it would be censorship if everyone who wants it has a right to a $100 million contract to say what they want said. unless i’m missing an opportunity, i don’t believe that right exists therefore giving such a contract to rogan is an editorial choice which can be withdrawn as easily as it is offered within the constraints of contract law. taking rogan off the air and paying off his contract because of public opprobrium may be an inconvenience for spotify and an annoyance for some group of rogan fans but it is in no way censorship unless, as i outlined above, there is a general right to such contracts.
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Wait, you didn’t get your $100M contract option? You must’ve missed the mail that day. You snooze, you lose! /S
Seriously, though, I definitely think (as likely many of us do) that there need to be some better regulations around platforms, etc., but that’s a whole different conversation. Other countries have figured this out, we should learn from them. Just in that thread about the WA state trooper who resigned over the vaccine mandate, there’s a clip posted about how the Murdoch Media group has way different takes on things like pushing anti-vax stances in places like Australia vs. the US., because the gov’t and populace in Oz just won’t allow such bullshit as they get away with here, rightly so.
But saying artists deciding they don’t want to be associated with Rogan’s dangerous rhetoric is censorship is just incorrect.
And anyone concerned that all platforms must allow all speakers with all views a platform might be interested to check out OANN, Breitbart News, and the like, and test the theory in other venues. Is it censorship that OANN doesn’t give Fauci a time slot?
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Part of what I was originally going for was that I felt like a lot of time and attention is being sucked up with debates over whether editorial decisions driven by public outcry should or should not be called censorship, when the important stuff, imo, isn’t about that particular language. My solution, which turned out to be a real lead balloon, was let’s all just agree it is censorship of a sort and get on to the other bits.
I’m fine just retracting the whole idea. My goal was less argument about the word, not more.
I definitely do not think all platforms should allow all people with all views.
I think every time something like this comes up the abhorrent people cry “it’s censorship!” and we all fight each other over that. I thought, what if we just said, “sure it is! Now let’s talk about whether it is warranted.”
As I said above though, bad idea, I stand corrected and withdraw the whole argument.
There are no shortcuts when having a serious discussion about complex issues that really demand critical thinking and empirical evidence. Which is exactly why the American right wing and its allies in the corporate media constantly push shortcuts. Agreeing to operate on their terms gets us nowhere.
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Cool. Living is learning. If you’re doing it right.
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20th century definitions of what constitutes censorship, or freedom of speech, these may be overly simplistic for the era of the all powerful tech giants. So sure, I agree, it’s not enough to say ‘the government aren’t banning it, therefore its not censorship’
Even looking back to the late 20th century, it was already more complicated than that. I certainly would consider it censorship when conservative pressure groups would ensure that, say, a gangster rap album would not be stocked by major retailers, which meant that the record label wouldn’t release it in its existing form, while retaining the rights to it. There’s no state intervention involved at all there, but the end result is nobody was allowed to choose to buy or listen to that album. Stuff like this informed my early understanding of politics.
Here’s the thing though, when a record label did that, the album in question was effectively actually banned. Likewise with the VHS “video nasties” in the UK. Likewise with every piece of media that was pulled from distribution because of some moral panic, every scene that gets cut from a movie before it can get certification.
In these cases, we genuinely are completely prevented from being allowed to make an informed, adult choice to seek this media out for ourselves and make our own minds up, and in many of these cases this was down to decisions made entirely by private entities, without intervention by the state, and yes, I would say that is censorship.
Now, if Google were to completely remove something from all search results without trace, if Facebook or Twitter were to participate in a media blackout of a breaking news story, if Spotify were to remove a podcast but refuse to release the legal rights for someone else to stream it, if every major ISP in a country blocks all access to a website, then I’d say these are comparible.
These cross my own line about what constitutes censorship (you’re welcome to play semantic games about the definition of censorship until you’re blue in the face, but I won’t be partaking)
Spotify terminating their contract with a podcaster for whatever reason they want, Facebook removing a page that pedals disinformation or hate speech, YouTube de-monitising a channel, Google removing something from the first page of results and ranking higher quality information over it? These just don’t cross the line for me. I don’t consider them censorship or overreach. They don’t worry me, and in fact, when some profiteering pedlar of harmful medical misinformation has their reach limited? I celebrate it, I feel no conflict over doing so, I don’t feel like a hypocrite, it does not cause me to lose any sleep.
I think that what you describe (at least in the first half) is largely a matter of rights ownership. If an artist signs away the rights to an album or a book or a movie, then the owner (usually a big corporation) is unfortunately within their rights to bury it so that it never sees the light of day. They are free to distribute it or not distribute it, and often the artist is often left with little recourse if they decide not to distribute it or (god forbid) distribute it in a watered down form that is not at all what the artist envisioned.
I think that this could be addressed with changes to contract law that would give artists recourse (specifically: the right to shop the work around) when the rightsholder attempts to bury a work that an artist sold the rights to with the assumption that it would be distributed. The big companies have all the power in these situations, so clauses to that effect are rarely baked into the contracts that the artists sign.
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