Spotify has announced will add ‘content advisories’, i.e. trigger warnings, to podcast episodes that discuss COVID-19, directing people to the platform’s ‘COVID-19 Guide‘, which includes podcasts by BBC News, the Economist, the New Scientist, the Guardian and Nature. In addition, it has published its ‘Platform Rules‘, which include the following description of ‘Dangerous Content’ that will be banned from the music streaming platform:
Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health includes, but may not be limited to:
– asserting that AIDS, COVID-19, cancer or other serious life threatening diseases are a hoax or not real
– encouraging the consumption of bleach products to cure various illnesses and diseases
– promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death
– encouraging people to purposely get infected with COVID-19 in order to build immunity to it (e.g. promoting or hosting “coronavirus parties”)
These announcements are clearly intended as a sop to the musical artists and others who are unhappy about Spotify’s decision not to remove Joe Rogan’s podcast in response to Neil Young’s threat to withdraw his music unless it did. But will they be sufficient to quell the rebellion? According to the Verge, which broke the story, an internal memo revealed that Joe Rogan’s podcast doesn’t “meet the threshold for removal” under these new rules.
The Verge also reports that an earlier draft of the ‘Platform Rules’ went further:
[C]ompared to the document posted internally and viewed by the Verge, the wording on examples has changed, and one line is missing entirely. It specifically called out “Suggesting that wearing a mask will cause the wearer imminent, life-threatening physical harm”.
Daniel Ek, the billionaire founder and CEO of Spotify, is keen to stress how on message he is when it comes to COVID-19 – unlike his pesky podcaster. In the announcement in the Spotify Newsroom, he writes:
I want you to know that from the very first days of the pandemic, Spotify has been biased toward action. We launched a variety of educational resources and campaigns to raise awareness and we developed and promoted a global COVID-19 Information Hub. We donated ad inventory to various organisations for vaccine awareness, funds to the World Health Organisation and COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) to increase vaccine equity and supported the Go Give One fundraising campaign. And we established a music relief project to support the creative community. While this is not a complete list, I hope it gives you a sense of how seriously we’ve approached the pandemic as a company.
I trust our policies, the research and expertise that inform their development, and our aspiration to apply them in a way that allows for broad debate and discussion, within the lines.
Within the lines. Interesting phrase. Rogan is currently “within the lines”, but that may change. Note that the ‘Platform Rules’ setting out what you’re not allowed to say, i.e. what’s outside the lines, “includes, but may not be limited to” the various things it explicitly prohibits. So the CEO has given himself the wiggle room to shift the line so Rogan ends up on the wrong side of it.
You can read more about this story on the Post-Millennial.
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Hopefully they put “Warning: as a certified snowflake you may be triggered by hearing truth from a person you don’t like.”
Joe should have apologised for failing to invite the world renowned covid expert Neil Young on his show.
Joe should have extended an immediate invite and explained that he would be more than happy to take correction from the learned Neil, but that he might have some questions for the sake of clarification for his low IQ listeners.
from the BBC
“US broadcaster Rogan apologised to the company and vowed to do better.”
“I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan,” he said, noting his admiration for Mitchell’s music as well.”
First sign of criticism and he buckles like a broken deck chair.
So, after the shredding of the Nuremberg Code (and following international agreements on forced medical experimentation) we are now back into book burning, othering people à la Pastor Martin Niemöller, and supporting an overtly fascist country to provoke a war in Europe.
And let us remember who continued to finance the German war machine until 1941.
Is it now time to tell the Yanks to eff off and take their geopolitical paradigms with them?
Does Spotify really think we’re that dumb?? They need to man-up and and tell the weak-feebled such as Neil Young to grow a backbone. Can Ek even define and classify ‘misinformation’?
Could we put a trigger warning on the Guardian, say?
Normal people may be adversely affected by content. There’s been a lot of conversation about misinformation in the Guardian on just about every topic. We’ve heard the criticism and we’re implementing changes to help normal people combat this.
If I was Rogan I’d push it further, get thrown off, then challenge the break of contract in court. Or take the money and run
All he’d have to do is get David Icke on…..
The Truth is like a lion.
You don’t have to defend it.
Let it loose, it will defend itself.
St. Augustine
https://mobile.twitter.com/thechiefnerd/status/1486168753629011973
Surely that tweet should have read:
‘A decade ago, we created Spotify so that we could make money by offering artists’ music for free and eventually decided that, to keep going, we’d have to offer them as little money as we could, while plastering advertising all over our customer’s screens (unless they used an ad-blocker)’
I wonder if Neil Young or Joni Mitchell even listened to the podcast in which Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Robert Malone. I suspect they haven’t because not only have they failed to identify the specific offending podcast(s) (everyone is assuming it’s the aforementioned one), but they’ve not mentioned one single thing that Dr. Malone said that – in their view – constitutes dangerous misinformation that puts lives at risk. I have a policy that if I’m critical of what someone else says or does, I do three things – or at least try to:
1) I pinpoint the specific comment(s) or action(s) that I think are wrong.
2) I detail how/why they are wrong and, where appropriate, cite expert third party sources to support my criticism.
3) Outline what I believe to be the correct information / course of action and again, where appropriate, cite expert third party sources to support my assertion.
Young and Mitchell have failed lamentably to do any of the above which, in my view, makes them look complete idiots. And that’s a shame, as I’ve been a fan of their music for 40+ years.
