It's baffling how a group of random people can assert so much pressure. Millions consume Joe's podcast, but somehow a dozen(?) of anonymous people inside Spotify believe they know what is good for everybody.
This is the same kind of behavior that arises in those who scream "Fascist!", as they put their boot on your face and punish you for not doing exactly what they want you to do. It's all for power.
These aren't just random people, so the number involved is irrelevant. The fact that Spotify has an exclusivity deal with him means that they inherently hold a powerful position over him. And they certainly don't care about what's good for everybody, that's not their prerogative. They care about what's good for Spotify, or moreso, what Spotify thinks is good for Spotify.
This is not the first time nor will it be the last time that a large corporation acquires some degree of power over something and wants to smooth it out for PR reasons. It has been going on since the dawn of corporate media.
Not sure you're correct that these employees have Spotify's best interest in mind. It's just as likely that they have their own political and social agenda which they are able to leverage by working at Spotify.
That's a really strange assertion to make. A corporation the size of Spotify giving that much leeway to individual employees on a major business relationship like this is basically unheard of and fairly implausible, and these sorts of things have been going on in a calculated, intentional manner for over a century in various forms of publishing.
Overall, I'm glad to see this sort of public laundry-airing, even if the anonymous people are wrong. Anything that forces the public to review and consider how these massive content distributors make decisions about how they operate is a small win over the black-box algorithmic attention mining mess we have now.
This is what happens when you spend millions of dollars on the new, edgy thing, but forget that you might one day be held liable when that edge cuts someone.
I meant "new" in the "Spotify just figured out they should get into the podcast game, so they swallowed a bunch of podcast networks" sense and "edgy" in the "some of the guests on his show are promoting snake oil and bad decisions" sense.
This is why you should only use podcast clients that are just rss feed consumers. Any aggrigate, algorithm curated feed will just try to manipulate you.
I'm not a fan of these podcasts, just remember who you're listening to (and that it's a group of people, not just the person who's voice you hear.)
Exactly. There's some good stuff, but the show has also become a podium for pseudo-intellectuals to pawn off bad ideas and completely misrepresent fact without being challenged.
People also eat up the "you can make up your own mind about what people say" argument. But, what fraction of a percent of people have the time to go out and do their own professional grade research after a controversial guest? What percentage of that can even effectively perform objective research? For me, the whole point of a media platform like that is to do some of that filtering for me or present a balanced view so that I don't get taken by some guy spouting complete BS without getting called out for it.
Could you give us some examples of misrepresented facts? I've only listened to a few episodes but most of the interview content seemed like stories and opinions rather than something represented as factual.
How does one distinguish a pseudo-intellectual from a real intellectual?
He did spend time talking about "interdimensional pedophiles" with Alex Jones [1].
> How does one distinguish a pseudo-intellectual from a real intellectual?
Well, that's certainly not something I'm qualified to answer. However, I was reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" recently and one of the heuristics for identifying if there can be real expertise formed in a subject or not is if it has regularity. IE, you can't have expertise if the outputs of some process are dominated by chance. I'd start there.
The problem is people who use cargo cult science as a selling point for their particular ideas which are usually political in nature or maybe have to do with startups or the stock market. Things that if they were a truly decided science, we wouldn't be arguing over in the first place. They take bad results with tiny sample sizes and pawn them off as fact and then because "facts don't care about your feelings" they feel justified calling anybody that doesn't believe in whatever it is they're selling an idiot.
If you want us to take your concerns seriously you'll have to come up with a better example than Alex Jones. I'm not going to waste my time listening to that episode but I highly doubt that Joe Rogan ever claimed his crackpot views were facts. And I don't think Jones was ever presented as an intellectual.
> They take bad results with tiny sample sizes and pawn them off as fact and then because "facts don't care about your feelings" they feel justified calling anybody that doesn't believe in whatever it is they're selling an idiot.
It's possible, but history's repeated proof that behavioral modification by repetition works (we call it brainwashing in more extreme contexts) and that fan worship is real suggests that yours is not a meaningfully valuable rebuttal. We have facts on the ground showing that people absorb what they hear in tragically large numbers, so saying "but technically they don't have to" is both not useful and probably also just flat out wrong.
If a tragically large numbers of people are really unable to consider two sides of an issue it implies that democracy itself is not viable. Even Spotify's execs answer to the board, which is elected by shareholders, are they somehow immune from this fan worship?
> If a tragically large numbers of people are really unable to consider two sides of an issue it implies that democracy itself is not viable
Your use of "viable" here is imprecise. Democracy isn't doing the right thing or the best thing or the good thing or the thing that helps the most people. Democracy is just asking people to pick. It says nothing about the influences that drive them to their choices or ascribe a moral quotient to the outcome of those influences. It is perfectly viable for doing what it does. Many people would indeed argue that it's not very good at doing the other things.
