Tangle - Joe Rogan and Spotify

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Last week, podcasting mega-star Joe Rogan became the center of conversation after momentum grew on Spotify to boycott Rogan's show. It started when rockstar Neil Young demanded his music be removed by Spotify if Rogan remained on the platform, citing Covid-19 misinformation that has been spread on Rogan's show. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both," Young said.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about Joe Rogan and Spotify and some of the drama with Neil Young and censorship and all that good stuff going on right now. But as always, before we jump in, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, the House and Senate returned from recess today to a full plate of issues.

A Supreme Court opening, the Russia-Ukraine tension, 18 days of government funding remaining, and President Biden's stalled legislation. Number two, the United Nations Security Council is going to meet today to discuss Russia's military buildup along the Ukraine border. Number three, in a speech over the weekend, former President Trump floated the idea of pardoning some of the January 6th defendants if he wins the 2024 presidential race. 4. New York's latest redistricting map, which is heavily gerrymandered, could give Democrats a three-seat gain in the House of Representatives. 5. North Korea test-launched a ballistic missile that could reach Guam on Sunday, its seventh missile test this month and one of its boldest in years. Rogan, who hosts the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, has frequently promoted unproven

methods for treating COVID-19 and downplayed the need for vaccines. Last year, Spotify purchased his podcast library for an estimated $100 million. All right, that is it for our quick hits today, which brings us to our main story. Rogan signed a $100 million podcast deal with Spotify in 2020, the largest in the industry's history. His show is famous for its long, meandering conversations with everyone from sitting members of Congress or Elon Musk to folks like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Rogan has repeatedly been the subject of controversy for allowing his guests to speak freely, often without being challenged, about controversial topics. When Rogan was diagnosed with COVID-19, he set off a whole news cycle of controversy by sharing

all the ways he was trying to treat it, including with ivermectin. Last week, the podcasting megastar became the center of conversation after momentum grew on Spotify to boycott Rogan's show. It started when rock star Neil Young demanded his music be removed by Spotify if Rogan remained on the platform, citing COVID-19 misinformation that has allegedly been spread on Rogan's show. They can have Joe Rogan or Young, not both, Young said. Spotify complied with Young's request, removing his music and saying they regretted his decision. But other singers and podcasters have started to make similar demands, including Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band members. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who also have a podcast deal with Spotify, shared their concerns over the weekend. U.S. Surgeon General

Vivek Murthy was asked about Rogan on MSNBC and responded by saying the government needed to root out misinformation like the kind spreading on Rogan's show. Spotify users also started sharing posts on social media announcing they had canceled their accounts and urging others to follow suit. Over the weekend, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek responded by publishing a press release with their longstanding platform rules and announcing that Spotify would start labeling any podcasts that discuss COVID-19 with a link to their COVID-19 hub. But the organization also reaffirmed its commitment to creators' freedom of expression. The entire controversy has set off a lot of debate about censorship, Rogan's show, and how to handle controversial content like the kind that appears on his podcast. Below, we'll take a look at some arguments from the right and the left, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying.

So the right supports Rogan, saying he should be free to interview whoever he wants. Many criticize the left for being increasingly censorious. Some cheer Spotify for supporting Rogan through the controversy. In City Journal, Zaid Jalani said the censors didn't win. If you doubt that censor is an appropriate word to describe those pressuring Spotify to dump Rogan, consider this. The platform is the world's largest streaming service with a whopping 31% market share in the second quarter of 2021, he wrote. When a private corporation controls such a large portion of an information ecosystem, its content decisions are more than mere acts of moderation. It is laying out the boundaries of discourse itself. That's precisely why Young

believed that Rogan's views shouldn't have a platform. Young's transformation from counterculture champion of freedom of speech to corporate censorship advocate and defender of the public health bureaucracy didn't occur in a vacuum, Jelani wrote. Progressives have become increasingly censorious over the past few years. A majority of Democrats now believe that both private tech companies and the U.S. government should take steps to restrict false info online. Many on the left were once militant in their support for free expression, believing that misinformed, even offensive viewpoints were as worthy of airing as any other speech. This viewpoint bears little resemblance to that of the activists of the modern left, who are now quick to label expressions they

disapprove of as misinformation or hate speech to justify censoring it. Glenn Greenwald, often a champion of progressive values, excorcheted American liberals who were now obsessed with censoring their opposition. For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of hate speech to mean views that make us uncomfortable and then demand that such hateful views be prohibited on that basis, Greenwald wrote. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not protect hate speech. Their political culture has inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.

Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the hate speech framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful, he wrote. That is why the newest and now most popular censorship framework is to claim that the targets are guilty of spreading misinformation or disinformation. These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term terrorism, it is their elasticity that makes them so useful. In the National Review, David Harsanyi reacted to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's comments about the need to root out misinformation. Government officials have no role in dictating speech, Harsanyi wrote. In fact, they have a duty not to. Murthy's comments wouldn't

be as grating if it weren't so obvious that the Biden administration has been pressuring big tech companies who oversee huge swaths of our daily digital interactions to limit speech. Last summer, Jen Psaki casually informed the press that the White House was flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. Can you imagine the reaction from the press if it learned that the Trump White House had been keeping a list of speech crimes? I believe that tech companies should enjoy unencumbered free association rights, Harsanyi said, but that position becomes difficult to sustain if corporations that spend tens of millions every year in rent-seeking and lobbying for favorable regulations

simply take orders from the government on speech codes. All right, that is it for the right's take on this, which brings us to the left's take. So the left generally supports Neil Young, hoping that his pressure campaign succeeds. Many say Spotify should have seen this coming. Others suggest Rogan's content is so dangerous it's worth censoring. In CNN, Jill Filipovich said Young is taking a stand against vaccine misinformation. On the show, Rogan and guests identified as experts have said that vaccination isn't necessary for the young and healthy. They are. That ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID.

It isn't, and using it in large doses poses serious potential health risks. And that people who have COVID face health risks from getting vaccinated. They don't. Rogan's misinformation campaign, which reaches millions of listeners, has been so dangerous that hundreds of public health officials have signed an open letter asking Spotify to intervene, Filipovich said. I typically err on the side of less censorship and more leeway in speech, even for bad or hateful speech, she wrote. The Rogan Spotify situation, though, is less akin to a freewheeling public square than, say, Twitter. There is a business relationship more akin to a traditional media house and its star talent. Rogan isn't a random person on the internet. He's a host imbued with the authority of the company that pays for

his show. He should be given room to discuss what he wants, even if that offends people who disagree with him politically. But the company should draw the line at dangerous, life-threatening conspiracy theories and the kind of misinformation that could result in unnecessary illness and death. Alex Shepard wrote in The New Republic that Spotify is getting the full Joe Rogan experience. Young, a polio survivor, is at odds with what is Spotify's most important exclusive podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which has increasingly come under heavy criticism for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and, in particular, vaccines, he wrote. Spotify should have known what it was getting into when it signed Joe Rogan to a multi-year, $100 million exclusive contract in May 2020. By that point, Rogan had already established a

reputation for transphobia and Islamophobia, had compared a black neighborhood to Planet of the Apes, and hosted, among other, Proud Boys founder Gavin McGinnis and right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos. But Rogan's comments on COVID-19 have been particularly controversial, Shepard added. Last spring, Rogan suggested that young, healthy people should not get the vaccine, telling one listener, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young and you're eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this. When Rogan himself contracted the virus in the spring, he claimed he was treating himself with ivermectin, a drug that has become particularly popular among those looking for alternatives to vaccines, despite the fact that no health authorities in the U.S. have approved its use. Late last year, he also

hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine. Eamon Ford wrote in The Guardian that Spotify has lost its way from its roots in liberal Sweden. We can date the shift to April 2018 when the company launched its direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange, and Manhattan rather than Stockholm became the company's geographical and cultural epicenter. Spotify has a history of making bad decisions. There was an ugly and public war with Taylor Swift in 2014 over its royalty rates. Then there was the bungled hate content and hateful conduct policy in 2018, which was seen to remove a disproportionate amount of content by black artists. But in those instances,

