Spotify signs ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ to an exclusive multi-year deal

Ok. But you cant have it both ways.

If this is the official position of google et al, that they should be free to boot people pf their platform. Fine. They are no longer pipes. They are editors for content.

As such. The agnostic pipes defense is no longer valid.

I would like to put my army of lawyers on attack mode to sue the sh*t out of them for copyright infringement, for trafficking stolen property, facilitating crimes etc.

You serve your dish and bow you must eat it.

> I don't know if he got his "day in court", and I'm not sure he deserved one since these platforms can do what they want on an individual basis.

I was making a tongue-in-cheek comment about his many legal troubles, but I also think that he had extended periods on all the platforms that he's been removed from where he knew that he was violating policies and did not change his behavior.

> What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication and then conspiring to censor the same person all at the same time, which is exactly what happened with Alex Jones.

Is this what happened with Alex Jones? The wikipedia article lists a somewhat piecemeal series of bannings in 2018[1]. You can still find videos about alex jones on youtube and there are still conspiracy videos here and there[2] I don't see much evidence that Alex Jones, the person, has been exiled from the public square. He's very much still a subject of valid conversation on the platforms that banned him. I'm not sure how the same platforms I've been using to find his content can be engaged in a conspiracy to censor him.

What you can't find on youtube[3] are video from Alex Jones's own accounts. It's also hard to find videos promoting various theories and ideas that youtube considers dangerous (like covid-19 conspiracies). I don't think this is a problem. I think there are all sorts of problems with the tech ecosystem, but I do not think a public, meandering process where one organization was removed because it continually broke website standards is going to lead us to fascism.

>When someone says "find your own platform", that is a complete dismissal towards someone and their ideas.

I don't think this is true in any situation. If I'm running a fictional video site "teentube" which hosts videos about teenage life in the US, I am not censoring anyone if I refuse to host amazing, essential, gory documentaries on terrorism and current events. Saying "go find another place" is not saying "your content has no value," it's saying "this is not your place!"

In general, I agree that we could use more specialized media hosts and economic models to support them. But it's not like the current crop of media hosts (Alphabet, Facebook, etc) are dealing with fundamentally different questions than the previous crop (ABC, CBS) did in the broadcast TV era. There were no fewer conspiracy theories in the 60s, but good luck getting a tv station to broadcast your tape on one!

>When these companies are all in cahoots and basically agree about everything

I think, to the degree that payment platforms and website hosters are in cahoots, that it is because they are all members of society. That is to say they are subject to international law and the laws of their own country. Within the boundaries of "not breaking international law," I think there's a lot of diversity in terms of perspective.

Edit: To add a summation: There's a world where people are forced out of society without the appropriate process, a world where going "elsewhere" isn't practical. I don't think we're in that world and I don't think Alex Jones is either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Social_media_restri...

[2] I found this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGDuyDyMMDg), which I don't recommend watching, just by searching "alex jones" and scrolling down.

[3] Of course, if you want them, they are right there on infowars. Google will take you straight there.

you make the right point. A lot of people see this as youtube censorship, but the podcast was also available in its purest form: through a RSS decentralized feed.

Now it moves to a walled garden with content unavailable to the outside world.

> You know who else breaks norms? Alex Jones when he peddles lies and threatens lives for profit. He needs to play by society’s rules if he wants to play by society’s rules.

Sounds like a average silicon valley person to me. Google, facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, all of them peddle lies and refuse to play be society's rules. Uber and Doordash are busy destroying local economies and social cohesion to turn a profit. Amazon for all intents and purposes runs a slave operation in it's warehouses.

What really grinds my gears is that these companies engage in such blatant, open hypocrisy while trying to project themselves as some sort of saints.

> Whose lives did Alex Jones threaten?

Is this a genuine question? This is HN, so it should be. However, I’m not sure how you can be this far down into this chain and not know about Sandy Hook, since it is the very incident that pushed him over the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...