Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Links - 5th July 2022 (1 - Covid-19: Joe Rogan & Spotify)

Meme - "I'VE BEEN DRINKING LOTS OF WATER
CNN: "JOE ROGAN PROMOTES INGESTING LIQUID COMMONLY USED AS ENGINE COOLANT"

Jordan Peterson Reveals Key To Joe Rogan’s Media Success In Single Tweet - "The comment came in response to a report that revealed Rogan’s audience exceeded the traffic of leading news shows, including top programs broadcast on Fox News and CNN, during the third quarter of 2021, according to average viewers per show based on Nielsen and Spotify statistics. “That’s because he doesn’t lie. Or talk down to his audience. Or manipulate for his own narrow advantage. Go @joerogan. See you in three weeks in Austin,” Peterson wrote"

Joe Rogan interview with Dr Robert Malone taken down by YouTube - "The now-viral conversation between Mr Rogan and Dr Malone saw the latter drawing parallels between current American society and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Nazis came into power, saying American society is developing a “mass formation psychosis”.  “It was from, basically, European intellectual inquiry into what the heck happened in Germany in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad. And how did that happen? The answer is mass formation psychosis.  “When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other, and has free-floating anxiety, in a sense that things don’t make sense. We can’t understand it. And then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis. They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” said Mr Malone... The interview came just one day after Dr Malone was banned from Twitter, which also seemingly relates to a Community Guideline violation. The ban was brought up at the very beginning of Dr Malone’s appearance on JRE, with the physician stating: “I try really hard to give people the information and help them to think, not to tell them what to think.”  “But the point is if I’m not — if it’s not okay for me to be part of the conversation, even though I’m pointing out scientific facts that may be inconvenient, then who is who can be allowed?”"

GOP Rep. Submits Joe Rogan’s Controversial Episode To Congressional Record So That Big Tech Can’t Censor It - "Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls submitted Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast with Dr. Robert Malone to the Congressional Record on Monday after it had been removed on YouTube, saying the move will keep it from being censored... “During the interview, Malone, who claims to be part of a collaboration that reportedly created the mRNA technology widely used in the COVID-19 vaccines, talked about vaccines, mandates, amongst other pandemic-related topics”"

Joe Rogan leads move to GETTR after Twitter bans Dr. Robert Malone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene - "GETTR was launched July 4 by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, who told Fox News in an interview at the time that he wanted the social media app to be "independent from social media monopolies, independent from cancel culture; embracing free speech." "It’s been nothing short of phenomenal," Miller told FOX Business in an interview after the app surpassed 1 million downloads in its first days. "It's the fastest-ever social media platform to reach 1 million users – which we were able to do just three days after launch.""

Obese YouTuber criticizes Joe Rogan’s health choices | The Post Millennial - "Resident YouTube blowhard Ethan Klein took aim at popular podcaster and host Joe Rogan on Tuesday, criticizing him for his health and pandemic-related advice. It was not well received. Unable to grasp the irony of his statement, Klein – who is also known as “h3h3 productions” – decided it was his turn to be Twitter’s main character by misrepresenting Rogan’s views"

Meme - "You think Joe Rogan is a health expert?"
"No, I think the health experts that he interviews are health experts."

