/sigh, come on man, you were so close.
Nobody is forcing Spotify to do anything. Some artists don't want their content hosted there, which you admit is fine. Some users don't want to subscribe to them any more, which is basically the same thing and so I assume you think is fine. And Spotify has not removed Rogan from their platform, which you clearly think is fine.
Will Spotify eventually remove Rogan, in an effort to stem the departures of users and artists? Maybe! Depends on how many people leave, I guess, and what their contract with Rogan requires. But if they do drop him, it won't be censorship, at least not in any meaningful sense. It'll be because Rogan is selling something that not enough people want to buy. Which is fine! It's literally how a market economy deals with things.
I mean, your stated goal is that people should be able to "listen and decide for themselves." Well, if people listen and decide they don't like it, it's entirely possible that they won't want to pay for it any more. That's ok! And if the company then decides to stop selling it, that just means the system's working! This is, and I really cannot stress this enough, *literally how you deal with controversial ideas without resorting to actual censorship*.
So unless your argument is that Spotify should be obligated by the principle of free speech to continue to host Joe Rogan no matter how unpopular his podcast becomes or how negatively it affects Spotify itself, I genuinely don't know what you're objecting to.
These are all fair points! And I think you pretty clearly demonstrate here that actually engaging with the specifics of a particular set of circumstances is much more productive than simply declaring something to be "censorship."
Beyond that, I'm not particularly interested in convincing anyone one way or the other about what Spotify should do about Joe Rogan. Personally, I find Rogan to be a vacuous and naïve interviewer with a tendency to invite and give credence to guests who espouse genuinely stupid and/or dangerous views, and so I'm not crazy about Spotify giving him such a prominent platform. But there's no accounting for taste, so, you know, whatever.
I also think Spotify's new content policies may very well be sufficient to minimize my own concerns about Rogan's habit for misinformation. And while I do think that the spread of COVID misinformation has been and continues to be demonstrably damaging to American society, I don't think Spotify's employment of Joe Rogan is remotely close to the most important front in that war. The fact that one half of a two-party system has been wholly captured by a movement that sees a historic medical emergency as just another opportunity to extract short-term political and material gains for itself, and is willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve those gains, is unspeakably more dire, and in the face of such reckless hate I am just too exhausted and dispirited to give much of a shit about Joe fucking Rogan.
But I nevertheless also understand why an artist would be uncomfortable having their music attract listeners to a platform where content they strongly disagreed with was given such prominent placement. To use your example, I am not aware of any violent or misogynistic music that I personally think shouldn't be on Spotify, but I wouldn't begrudge a Christian worship band if it didn't want its music to share a platform with "WAP" or whatever.
So I don't really have a dog in this fight, beyond a pretty firm conviction that "bUt it'S cEnSoRsHiP" is just a very bad and silly argument.
Ok, so if the issue is that the content isn't illegal, would you object to Congress passing a law making it illegal to say false or misleading things about the COVID vaccines? And if you would object to such a law, do you also object to the laws against possessing or distributing child pornography?
If one of those laws is ok, but the other is not, then you are granting my point: that society does have the right to limit certain forms of speech or expression, and the actual argument is about where we should draw that line.
Also, just because a form of speech is legal doesn't mean every outlet is obligated to disseminate it. Making something illegal authorizes the state to use force, potentially including physical violence, against those who do that thing, and there should generally be a pretty high bar for what sorts of acts would justify the use of such force.
But just because society says "this act is not bad enough to imprison someone for" doesn't mean members of that society can't apply other, less extreme types of limitations on that act. Posting spammy ads in a music blog comment section isn't illegal, and I suppose probably shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean Stereogum isn't allowed to prevent or remove spam comments.
"There's been a lot of terrible movements that have had soapboxes that never got any traction as a result of losing sound debates on the big stage."
Yes, and there have also been a lot of terrible movements that *did* gain traction through their soapboxes. Like, you know, Nazism.
I mean, surely you recognize that there's a difference between having students engage in hypothetical debates about violent or extremist ideas in a classroom setting, and providing actual believers and practitioners of such ideas with public platforms to disseminate their beliefs, right? That, for example, having students read sections of Mein Kampf alongside Wiesel's Night as a way to more fully understand the origins and reality of the Holocaust is different from requiring CBS to air a Super Bowl commercial in which modern-day Nazis rail against the Jews while the screen shows diagrams of how to build incendiary bombs?