Perhaps Neil and Joni weren’t specific because they’re hard at work writing songs about it.
Being both Canadian, they might like to comment on the Freedom Convoys, too, since they’re both so committed to opposing The Man?
Neil Young has come a long way from the 1969 Woodstock days, and his participation in anti-establishment songs like ‘Almost Cut My Hair’, which he recorded in 1970:
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It’s gettin’ kinda long
I coulda said it wasn’t in my way
But I didn’t and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
Yes, I feel like I owe it to someone
Must be because I had a flu for Christmas
And I’m not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car
But I’m not giving in an inch to fear
‘Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone
‘A prisoner of the white lines on the (not so) freeway.’
Nice one.
How about Pissing on Summer Lawns?
Surely this can only lead more and more people to realise that something is seriously wrong with this bullshit pandemic.
Dear Spotify, try treating your subscibers like grown ups and let them decide what to listen to. Dear Harry and Sparkles, for people who escaped to get privacy, you do a great job of opening your mouths and talking sh1te too often! Back to your many mansions with you.
Warning!
This content may contain truth that is not conducivie to the WEF technocratic plan for the future.
Spotify’s new content guide is right about AIDS not being a hoax. It’s a brilliant, heartless medical ponzi scheme.
‘It’s a brilliant, heartless medical ponzi scheme.’
Just like covid.
Maybe put a warning on Neil Young tracks “may contain boring unimaginative lyrical content from a washed-up has-been, listener discretion advised”.
Or for podcasts where they interview Harry and Meghan “warning – so much bland predictable wokery that it’ll have you clawing your eyes out”.
I must admit, I don’t know much about spotify. I can’t be doing with all these new fangled apps and things so it won’t affect me other than make me angry that yet another communication vehicle is participating in stifling truth. I’d be livid if I was expected to pay for it!
Nils Lofgren is the latest one to cancel himself 🙂
Big buddy of Neil’s of course, since he was invited to play piano on ‘After The Goldrush’.
Joe Rogan knows who he is and who his audience is. I hope that he gets out in front of this and tells Spotify to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Take your business elsewhere, to a friendly platform!
FFS!
I wonder if there’ll now be an advisory at the top of the BBC news page as a warning to the naive, and the uninitiated… that what they are about to read is based on the BBC’s opinion of what we should be made aware of, what we are best not knowing, and what we should say think & believe?
And that, kiddy piglets, is how Spotify saved the world! Not.
Saving the income stream would seem to be the aim. It would be amusing if ceding this ground led to Spotify’s demise, but then I’m not a customer, so wouldn’t mind.
They’ll quietly delete all the… problematic… episodes over time, as they’ve already done with his back catalogue. They even flushed his chat with Carl Benjamin down the memory hole, even though it was mostly Rogan tossing Benjamin around like a chew toy rather than promoting his alt-lite-right narrative.
Off-topic but great news as Sunday draws to a close: according to the Daily Telegraph, Britgov seems about to scrap mandatory vaccination for healthworkers!
This could be because those who want to keep Boris Johnson in office don’t want to associate him with a policy of “emerding” (© Emmanuel Macron) on nurses and other healthworkers – including by obtaining information about their vaccination status without their permission – but whatever the reason for it, it’s good news.
Also reemployment of sacked care home workers, according to the same story:
“The legal requirement for care home staff to be fully vaccinated came into effect in November. An estimated 40,000 people lost their jobs over the policy. Under the new rules, they are expected to be able to return to work in the sector.
On Sunday night, care home representatives expressed fury at the handling of the issue, saying the flip-flopping had “devastated our workforce and brought providers to their knees“”
It’s reassuring to know that these celebs have our best interests at heart. I would hate to be inadvertently exposed to “misinformation”.
DT reporting NHS cancelling staff vaccine mandates.
Hats off to Steve James & many others for standing up to intimidation.
Great news, it begs the question, if they don’t need it, why does anyone else?
Don’t celebrate too soon. Remember Savage Jabber doesn’t like people who stand on the shoulders of others. I wouldn’t be surprised if they now look at enforced jabs for everyone in order to avoid being accused of singling out certain occupations – in the interest of everyone’s health, of course.
Hmm. We’ll see.
What is DT? Sorry, not in GB.
Daily Telegraph
Or, a limp, woke rag, if you’d like the full, updated description.
https://mauihawaiitheworld.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/rockin-in-the-free-world-neil-young-joni-mitchell-and-the-slippery-slope-to-censorship/
Could he change it to ‘Opinionating in the Free World’ I wonder?
In other, happier news…
I suppose the sad part of that ‘news’ is that the Health Secretary has only just realised that his failure to bully health staff into receiving medical treatment they didn’t want might result in the sainted NHS performing even more badly for those it has failed over the last two years.
The Mekon is a bit ‘slow’, it seems.
All these censor bugs have one thing in common: a terror of the idea that their audiences might have some intelligence. On the whole, the last two years have shown that they don’t need to worry.
Joe Rogan said his doctor, Pierre Kory, is part of a group that has used Ivermectin to quietly treat 200 Members of U.S. Congress for COVID19. Dr Simone Gold, from America’s Frontline Doctors, told that she has prescribed treatments for Congress. She still believes in her oath, but she is vocal saying she has been contacted by many in DC. Can you believe these demons? Healing for them are OK but not for us. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
If Omicron (either current version) is as mild as predicted, some Night Nurse and bed rest are likely to preclude the requirement to source invermectin from overseas sources.