Opinion | The media slant on Joe Rogan and covid has been wrong. Journalists must do better. - The Washington Post - "Among media critics (and who, after all, is not a media critic — there is so much to criticize), one sees a dangerous trend. Reporters are increasingly urged to be definitive, to call out “liars” and defend “science” and hurl all sorts of Zeus-like thunderbolts adjudicating the Truth. This is a terrible idea... What makes a good reporter is not knowledge. It’s the hunger for knowledge: curiosity, open-mindedness, independence and a willingness to think anew. The good reporter wakes up each day ready to be surprised, ready to see a new thing, or an old thing cast in a new light.  This leads to a corollary observation: Generally, the more reporters know about a subject, the more open-minded they become... a knowledgeable reporter on the climate change beat is one who understands that computer models of future climate involve a lot of guesswork, that the role of greenhouse gases in day-to-day weather events is not as simple as cause and effect, and that the mixture of technological advance and behavioral change necessary to zero out carbon emissions is far more complicated than voting yes for one bill over another.  Political reporters — and I say this with love — rarely know much of anything. Few of us have ever run for office. We are almost never “in the room where it happens,” as Lin Manuel-Miranda put it in his musical “Hamilton.” A political reporter on a typical day is something like a music critic who (a) has no musical experience and (b) doesn’t hear the performance. Instead, we wait outside the concert hall to ask the first violinist, the conductor and the featured soloist how things transpired inside, and read poll results and tweets reflecting audience reaction.  This doesn’t make political coverage worthless, though much of it is. Politics affects lives. It is important. It bears watching. But it does mean that political journalism should be done in a spirit of humility — and the bigger the stage, the more humble the journalists should be. If the city council funds a $1 million contract to build a dog park on Juniper Street, it’s probably fair to report that folks can expect to see some happy dogs on Juniper. But if Congress appropriates $500 billion to change the way electricity is generated and consumed in the United States, we can only speculate as to the impact on atmospheric chemistry in 2050. In my experience, a journalist who admits uncertainty and owns up to mistakes is ultimately more trusted, not less so. (Even opinion writers should be accountable to facts and alive to the unknowable.) For this reason, CNN is wrong to double down on its smug reports that vaccine-skeptic podcaster Joe Rogan treated his coronavirus with “horse dewormer.” He did not, as nearly as I can determine. Rogan’s covid-19 was treated, he said, with a number of medicines, including the anti-parasite drug ivermectin — the same medication that former president Jimmy Carter’s foundation has used to fight the scourge of river blindness in Africa and Latin America. Like many drugs, ivermectin also has veterinary applications.  So far, there isn’t a lot of evidence that ivermectin is a good anti-covid therapy, and federal agencies have warned people who hear about the drug not to consume a paste intended for livestock. But that doesn’t mean Rogan ate horse dewormer. You don’t fight disinformation with disinformation. Not if you’re a good reporter. CNN’s pundits might not have sneered at Rogan if he had toed the line on coronavirus vaccines — even if it is a line that is underinformed and overconfident. I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for these vaccines. They are wonderfully effective, and the speed of their development was a scientific triumph. However: The vaccines are new. There are unanswered questions about long-term effectiveness and potentially unforeseen effects. And even vaccinated people keep dying — albeit at much lower rates. It’s understandable that some — such as Rogan — will air doubts. CNN shouldn’t be stigmatizing their natural skepticism.  It is not the journalist’s job to tell people what to think. The job is to question, to learn and to share those learnings — as well as their limits. In weighing the credibility of sources, we must first examine ourselves."

Opinion | CNN defends Joe Rogan treatment in fiery statement - The Washington Post - "So there’s an animal application and human application for ivermectin. What separates the two? A lot, as it turns out. An ivermectin dose for horses can be as high as 1,200 milligrams, according to Scott Phillips of the Washington Poison Center in Seattle. “It’s really the dose that makes the poison,” says Phillips — even too much tap water or salt can be poisonous.  With those considerations in mind, consider how CNN framed Rogan’s use of ivermectin... There’s a reason for reciting these transcripts. They turn up a consistent formulation from multiple CNN voices that surely wasn’t a sober recitation of the facts. By highlighting that ivermectin is a horse dewormer, and downplaying that ivermectin has important uses for people, CNN facilitates a certain assumption among its viewers. Namely, that Rogan had been haunting the aisles of Tractor Supply.  After hearing Rogan’s concerns about how CNN cast the issue, Gupta said, “They shouldn’t have said that.”... “As long as the drug is approved for some humans, it seems to me irrelevant that it’s approved for animals, except that this is the way that people have gone about procuring the drug and in so doing have put themselves at risk,” says Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a former FDA associate commissioner... CNN’s statement sounds more like the work of an advocacy group than a journalism outfit. The “issue,” actually, begins and ends with the integrity of CNN’s content. If we take Rogan’s prescription claim at face value — and CNN hasn’t challenged it — then the network’s coverage was slanted in some cases and straight-up incorrect in others. “[I]f you’re prescribed the FDA human version [of ivermectin] then you’re not taking a horse pill,” notes Phillips in an email.  So in this instance, you don’t have to endorse Rogan to abhor CNN’s coverage of this topic. Here’s a network, after all, that prides itself on impeccable factual hygiene, a place where there’s no conceptual hair too fine to split, no political statement too sprawling to flyspeck. It’s tough living by your own standards. If CNN wants to describe ivermectin in a way that doesn’t slime the people who take it, the Guardian provides a fine template: “a drug used against parasites in humans and livestock.”"