> Even Spotify's execs answer to the board, which is elected by shareholders, are they somehow immune from this fan worship?
Nobody is immune. Not one of us. That's why it upsets us when people we admire fall from grace. But board members are far more likely to be people the stockholders have never heard of before than identifiable personalities.
Hypothetical side question: Do you own stock and participate in shareholder votes? I do, and I have zero clue who any of the people are when those questions come up. They may as well be asking me to pick a hand.
I do participate in shareholder votes and typically just perform a quick online search for each board member candidate. I concede that it is insufficient to really get to know them.
Given that, shouldn't we trust corporations less rather than more. Why are we pushing for corps to make decisions about what we are allowed to see and hear?
It's a total mix with Joe Rogan, on the one hand he's had Alex Jones on his show with the two of them talking about taking drugs to communicate with aliens in another dimension, but on the other hand I thought he did a pretty good job interviewing Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders before the democratic primaries started. The quality of any single one of his episodes is largely driven by the quality of his guest. I honestly think Joe fills the role of an average guy asking the kind of questions most average guys would ask very well. He also generally sounds sincere, curious and unbiased when he brings people on his show. Yeah someone like Alex Jones can take the show way off the rails, but on the other hand he's interviewed people like Edward Snowden, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders and had very interesting and thoughtful conversations with them. In fact when it comes to non-mainstream political candidates like Andrew Yang, Joe was one of the few people to give them more than a few minutes to articulate their platform.
I still don't get why Yang is not a "mainstream" candidate. He was by far the sanest (and smartest) candidate in the lineup, and the DNC instead chose two of the least likable people to ever run, one of whom can't remember what office he's running for from time to time.
Dude is also the best long-form interviewer on YouTube, bar none, and not afraid to invite controversial people and ask them controversial questions. He can peddle Viagra for all I care, I'm still going to listen to his interviews. But not if Spotify has any "editorial control" over them.
I think he is a good conversationalist and funny but a pretty bad interviewer. hes also largely an idiot (a fact he regularly admits), hes more goop salesmen than thought provoking journalist but i think that is what he wants.
He's just realistic. 99% of people are "idiots" by that definition. Twitter and the press are full of people who take themselves really seriously but turn out to be total idiots upon further scrutiny. I think it's undeniable, however, that he's really good at what he does. Spotify deal aside, wouldn't have 9 million subscribers otherwise.
Sure to get downvoted into oblivion for this, but Spotify has a responsibility to provide direct editorial oversight over Rogan's podcast.
This isn't just him flirting with the alt-right and intellectual darkweb anymore. He's out here repeating lies about left-wing activists starting fires at the same time there are actual right-wing militias setting up paramilitary checkpoints.
This has gone from Joe saying stupid stuff to Joe spewing dangerous rhetoric that may get people killed.
Why do so many tech employees feel that they're entitled to be arbiters of morality? Tech companies should have the backbone to fire every annoying internal activist group that tries to sabotage their efforts.
First off this isn't a tech issue, if you sign a 100 million deal with someone that usually comes with strings attached. The political side of it aside, Rogan can't seriously believe he can say whatever he wants and damage Spotify's brand in the process. If he wanted full autonomy, pretty easy, don't sign that deal.
Secondly on the political issues, at the very least his enabling of Alex Jones is irresponsible. He's giving a complete lunatic who does nothing but spread conspiracy theories an uncritical platform. This isn't even a matter of ordinary politics any more, platforming someone who calls the victims of a school shooting crisis actors is reprehensible. Not really sure how anyone who has some sense of morality wants to enable that. I fully understand tech workers who want to put a stop to it rather than enabling it for financial gain.
This is honestly the first time in my life where basic decency, honesty and factuality are politicised.
The article makes it clear that this is a group that does not have leadership backing. I very much doubt this internal group of staffers is attempting to push back against leadership due to business concerns. This is definitely political.
Also, the article explicitly mentions that this is a breach of contract, so there's very little chance this actually happens. Just more political noise from the same type of people that always generate political noise.
Because your work is owned by Spotify and they can do what they want with it. Yes, it's well within your rights to form one of these internal activist groups that attempts to sway company policy by loud-mouthing your employer, but it's also well within the company's right to fire you. I simply wish tech companies had the courage to do so.
It is owned by spotify when I do the work. Don't listen to your workers and watch as everything goes to heck at the extreme or at the least you don't do as well and competition eats away at you.
When you are a 100% tech company then you better listen to your tech workers.