Neil Young deletes open letter calling for Joe Rogan censorship on Spotify

https://reclaimthenet.org/neil-young-deletes-open-letter-calling-for-joe-rogan-censorship-on-spotify/

by finite_jest • 4 years ago

5 7 4 years ago

smt882• 4 years ago

It's ironic that the same people crying about the death of the free market are now crying about "censorship" and "cancel culture" in cases (like this one) where it is clearly just the free market.

If Neil Young's contracts allow him, he is free to choose to stop using Spotify. That's all he said in his letter: Spotify can't have both his music and Rogan's podcast.

Calling this "censorship" is authoritarian.

finite_jest3• 4 years ago

That's not really a fruitful line of argument. The natural continuation is that, of course, we are also free to criticize someone for trying to shut others up.

Censorship has many forms, and is not exclusive to the government. Corporate censorship [1] in response to social pressure seems to be the dominant one in our era.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship

smt882• 4 years ago

The solution to corporate censorship is not to take away corporate speech. It is to enable competition against corporations that are too powerful.

For example, Spotify doesn't have startup competitors because it's so difficult to get legal rights to streaming. The government could require that music owners of significant size publish prices for streaming rights and apply those prices equally to any streaming service.

vanusa2• 4 years ago

I don't by this "censorship" rap. That's not what's happening here.

Neil is just saying: "If you're going to do <X> (which just so happens to be patently obnoxious and harmful) -- I don't want to be associated with it. So I'm going to find another party."

Which he has a perfect right to do -- full stop.

Neil Young deletes open letter calling for Joe Rogan censorship on Spotify

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