Spotify eventually softened its stance. This tendency to conciliation has collapsed as the company recalibrates its ethical and ideological viewpoints to be much more American. Naked capitalism, regardless of the negative consequences, seems now to triumph internally at the company overall. All right, so that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I should start by making a brief journalistic disclosure. The Tangle podcast is currently hosted on Anchor, which is a podcast distribution platform owned by Spotify. While our newsletter and website are totally ad-free, we have experimented with ads on this podcast, as you've heard, including one promoting Anchor that you've probably just listened to in this podcast, which is a fantastic tool. I love Anchor. Though the ad makes me a paltry $10

to $20 an episode, meaning we're currently losing money on the podcast, don't forget, go subscribe to Tangle, become a monthly supporter, please help us. It seems worth acknowledging this before I say what I'm about to say, which is that I support Spotify 100%. I know there are a lot of problematic things about Joe Rogan. I've listened to his show probably 20 or 30 times, and I usually tune in when he has guests I'm curious about, especially the UFO episodes. And there are regularly moments where I cringe or squirm or sigh or wish he'd challenge the people he's interviewing a bit more than he does. But guess what?

A lot of people say that about my podcast too. And squirming, being made uncomfortable, getting frustrated, those are all feelings you get when you're being brought out of your comfort zone and confronted with ideas you may not like. And that's perfectly okay. The irony on this issue exists in every direction. Rogan, for starters, is not a right-wing anything. He's said on his show repeatedly that he's never voted for a

Republican, he's socially liberal, but he refuses to be put in a political box. At various times, he's expressed his pro-Bernie, anti-war, pro-healthcare-for-all ideas. He is, like me and many millions of Americans, especially young Americans, a complex person with little or no political party affiliation. If anything, though, he's left of center on the spectrum, and he could be an ally for many of the people attacking him now. It's also ironic to see audiophiles saying they are going to ditch Spotify for allowing Rogan free reign in favor of Apple, a company that has repeatedly been caught using slave labor to produce its product

and then lobbying against bills to try and ban slave labor. I suppose that's supposed to be some kind of moral high ground? It's ironic too that Neil Young, once a censored champion of free speech himself, is now encouraging censorious behavior. Even cringier is the folks who saw Neil Young make little or no impact than suggest that stars like Taylor Swift sabotage their own careers by threatening to leave Spotify if they don't shut down Rogan. The obvious lesson Rogan should have taught everyone by now is that the American spirit much favors someone who allows open discussion and gets things wrong over someone who is right but makes everyone else shut up.

Most of us have the classic knee-jerk reflexive annoyance to that know-it-all in the room, and right now that know-it-all is the musicians, corporate media, and medical experts coming for Rogan's head because he allows people to say what they want on his massively popular show. When I watch CNN segments framing Rogan as a threat to the nation who is killing people because he interviewed one of the people who helped develop the mRNA vaccines, it makes me root for Rogan. Of course, Rogan is actually a pretty fair guy about all of this. It's not like he just runs clownish characters like Alex Jones

through his show every week. He recently interviewed CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta to discuss COVID, whose views are a perfect summation of the people fighting Rogan now. He's had guests on who now sit on Biden's COVID-19 team. He's had vaccine advocates on, including those who have fact-checked him in real time on his show. He has apologized repeatedly when he's gotten things wrong or felt like he left an important falsehood go unchecked, something many political influencers, politicians, and television hosts rarely do. In fact, Rogan even addressed this latest controversy with a video he released on Monday morning. I do not know if they're right, Rogan says about his guests, many of whom come on his show with strong credentials. I don't know because I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a person

who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely, I get things wrong. But I try to correct them whenever I get something wrong. I try to correct it because I'm interested in telling the truth. I'm interested in finding out what the truth is, and I'm interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I'm not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective. How simple is that? It's why his show gets more than 11 million listens every time he posts an episode.