It's absolutely true that there are a lot of bad ideas that should be allowed to circulate freely in a society, because they will mostly be shouted down and even if they do gain traction, they'll only do so much damage. But there are also very obviously certain ideas and ideologies that, even if they only gain acceptance among a small group of listeners, can lead to staggering amounts of human suffering. Such ideas can and often should be explored in specific settings, where they can be properly contextualized and deconstructed; indeed, this can be a very effective way to minimize the likelihood that such ideas will spread again. But that categorically does not mean that society has a blanket obligation to allow such ideas full and easy access to public circulation.
And if you *do* believe that society has such an obligation, then you have to actually make that case. If the benefit is a society with full and unadulterated freedom of speech, but the cost is a very real risk of a literal genocide (not to mention the abject terror that the targeted group would be subjected to if such genocidal speech became widespread), you have to actually make the case that that benefit is worth that cost. And the same is true down the line from Nazism to less extreme views.
I posted this already in an older of these threads, so I'm just going to paste it again:
If someone posted child pornography in a comment here, I'm sure you would agree that Stereogum would not only have the right but the obligation (both legal and moral) to remove it. And if they didn't do so, I'm sure you would also agree that other commenters would be well within their rights to remove themselves from this community in a public way, both to pressure Stereogum to remove the content but also because they do not want to associate themselves with an outlet that allows such things.
Similarly, the content guidelines Spotify's released as a result of all this don't just cover COVID info. They also ban "content that advocates or glorifies serious physical harm towards an individual or group," including "encouraging, promoting, or glorifying suicide and self-harm" and "inciting or threatening serious physical harm or acts of violence against a specific target or specific group." Also "content that targets an individual or identifiable group for harassment or related abuse."
Is removing content like that also dangerous censorship? Would it be better for society if Spotify allowed Nazis to host a podcast on their platform, which they then used to encourage and coordinate attacks against synagogues and Black churches? What if Spotify then spent millions of dollars promoting that podcast? Would artists then be out of line if they removed themselves from such a platform?
Or is it actually the case that a society has the obvious right and obligation to determine what sorts of speech it will accept in public forums, and that the real question is where that society should draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable? Sometimes, like in the case of child pornography, that line should be easy to draw. But most topics, including medical misinformation, would be much more difficult, and would require real debate and argument to adjudicate. But the argument would be about *where* to draw the line, not *whether* to draw it.
Those who want Rogan removed from Spotify are making a specific argument: that spreading COVID misinformation directly endangers the lives of others by contributing to vaccine skepticism, hoax cures, and other actions that have the effect of encouraging the spread of a deadly virus. It's absolutely fair to disagree with that position, for any number of reasons, but you do have to actually engage with the argument itself. Simply declaring something "censorship" is insufficient to the point of irrelevance.
Wow, it's almost like dictionary definitions are just brief summaries of a word's full meaning and are therefore neither intended to nor capable of expressing the totality of a complex topic.
If someone posted child pornography in a comment here, I'm sure you would agree that Stereogum would not only have the right but the obligation (both legal and moral) to remove it. And if they didn't do so, I'm sure you would also agree that other commenters would be well within their rights to remove themselves from this community in a public way, both to pressure Stereogum to remove it but also because they do not want to associate themselves with an outlet that allows such content.
Similarly, the content guidelines Spotify's released as a result of all this don't just cover COVID info. They also ban "content that advocates or glorifies serious physical harm towards an individual or group," including "encouraging, promoting, or glorifying suicide and self-harm" and "inciting or threatening serious physical harm or acts of violence against a specific target or specific group." Also "content that targets an individual or identifiable group for harassment or related abuse."
Is removing content like that also dangerous censorship? Would it be better if Spotify allowed Nazis to host a podcast on their platform, which they then used to encourage and coordinate attacks against synagogues and Black churches?
Or is it actually the case that a society has the obvious right and obligation to determine what sorts of speech it will accept in public forums, and that the real question is where that society should draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable? Sometimes, like in the case of child pornography, that line should be easy to draw. Other topics, like medical misinformation, would be much more difficult, and would require real debate and argument to adjudicate. But the argument would be about *where* to draw the line, not *whether* to draw it.