Woke Spotify Staffers Reportedly 'Outraged' by Joe Rogan's Show

As Joe Rogan’s Platform Grows, So Does Liberal Backlash. Why? - "What is it, by the standards of U.S. political and media orthodoxy, that makes Rogan so radioactive? In March, billionaire and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg — who spoke at the 2004 GOP Convention in the middle of the Iraq War and war on terror to urge the reelection of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and who presided over and repeatedly defended the racially disparate “stop and frisk” police practice — endorsed Joe Biden for president, and Biden not only accepted but celebrated the endorsement, praising Bloomberg in the process. What are the standards that make Michael Bloomberg an acceptable endorsement to tout but not Joe Rogan, given that the billionaire three-term mayor and former Republican has taken far worse positions and done far more damage to far more people than the podcaster could ever dream of doing?  That question is even more compelling when it comes to the Biden/Harris campaign’s touting of the endorsement of former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, widely blamed for the criminally negligent lack of clean drinking water which plagued primarily African American residents of Flint, Michigan, for many years. Not only did the Biden campaign accept Snyder’s endorsement, but they issued a press release trumpeting it. What makes all of this more confounding is that Rogan is a fairly basic political liberal on almost every issue: He believes in the need for greater social spending for the nation’s poor and working class, opposes war and militarism, favors drug legalization, is adamantly pro-choice and pro-LGBT rights, and generally adheres to liberal orthodoxies on standard political debates. That is why he was so fond of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, and why Andrew Yang — whose signature issue was the universal basic income — was one of the few candidates he deemed worth talking to.  The objections typically raised to Rogan concern his questioning of some of the very recent changes brought about by trans visibility and equality, particularly asking whether it is fair for trans women who have lived their entire lives and entered puberty as biological men to compete against cis women in professional sports (a question also asked — and even answered in the negative — by LGBT sports pioneer Martina Navratilova, among many others), and whether young children are emotionally and psychologically equipped to make permanent choices about gender reassignment therapies and gender dysphoria.  If embracing and never questioning the full panoply of trans advocacy is a prerequisite to being permitted in decent society, I seriously doubt many prominent Democratic politicians will pass that test (even Kamala Harris, from San Francisco and the very blue state of California, has a very mixed record on trans rights). Moreover, though polling data is sparse, the data that is available show that there is still much work to do in this area: Only a small minority of Americans believe it is fair to allow trans women to participate in female professional sports.   If the standard is that anyone who even entertains debates over the maximalist and most controversial questions in this very new and evolving social movement is to be cast out as radioactive, liberalism and the Democratic Party will be a very small group. It will also have to proceed without the vast majority of political leaders whom they currently follow. Even on this issue of trans rights, Rogan’s views are in accord with the standard Democratic Party view: He advocates full legal protection and dignity for the right of trans people to live with their gender respected.   The other critique centers on Rogan’s willingness to invite on his show various pundits with far-right views. That’s a bizarre criticism of someone who purposely hosts a program designed to foster dialogue with people across the political spectrum. After all, if one employs the blatantly irrational tactic of attributing to Rogan the views of all his guests, he would be simultaneously everything and nothing. But again, this is a standard which few if any Democratic Party leaders could meet. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders all went on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, while Rep. Adam Schiff has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s program. Speaking with people with differing views is called politics and journalism, and if one is decreed radioactive for interacting with people with bad views, few will survive that standard. (Liberals also point to the fact that Rogan said he could not vote for Biden over Trump, but that was not on ideological grounds but based on the same narrative that Democratic political and media elites spent all of last year disseminating: namely, that Biden’s cognitive decline makes him unfit for the job.)   While Rogan is politically liberal, he is — argues former Obama 2008 campaign strategist and Rogan listener Shant Mesrobian — culturally conservative, by which he does not mean that Rogan holds conservative views on social issues (again, he is pro-choice and pro-LGBT rights). He means that Rogan exudes culturally conservative signals: He likes MMA fighting, makes crude jokes, hunts, and just generally fails to speak in the lingo of the professional managerial class and coastal elites. And it is those cultural standards, rather than political ones, that make Rogan anathema to elite liberal culture because, Mesrobian argued in a viral Twitter thread, liberals care far more about proper culture signaling than they do about the much harder and more consequential work of actual politics."

