IP laws vis-a-vis fair use and public domain considerations could be a conversation in parallel with what we've been hashing out.)  The free expression of those with money, power, or a platform that has either wins out over those that could benefit from a system that truly values free expression.

One way to perceive this discussion is about the gap between where things are and where we think we ought to be.  Regrettably, getting to where we ought to be is more achievable by acting from where we are than from where we ought to be.

The last two years have shown repeatedly that money matters most.  Our lives don't matter as much as we want them to, and our ideas and any connection to the truth matter even less.

Damn, that's dark.  But I'm not in the mood for sugarcoating.

David

Kevin M.

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Feb 5, 2022, 10:19:36 PM2/5/22
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And here’s an article from a songwriter’s perspective, focused mostly on Spotify’s treatment of musicians/artists.


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

Steve Timko

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Feb 6, 2022, 5:57:47 AM2/6/22
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Wow, this is a great clip. What happened to that Joe Rogan?


Bob Jersey

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Feb 7, 2022, 7:46:35 AM2/7/22
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Singer India Arie posted a collage of Rogan epithets, joining the Spotify artist protest exodus... leading to an apology, and withdrawal of many episodes, by Joe... and to Spotify head Daniel Ek both condemning and defending him...


Steve Timko, to Kevin M, David Bruggeman and PGage, Feb 6th:

PGage

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Feb 9, 2022, 10:56:15 AM2/9/22
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Social Worker Brené Brown, who also has an exclusive Podcast deal with Spotify, has articulated better than I can the position I associate myself with on all this. I recommend her full statement at the link below (also available on her Instagram), but here is a key excerpt:

“On February 1, I explained the pause across social and on my website and committed to learning more about Spotify’s policies and the application of these policies… I also needed to wrestle with the line between misinformation and censoring. If there’s a line—who gets to decide it? Do warnings really help?

I’m always going to stand firmly on the side of free speech, so I had a lot of learning to do.

As stated in the previous post, I’ve never asked Spotify to deplatform or censor Joe Rogan. I wanted Spotify to have a transparent misinformation policy (made available to the public) that balances addressing the complex misinformation issues we face today while respecting free speech. And to be meaningful, I stated that the policy must be applied across the platform without exception. Spotify developed the policy, shared it publicly, and have started to apply it. There’s still a ton of work here. We need to better understand what warnings are effective and what warnings are useless (e.g., there’s interesting new data on the efficacy of contextual versus interstitial warnings)…”



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