Those who want Rogan removed from Spotify are making a specific argument: that spreading COVID misinformation directly endangers the lives of others by contributing to vaccine skepticism, hoax cures, and other actions that have the effect of encouraging the spread of a deadly virus. I happen to agree with that argument, but it's not a clear-cut issue, and it's absolutely fair to disagree with it. But you do have to actually engage with the argument itself, not just wave vaguely toward "history" and slippery slopes.
I mean, that's clearly what the dude wants. I have a hard time believing even he thinks he has a good shot at actually *winning* this case in court.
But the public seems to be pretty clearly on Nirvana's side here, so there's no PR reason for the band to want to shut it down. Which means it's mostly just about the money; if it looks like it'll cost more to defend against the suit than to settle it, then they'll probably settle. But the case was already dismissed once, and is ridiculous on its face, so they probably figure it'll be cheaper to just let it run its course, at least for now.
I think it's also worth noting that being accused of making and selling child pornography is probably pretty upsetting, even if everyone knows the accusation is absurd. So even if it *did* make more financial and legal sense to just settle, the band might want to fight it out just for the principle of the thing.
I am begging Stereogum commenters to please just assume that every other Stereogum commenter already knows about the AWK identity theories. Especially when commenting on an article that discusses said identity theories *in literally the first paragraph*.
It was obviously understandable, but I was still pretty bummed he pushed his tour off until next year. After over a year without live music, an AWK show would have been pretty damn magnificent.
Cephalic Carnage!
I worked at an FYE for a summer during college (hoping it would be like Empire Records; reader, it was not). Didn't listen to much metal at the time, but I regularly wasted time by flipping through the metal section just to find the best metal names. I distinctly remember finding Cephalic Carnage and literally loling. A perfect, hall-of-fame metal band name.
I mean, what normal people actually do is record an album, release it, wait 10 years, and then re-release it with a bunch of demos and alternate takes. This would just flip the order a bit.
Sort of, it's just muddled because these keep being presented as "release parties," so the expectation/reaction is more about whether he'll actually release the album this time. The whole thing seems more like an artist going "here's a finished project...no wait actually I want to change something, here's the real thing...no wait actually..."
This way is certainly funnier, and Very Kanye, while still having a bit of that behind-the-curtain thing. I just think there's a missed opportunity to really lean into that aspect with a full-blown "watch me make a whole album" spectacle.
It's a shame that Kanye is so very Kanye, because it'd actually be pretty interesting if he were to hole up in some studio to make an album, MBDTF-style, and then do a series of weekly shows at a nearby venue where he just plays the current draft of the album.
Obviously Kanye comes with so much baggage at this point that even if he were to try that now, a lot of folks (myself included) probably wouldn't bother to follow along. It'd just be cool to watch an album come together, and I'm not sure there are many artists besides Kanye who (a) have the ego necessary to think that even their drafts are good enough to show the public and (b) would be able to make it as much of a spectacle as he could.
I wish this guy had stuck with "Dylan left for England in late April and was gone for all of May," though. Everything else isn't really exonerating, it's just bits and pieces for Dylan's eventual defense. "He was awfully busy at the time, and mostly stayed at a different hotel" isn't actually exonerating, outside of the broader context of the defense's argument. And the "he was banging adult women then, too" bit is entirely irrelevant.
"He wasn't in New York in May" is pretty solid evidence. Giving that to the press is fair. Save the rest for when Dylan's defense attorney calls, though.
This'll make a pretty dope album cover for the posthumous album that gets released because dude never bothered to put "destroy my unpublished material" in his will.
This is probably the only thing that would get me to listen to a whole* Cradle of Filth or Ed Sheeran song, so hats off fellas. You got me.
*Well ok fine, let's be honest, I'd probably still only listen to like a minute of it, but the point stands.
Just because something's "capital A [A]rt" doesn't mean it's good.
In fact, if you're going to categorize things as "art" and "Art," that usually means you're distinguishing between "art that looks nice" and "Art that Means Something." If that's the case, what exactly does standing in the middle of an empty arena floor while your album plays mean? What statement is being made here, other than "Kanye West is so famous that people will watch him do basically nothing as long as they get to hear his newest music"?
As a listening party, this thing seemed fine. The point of a listening party is to let people listen to a new album; people were able to listen to the new album, so it was a success. Everything else is just gravy, really. And heck, if you're into Kanye's whole dystopian minimalism visual aesthetic, then it works as looks-cool art, too. But as Abramović-style capital-A Art? Middling at best.
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