Spotify sides with Joe Rogan, removes Neil Young’s music - "The legendary folk singer gave the streaming behemoth an ultimatum earlier this week, saying he refused to allow his music on the same platform as Joe Rogan. The “Heart of Gold” singer accused Rogan and his podcast of spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines.  Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million to be the exclusive home of Rogan’s show. Young, meanwhile, stands to lose 60% of his streaming income from his defiant stance"
"It's good that Spotify removed someone who spreads bigoted medical misinformation. Neil Young's comment on AIDS, that “You go to a supermarket and you see a f*ggot behind the fuckin’ cash register, you don’t want him to handle your potatoes.” is just one example of why he should never have been allowed on the platform in the first place"

Cameron Winklevoss on Twitter - "Neil Young: Keep on rockin' in the free world.
Neil Young: Unless I don't like your views. Then I will try to silence you like the Soviet Union."

Meme - "Singers in the 1960s: i will go to jail or die for free speech
singers in the 2020s: ufc man interview ppl i don't like. plz ban him"

Meme - Hollaria Briden, Esq. @HollyBriden: "Our five year-old son Jasper has been upset since Joe Rogan forced Neil Young off of Spotify and this morning we found this on his door. Spotify is literally killing people. They must bring back Neil Young and make Joe Rogan apologize. #BoycottSpotify #NeilYoung #JoeRogan"

Meme - "WHEN YOU ARE SO WOKE
YOU CANCEL YOURSELF."
Won't stop liberals claiming cancel culture isn't real. So much for "if you don't like a book, don't read it"

Rob Sheridan on Twitter - "Think about this for a moment: A private company is deciding they don’t want something on their own platform. That is how the free market works. You have a “right” to post on YouTube the same way I have a “right” to take a shit in your living room. Post your trash elsewhere."
Rob Sheridan on Twitter - "@THR Imagine pulling a beloved music legend's entire catalog instead of telling a podcast bro to stop spreading unchecked lies about life-saving vaccines during a global pandemic that has killed 6 million people. Tells you where @Spotify's priorities are."

