Curation, Not Censorship

Felice told me Scott Galloway took his podcast down from Spotify, and he pointed to Roxane Gay's opinion piece in the "Times" as an explanation.

I'd proffer that most people defending Joe Rogan have no idea who these two people are. And that's fine, no one can know everything, but you don't want to live in an echo chamber.

I go to the Fox News site every day. I listen to the channel on SiriusXM. Do I agree with everything they have to say? No. But I want to know what they are thinking, I don't want to live in a bubble, I want to have context.

Furthermore, they sometimes say something, even Tucker Carlson, that makes me think, that stimulates me to do more research. Same with the Op-Ed pages of the "Wall Street Journal." But Carlson and his ilk have poisoned the water. Despite quoting from the "New York Times" ad infinitum, they denigrate it and constantly tell YOU not to read it, that it's untrustworthy hogwash. And that is possible, but you'd have to read the "Times" to form an opinion.

Just like all the people saying one has to listen to Joe Rogan. I certainly have, but this is not what we're talking about, the fact that even a high percentage of the show might not be inflammatory, that does not mean he gets a pass on the rest of it. Whoopi Goldberg mischaracterizes the Holocaust, and she's off the air for two weeks. Joe Rogan spreads misinformation and he escapes unscathed. And Joe reaches more people!

I point you to Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson's letter about Whoopi to the aforementioned "Times":

"According to a nationwide survey of millennials and Gen Z conducted in 2020 by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (https://bit.ly/3gnDvT8), more than 60 percent of respondents were unaware that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and nearly half could not name a single Nazi death camp. And more than 10 percent believed that Jews actually caused the Holocaust."

https://nyti.ms/3sfdew8

If you're not horrified by this, you're an anti-Semite.

You think if you know something, everybody else does too. But the years keep passing, they're constantly making new people, it turns out we have to educate young people, which is why misinformation is such a huge problem. There are a ton of Holocaust-deniers. Should they be able to have a platform on Spotify?

So, what does writer Roxane Gay have to say?

1. We don't live in a vacuum. With a large audience comes a responsibility to the truth, things you might get away with saying amongst your friends don't pass muster if they're widely disseminated.

And Ms. Gay also makes the point that we DON'T live in a vacuum, we are all in it together and we have to behave accordingly.

But the heart of the matter is:

2. "I would never support censorship. And because I am a writer, I know that language matters. There's a difference between censorship and curation. When we are not free to express ourselves, when we can be thrown in jail or even lose our lives for speaking freely, that is censorship. When we say, as a society, that bigotry and misinformation are unacceptable, and that people who espouse those ideas don't deserve access to significant platforms, that's curation. We are expressing our taste and moral discernment, and saying what we find acceptable and what we do not."

BINGO!

Furthermore:

3. "Too many people believe that the right to free speech means the right to say whatever they want, wherever, whenever, on whatever platform they choose, without consequence. They want free speech to exist in a vacuum, free from context, free from criticism. That, like the idea that living in an off-the-grid yurt frees one from the demands, responsibilities and complicities of human society, is an illusion."

There's that nonexistent vacuum again.

And hammering the nail in:

4. "Spotify does not exist in a vacuum, and the decisions it makes about what content it hosts have consequences. To say that maybe Mr. Rogan should not be given unfettered access to Spotify's more than 400 million users is not censorship, as some have suggested. It is curation."

And this is why misinformation is so dangerous:

5. "Misinformation has contributed to tens of millions of people believing the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. It contributed to the Jan. 6 insurrection. And misinformation has helped prolong the Covid-19 pandemic and encouraged people to do dangerous things such as injecting bleach or taking Ivermectin..."

Finally:

6. " The platforms allowing this misinformation to flourish and intensify consistently abdicate their responsibility to curate effectively. Instead, they offer tepid, ambiguous, and ineffective policies. They frame doing nothing as a principled stand to protect free speech, but really, they're protecting their bottom line."

https://nyti.ms/3slhslB

Instead of having a knee-jerk reaction based on what you've heard from your team, you'd be better off DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH by hearing opposing ideas, which will help you formulate and solidify your thoughts.

Which is why I'm excerpting so many of Ms. Gay's words here. Because to get someone to click on a link can be nearly impossible, never mind get them to read what you've linked to, especially if it's in the "New York Times.

But none of the haters e-mailing me ever goes this deep. All they say is it's CENSORSHIP! We're all entitled to FREE SPEECH! And we don't know enough about Joe Rogan.

We've watched and listened to clips of Joe Rogan, is that not enough? Are we supposed to buy that 1/6 was "legitimate political discourse"? Are we supposed to deny what we saw and heard?

Ms. Gay has illustrated how it's not censorship, and it truly is not. Certainly not under the law. And she's taking Spotify to task for being hands-off, which it is, all in the name of profits and the tech wall, where nobody with a platform wants to give an inch, especially if it's gray, they can think in black and white, zeros and ones, but not concepts.

And I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret. If you're running a billion dollar company you don't have TIME to read and explore every opinion. So, you RELY on direction and feedback to be in touch with what is going on at your company, the impact of its actions, the context.

I'll listen to your explanation why Rogan deserves a pass, I just haven't gotten a reasonable one yet. Just full throttle hatred saying it's censorship and he should be able to say and do whatever he wants, irrelevant of the consequences. But no one should believe this, NO ONE! No one is inviolate, some day they're going to come after you, and you want the same rights, the same protections. Hell, that's how we got into this mess, because white people were and still are afraid of losing power, their dominance. And the future always comes, and more often than not it's positive. What is inherently wrong with having a rainbow of colors in society? I think it actually ends up reducing hatred.

So read this Roxane Gay piece.

And I don't think Joe Rogan should be excised for all time from Spotify. But I do believe he should pay a price, just like Whoopi Goldberg. He needs to be told the truth, he has to reflect on the fact that his words have consequences. Just like Trump's. Trump said, with no verification whatsoever, that he won the election. And now tens of millions of people believe him, even though there's not a shred of information supporting this.

And don't tell me it's both sides. Democrats lost the governorship in Virginia, they didn't say there was a flaw in the system, that really their candidate won, THEY ACCEPTED IT!

No one wins all the time.

Unless you rig the game. And if you do, people lose faith in the game. Integrity is everything. Do you really want to support the sign stealing of the Houston Astros? I think not.

Which is just my point, to think. Roxane Gay has framed this issue in a way that anybody can understand it. Assuming you're open to new information, which sadly too many people are not.


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