Originally published at: David Crosby ditches Spotify | Boing Boing
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“listen to rogan’s show before you demand his cancellation”?
Does he bring these cranks on his show so they can be torn apart by people who actually know what they’re talking about? Does he demand that they provide evidence and sources for their claims? Does he point out the far stronger basis for the scientific consensus that they claim to know better than?
No?
Well then, I don’t need to listen to his damned podcast before deciding he shouldn’t be taking people who belong on the fringe of the internet and presenting them as apparently credible to millions of listeners.
That’s the issue. Cranks, snakeoil salesmen, zero evidence conspiracy theorists, they’re not being denied a platform. They’ve always had it. They can have their grubby little corners of the internet, their conventions, their self-published books.
The issue is whether these people should be presented in a context where they are given a veneer of credibility. That is not a free speech issue, it’s not a censorship issue. These people are not being rounded up and silenced by the government.
It’s interesting that musicians who lived through the 60s and 70s seem to understand the difference a hell of a lot better than the current generation, who have been spoon fed the idea that free speech means an unaccountable platform to say whatever you want, any time, anywhere, as loudly as you want, to as many people as you want, without consequences, accountability, or ever having to hear anyone telling you you’re talking shit.
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I had been thinking, “where’s the mass exodus from spotify,” but you know, a gradual trickle out may be better. Keeps the topic in the news.
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These are okay, boomers 
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I don’t think it’s so much the current generation as a small but not insignificant subset of people who think freedom of speech means the “Right to an audience.” It doesn’t.
It may be that they got this idea because outrage capitalism has amplified their voices in ways it wouldn’t have pre-Facebook, but there are plenty of people of all generations who think companies such as Spotify shouldn’t be profiting from dangerous disinformation.
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Well done Mr Crosby, et al!
One of our friends recently ditched spotify, too. Here’s part of the email he sent me, w/the subj line “In support of truth, justice (and democracy) and the American way”
In my written message as to why (which was part of the cancellation process), I told the schmucks at Spotify that I find lying, ignorant, anti-vax, jock gas bags like Joe Rogan (and his propaganda podcast) to be an affront to the health and safety of the general public - and an insult to my intelligence.
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your statement is a relatively accurate assessment of things; however. if i had written that passage i would have phrased it differently, possibly something along the lines of:
i don’t think it’s so much the current generation alone as a distressingly large minority of people who believe freedom of speech means the “right of white men to have an audience.” it doesn’t.
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Yeah, I mean, I’m certainly not Crosby’s generation myself. I barely just turned 40 so I hardly even count as Gen X, I think 
I would maintain though, that musicians and activists who were around at the height of the civil rights movement might just have a better grounding in the fundamentals of free speech and what it really means for it to be under threat?
From my wholly anecdotal experience, it appears to be people maybe a little older than me who are the most prone to flinging the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ around with little or no understanding of what it means, or seem to have got the actual human right to freedom of speech mixed up with the meaningless platitude of ‘everyone’s entitled to their opinion’
There is still a notable absence of younger artists calling spotify out on this, the only one I’m aware of even offering an opinion on it is the cretin from Disturbed who praised spotify for…standing up for free speech
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Another aspect to keep in mind is that a significant and influential portion of the Boomers who followed the 1960s counterculture moved smoothly into the funhouse mirror version called the Californian Ideology. Their embrace of neoliberalism in the 1980s was matched by their internalisation of naive and techno-utopian free-speech absolutism in the 1990s. By establishing these as core values and assumptions of the consumer Internet they also created the media environment where Rogan (a Gen Xer) and his JAQing off thrives.
David Crosby is 80, a Silent generation leader of the counterculture who, despite his rebellion against the status quo (and despite his being a problematic figure), grew up with very different values and assumptions.
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You too can learn that spending $100 million on a snake oil grifter gets you a billion dollar lose in value & the scorn of the populace. Now which is worse, I wonder aloud.
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FTFY.
–signed,
Late Stage Capitalism
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By all accounts, Crosby has been a gigantic a hole for most of his life. He is quite likely a statutory rapist (“Tamalpais High (at about 3)” is about picking up his girlfriend from high school - when he was at least 29). But, it’s never too late become a better person. Or a worse person, as Mr. Clapton has endeavored to become.
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Perfect example of the First Amendment in action within a free-market setting.
Unlike, say, a board of elected officials banning a book.
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It seems like we are missing some nuance in a lot of the “is it or is not censorship” conversations. Certainly, corporate decisions about content they will allow are not relevant to the 1st amendment. Just as certainly, those decisions by players who control massive slices of an entire medium have a real impact on whether voices are heard. That is “censorship” by any reasonable definition.
I feel it’s worth thinking pretty hard about who we really want to be the gatekeepers.
I have no answers yet, just vague sense of discomfort about demanding that voices with whom I disagree be “deplatformed”, or whatever we are calling it, but I’d love to see a little more thought put into the debate while I’m searching for those answers.
Would you draw the line at podcasters who have guests who murder one innocent person, live on the air?
If so, why would you call it censorship to boot a podcaster whose guests have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people with their FUD, AND profited from it?
It’s really not so difficult a question.
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It’s your move, Firefall.
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To be clear, it is censorship by definition. That is not really debatable.
It seems like what you are asking me then is whether I think it is warranted. My answer remains, as above, I don’t know yet.
I would like to live in a happy place where the vast majority simply knew better than to take that kind of thing at face value. If wishes were horses…
But you sort of make my point. I think this should not be a debate over what is censorship (and if words still mean things really can’t be), but one over how we ought to best be going about it.
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Have you looked up the definition of censorship? Because deplatforming is definitely NOT censorship.
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Bullshit. What dictionary are you using?
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Why is misinformation and promoting literal white supremacist talking points okay to platform?
Yeah. It is. You don’t get to impose your definitions on the rest of us.
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