Nolte: Why Neil Young (and Most Celebrities) Are Fascists - "Why would an anti-establishment hippie like Neil Young suddenly turn fascist and want to blacklist Joe Rogan to protect the establishment from criticism?  Why did Sean Penn embrace a left-wing Nazi like Hugo Chavez? Why is left-wing Hollywood sucking up to China’s Nazis?  Why does a 60s icon like Cher call for the imprisonment of those she disagrees with?  Why does a free spirit like Bette Midler demand all women stop having sex with men?  Why does a Whoopi Goldberg rhetorically lynch an innocent man?  Why does television’s most famous anti-establishment liberal now protect the establishment by accusing those he disagrees with of “sedition?”... Neil Young and Rob Reiner and Bette Midler never believed in free speech or freedom or live and let live or individual liberty or opposed McCarthyism and racial terrorism… That was all bullshit. What they wanted was the right to do whatever they wanted to do. They were never fighting for a principle or for anyone else. It was always all about them. They simply hid this selfish crusade behind words like “freedom” and “justice.” Beneath it all, just below the surface, they were always bullies, tyrants, and fascists. They were always willing to push people around and lash out with prudery, censorship, lynch mobs, and blacklists. They were always ready to become the Moral Majority, to reinstate the Production Code, and ape Joe McCarthy if it meant getting what they want. And now we see that because it’s right out in the open."

Meme - BrooklynDad_Defiant!: "I can guarantee you RIGHT NOW that I will not be taking anything called the trump vaccine."
BrooklynDad_Defiant!: "Big props to Neil Young.
Fuck Spotitfy."
Basically to liberals, "misinformation" is anything that goes against their narrative

Debra Messing: "THIS WILL KILL PEOPLE!! A NEW VACCINE not going through the safety protocols will lead to DEATHS. #TrumpVirus #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #Trump Terrorism #TrumplsATraitoir" Debra Messing: "Thank you @barrymanilow for taking a surefooted step to support science, and protest potentially lethal misinformation disseminated by @Spotify via #JoeRogan. Over 800,000 Americans have DIED in 2 years. LIVES must come before revenue. #Spotifydeleted"
Ironically the Barry Manilow thing was fake news

Meme Steve Biffle: "You could not pay me to take this vaccine."
Steve Biffle Replying to @barrymanilow: "Very disappointing to see that you support the spreading of covid disinformation by your staying with Spotify. I guess the money means more to you than people's lives."

Meme - Humphrey Bogarts hungover pissed of...: "l am not taking any fucking rushed vaccine full of possum tranquilizer and Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope"
Humphrey Bogarts hungover pissed of...: "Boycott Spotify......."

‘Cherry Picked Bullsh**’: Twitter Users Responds To Claims Spotify Lost $2 Billion Following Neil Young Exit - "“Spotify Lost More Than $2 Billion in Market Value After Neil Young Pulled His Music Over Joe Rogan’s Podcast,” a Variety headline announced Saturday. Many other publications had similar declarations, which appeared to link the two events. But the text of the article, commenters pointed out, led to different conclusions."

The Spotify Backlash Over Joe Rogan Never Had a Chance - "Five years after the #DeleteUber hashtag ushered in the first broad Big Tech boycott — and failed to gain any long-term traction — calls to do the same thing to Spotify over Joe Rogan have sputtered out after hardly a week.  On Monday morning, the world of capital rallied around the Swedish streaming company, sending the company’s stock up more than 12 percent — a surge that, if it holds, would be one of its best days ever on the New York Stock Exchange — despite major artists such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell bolting over the platform’s most popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, airing COVID-19 misinformation. The tension reached a head before the markets opened with Rogan taking to Instagram to offer a semi-apology for giving the mic to COVID cranks, saying he will change his format around such controversial guests. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the company would label podcast episodes that have misinformation in them. It was all very neat and sounded nice even as it added up to very little. This is the playbook now, and it works... ultimately, if anyone heeds the call to #DeleteSpotify, what are their options? There’s Apple, the largest company in the world by value — not exactly an inspiring choice for anyone trying to show their activist bona fides, given its questionable history on human rights in China. Tidal, the streaming upstart that had Jay-Z’s imprimatur, was recently bought by Jack Dorsey’s payments company. Other platforms like Bandcamp and Soundcloud don’t have the catalogue to compete. And Neil Young, the guy who tried to start his own streaming service and has fought music-industry executives like David Geffen in the past, directed his fans to stream his music through Amazon Music. Fucking Amazon? To have Young running into the arms of Jeff Bezos, a man who has become the planet’s second-wealthiest person amid his company’s sales of COVID misinformation and counterfeit masks, whose company didn’t inform warehouse workers about COVID outbreaks and has eased up on safety conditions, doesn’t make for a clear or satisfying choice for anyone who might be angry over Rogan."
Too bad they apologised, given that apologising just emboldens liberals who, smelling blood, will hate them even more

