| I'm struggling to see the distinction here. Sure, Podcast ≠ Spotify, just as Git ≠ Github. But people choose to distribute their code on Github for exactly the same reason the people choose to distribute their podcasts on Spotify - reach. That exact reach is what Drew argues so articulately against - in fact he expressly calls out marketing on Twitter and Facebook as a "mistake", and damaging against the FOSS community. He goes on to encourage people to prefer open infrastructure with lesser reach, even if that comes at the expense of effectiveness: > Such projects would prefer to exacerbate the network effects problem rather than risk some of its social capital on a less popular platform. To me, this is selfish and unethical outright. It's hard to see how that same argument doesn't extend to promoting your software on podcasts which are primarily distributed via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc. On the topic of Activism, I think I'd agree with you, if he was on Spotify podcasts promoting other "Free" podcast platforms. But he's not - he's promoting a programming language. |
My opinion is that he didn't explicitly ask for the podcasts to be on Spotify or Apple. That Spotify and Apple Podcast are the main way of consuming podcasts is not of his making. And maybe he requests podcasts not to be hosted on those platforms. Maybe not.
But I can see how you may find that there can be some contradiction here.
To me this would be a "you still need to be part of this imperfect world" thing, or a "imperfect activism" thing, but I would totally understand someone disagree with this / find that it's not coherent.