Substack, the independent newsletter platform where Tangle started, also waded into the discourse by publishing its own defense of free speech and why it does not censor its writers, and the headline says it all. Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse. Substack's vice president of communications, Lulu Cheng Maserve, was more direct on Twitter. If everyone who has ever been wrong about this pandemic were silenced, there would be no one left talking about it at all. Again, it really does seem that simple to me too. Young has a right to use his platform and influence change to Spotify's policies, just as other musicians do too. More power to them. But I'm glad he's losing. However much some of Rogan's content makes me want to pull my hair out, I'm glad Spotify is sticking by him and standing up for open discourse.

One thing seems obvious to me. The longer this fight goes on, the more popular Rogan's show will become. Alright, so that is it for our main topic today. That brings us to a question, a reader-listener question. This one is from Dave in Wheeling, Illinois. He asks, is there a difference between the New Democrat Coalition and Third Way Democrats? If so, how do they differ? Where do blue dogs fit in? Also, is there a difference between a moderate and a centrist? So these are great questions. The fundamental difference is what they are. The

New Democrat Coalition is the largest House Democrat caucus that was formed on ideological grounds. I think they're best described as pro-business or more fiscally conservative as you may imagine a run-of-the-mill Republican. Their most popular members are folks like Representatives Val Demings, Adam Schiff, Seth Moulton, Alyssa Slotkin, and Joaquin Castro. In other words, it's a group of members of Congress who work and vote together. It's a caucus. As for Third Way, it depends which Third Way you're talking about. There is the Third Way non-profit think tank. They are absolutely associated with some politicians, including Joe Biden, who's featured prominently on their website, but their ideals are more center-left across the board, almost certainly left of the New Democrat coalition on some economic issues.

Third-way politics is essentially a fancy way of saying centrism. Blue Dog Democrats, meanwhile, are more conservative than the New Democrat coalition and also a lot smaller. They are mansion-esque Democrats who typically serve in red states. But some Blue Dog Democrats are also in the New Democrat coalition, a good sign that there isn't actually that much space between them. As for moderate and centrist, I define moderate politics as someone who generally operates near the center and has an allergy to far-left or far-right stances. Centrism to me is actually itself a strongly held ideology that I could see moderates not agreeing with, i.e. the cause of being centrist often boxes people in just like the cause of being left or right does. I would consider myself a moderate but not a centrist.

All right, that's it for our reader question today. Reminder, if you ever want to ask something, you can write in. Isaac at readtangle.com, I-S-A-A-C at ReadTangle.com. Next up is our story that matters. This one is another story from the border. The U.S. border is now drawing an increased number of migrants from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, India, and other further away nations than what is typical. For decades, migrant crossings from northern Mexico have typically been dominated by immigrants from Mexico or the Northern Triangle, which is Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. But last month, the combined number of migrants from the Northern Triangle was less than the migrants from other countries in South America and across the Atlantic

Ocean. More than 2,000 Russians and 300 Ukrainians were apprehended, and 800 people from India were allegedly found crossing into Yuma, Arizona. Border officials say the change in demographics reflects a changing strategy for smugglers. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. Six million is the number of monthly listeners Neil Young has on Spotify. Sixty percent is the percentage of Young's worldwide streaming income he may lose by taking his music off of Spotify. 150 million dollars is the amount of money the firm Hypnosis Songs Fund paid for a 50 percent stake in Young's music rights last year. 24 percent is the growth of Spotify's subscriber base in 2020. And 20,000 is the number of podcast episodes related to COVID-19 Spotify

says it has taken down since the beginning of the pandemic. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. This one is an awesome story. From restaurants to ride sharing, Americans are tipping more now than they did before the pandemic. According to multiple experts and data sets, Americans are now leaving tips much more frequently and making them more generous than they did before the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, people tipped on 63% of credit card transactions where tipping was optional. Today, that number is up to 66%. Tipping has grown most in areas where it happens remotely. The percentage of remote transactions in which the consumer tipped when the chance was offered has soared from about 46% before the pandemic to about 86% now, Nathan Boney reports. There's a link to that story in today's newsletter.

All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, go check out the episode description and see some of the ways to do that. Or just, you know, give us a five-star rating, spread the word to friends. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you guys had a great weekend and we'll be back tomorrow. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com.