Meme - BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan: "I spent the past 13 years curating a MONSTER musical library, with thousands of albums, songs, and playlists... And Apple is just going to KILL iTunes???? What, you're not making enough PROFIT from all those kids in China working for pennies a day?"
BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan: "Don't mind me, I'm just listening to Neil Young on Apple Music, where his music now lives."

𝕁𝕠𝕤𝕙 𝕊𝕫𝕖𝕡𝕤 on Twitter - "If @Spotify dropped @JoeRogan, he’d go from being the man with the biggest podcast in the world to being nothing more than- [CHECKS NOTES] - the man with the biggest podcast in the world"
Bret Weinstein on Twitter - "This really isn’t about Rogan. Joe is a singular point of failure for narrative control. As they marginalize every other such voice, people flock to Rogan. Shutting Joe down—and preventing future Joes by threatening platforms—is about protecting power from scrutiny. Permanently."

Seerut K. Chawla on Twitter - "Joe Rogan is so well liked- including by people who don’t agree with him- because he would never use his clout to force people to agree with him. Let alone try to censor or smear them."

Leon Benjamin on Twitter - "Very hard to wrap my head around 50% of the nation believing the gravest threat to our country is Joe Rogan’s podcast."

Meghan McCain on Twitter - "I think a lot of people are really missing the point. Ask yourself why so many Americans have fled mainstream media and gone to Joe Rogan. He gets 100 million listeners a month and Jim Acosta can’t even break half a million in primetime. Why doesn’t anyone trust you anymore?"

Welcome to the PMRC, Neil Young - "Back in the ‘80s, a senator’s wife named Tipper Gore got sick of her kids listening to music she didn’t like, so she started an organization called the Parents Music Resource Center. The PMRC compiled a list of songs they found unacceptable, including “Darling Nikki” by Prince, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, and “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper. Then Tipper used her political connections to convince the Senate to hold hearings about this supposedly dangerous music.  A lot of Americans decided they liked what popular entertainers were saying, and a handful of busybodies tried to put a stop to it. “If we don’t want to listen to it, nobody should get to listen to it. We need to protect the helpless unwashed masses from themselves!”  Sound familiar?... you can watch Dee Snider’s entire Senate testimony here. By the time he was done, the PMRC had been exposed for the meddling, hypocritical clowns they were. Their brief moment of relevance was over, at the hands of a guy who looked like Bette Midler transitioning into a Wookie.  The PMRC did get a consolation prize, though: the “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker you can find on a lot of cassettes and CDs from the era. Y’know, the sticker that made kids want to listen to what was inside because their parents wouldn’t like it.  Over the next couple of decades, the PMRC ended up helping a lot of artists sell a lot of records... Decades later, a bunch of old hippies are doing the same thing to Joe Rogan. Maybe the dementia is setting in, and they don’t remember the PMRC anymore. Or maybe they do remember it but imagine they’re somehow different.  They’re not. It’s the same old crap. The erstwhile rebels have become the establishment, and now they’re making the same arguments they once scorned. Neil Young used to be the man, but now he’s The Man.  Now PMRC stands for Pushy Musicians Reviving Censorship.  And they’re getting the same self-negating result their predecessors got. Spotify just announced… parental advisory labels! Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1985... There’s one big difference, though. Back when I was a kid, all the people telling me which records I should and shouldn’t listen to were older than me. But in 2021, a lot of the people pushing for censorship weren’t even born yet when Dee Snider faced down Tipper and her fellow hens. It feels like my generation is the only one alive that isn’t full of censorious scolds... A lot of the people who want to silence Joe Rogan are also freaking out because Art Spiegelman’s Maus was removed from the middle-school curriculum of a little town in Tennessee that you hadn’t heard of last week and won’t remember next week. Hey, these people gotta take their daily Two Minutes Hate wherever they can get it.  Remember: Censorship is bad unless self-described “progressives” are doing it."
Not to mention, if not including a book on a curriculum is "censorship", virtually all books in the world are censored

‘Joe Rogan Is The Media’s New Trump’: Efforts To Deplatform Rogan Podcast Grow, Defenders Rip Attacks - "“The anti-censorship crowd wants to de-platform Joe Rogan,” criticized columnist Erick Erickson. “The anti-racists want kids to be defined by their race and class. The anti-segregations wants kids locked into public schools with no way out. Post-modernism is really just insanity pretending its the sane one.” “These musicians are willing to pull their music from Spotify over Joe Rogan [but] so far none of them have said anything about Apple’s links to Chinese human rights violations,” commented Lauren Chen. “Strange…”... “Elite liberal media types want Joe Rogan banned for the same reason they call anti-mandate truckers fascists—both speak for millions of working class people who were abandoned when liberals got rich and woke. Rather than confront this, they silence or smear anyone who exposes it,” argued Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon.  “Liberal elites believe they should be able to tell the hoi polloi what to think, so they imagine the people they envy—like Rogan with his 11 million listeners—have that influence,” she added. “The truth is the opposite: Rogan has that audience because he mirrors his listeners’ skepticism.” “These artists have a right to remove content in protest. But make no mistake, their intent is to force Spotify to censor Joe Rogan so that you and I can no longer choose for ourselves whether to listen. They’re on the wrong side of history,” posted intellectual Bret Weinstein. “Truth persuades. It doesn’t coerce.”"
"The Left is desperate for a villain. It's the only way they can source meaning."

Neil Young Says He’s Against ‘Censorship’ After Spotify Removes Music Over Joe Rogan Dispute - "Neil Young wrote Friday that he has “never been in favor of censorship” and “supports free speech”"
Freedom is slavery

Meme - Kanan Vitolo (Liberty Page) @KananVitolo: "All of these artists threatening to leave Spotify were fine with sharing the platform with R Kelly (sex trafficking), Chris Brown (domestic assault), Vince Neil (murder), Marilyn Manson (sexual assault), John Lennon (domestic assault), 6ix9ine (conspiracy to murder), + many more."

Joe Pompliano on Twitter - "Spotify didn't choose Joe Rogan over Neil Young. Neil Young chose to deplatform himself because a $30 billion company wouldn't cede to censorship."

Hux on Twitter - "This Neil Young thing is an attack on Spotify by The Blackstone Group, who owns 50% of Neil's songs (via Hipgnosis), ran by guys from Lehman Brothers who keep the former Pfizer CEO as an advisor. Expect more "owned" artists to follow suit."

Joni Mitchell, Other Aging Rockers Pull Music From Spotify In Support Of Neil Young - "Mitchell also linked to an open letter issued to Spotify by 270 “scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators” denouncing Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” specifically the December 31 episode featuring Dr. Robert Malone, the medical researcher who helped pioneer the mRNA vaccine technology used in the COVID-19 vaccines. The signees, many of whom are doctors without expertise in infectious disease or immunology, veterinarians, therapists, nurses, students, or podcasters themselves, claimed that Rogan “has a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic,” and said Spotify “has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.”... Singer Liza Minelli also announced she was pulling her music from Spotify... David Crosby, who sang with Young in the folk supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, told another user that he would pull his music from the service if he owned it... A number of users also claimed that singer Barry Manilow was also pulling his music from Spotify, but Manilow dismissed those rumors. “I recently heard a rumor about me and Spotify,” Manilow tweeted. “I don’t know where it started, but it didn’t start with me or anyone who represents me.”"

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