Spotify and Rogan are the real adults – with insight from The Wall Street Journal

We're big fans of Spotify. The company's stock is held in both BizNews share portfolios – and we're in the process of moving our podcasts over to Spotify-owned Megaphone. We're also avid consumers of insights from its visionary founder and CEO Daniel Ek. Even more so after the past few days. The Swedish-headquartered multinational was thrust into the spotlight after Neil Young and Joni Mitchell very publicly ditched the platform, encouraging other musicians to follow. Their beef is with podcaster Joe Rogan, who, they claim, is spreading disinformation about Covid-19, vaccines and benefits of ivermectin. The piece below by WSJ editorial board member Holman Jenkins is insightful. More relevant, however, is Spotify's response. It stuck with the principle of free speech – unlike Facebook (now Meta) which is paying dearly for a self-righteous censorship policy (see link below – shares dropped 20% overnight). In supporting its podcasting superstar, it's almost as though Ek and Co recalled the words of great scientist Charles Darwin who wrote: "As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved, as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it." – Alec Hogg.Use Spotify? Access BizNews podcasts here..Use Apple Podcasts? Access BizNews podcasts here..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Spotify and Rogan Are the Real Adults.The company meets ageing rockers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell halfway, but it's not good enough for them..By Holman W Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal .Neil Young found a way to remind you he exists. So did Joni Mitchell. These children of the '60s may not recall the spirit of the Berkeley free speech movement, but they do the era's sanctimony, with their ultimatum to Spotify to stop streaming their music if it continues to host the antic, disobedient podcast of comedian and actor Joe Rogan..Only in stereotype are the elderly sweet and meek, at least other than when hulked over by someone disturbingly youthful and vigorous. Judge Richard Posner in his book on aging and human nature noted that older people, less dependent on "transacting with others," actually have less reason than younger people to conceal their obnoxiousness. How much more so two superstars approaching their 80s with a lifetime of royalties in the bank..And yet the story is turning out better than we might have hoped. On receiving their demand, Spotify obliged them by removing their tunes while also acknowledging a responsibility for the occasionally regrettable content of Mr. Rogan's podcast..Mr. Rogan apologized for not policing himself or his guests better, acknowledging that his free-wheeling talkathons did not always adhere to high standards of accuracy or good sense..This was reasonable all round. In the platform vs. publisher debate, Spotify is clearly a publisher because it paid a reported $100 million to distribute his podcasts exclusively..Mr. Rogan understands the difference too. He was willing, instead of prating about free speech, to meet his commercial partner halfway in the impossible work of making everyone happy..This was grown-up behavior, and good to see. Mr. Rogan, demonstrating Judge Posner's point, even went out of his way to declare himself a fan of Mr. Young's music..If more evidence was needed that moral panics have endings as well as beginnings, Twitter, under questioning from CNN, admitted this week it had stopped censoring what it regards as lies about the presidential race.."The 2020 U.S. election is not only certified, but President Biden has been in office for more than a year," a spokesperson explained, implying that censorship would be avoided except in the social media equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater..Utopians might wish it were otherwise, but there is no way to censor lies without censoring the truth. You do only damage by trying. This is a thing that civil libertarians once understood..Progressives trust themselves to distinguish truth from lies, even though they demonstrably fail when the lie serves their interests. They live by the judgment: "I am a thinking person. You are not. You are an algorithm programmed by society. I, as a superior person, must make sure you are programmed with the correct thoughts.".Fear is their real power. If you don't see how often corporate and individual obeisances to the ESG litany are driven by fear rather than conviction, you aren't paying attention..You also aren't paying attention if you haven't noticed how progressives are conveniently ready to stipulate that defending somebody's right to speak is tantamount to agreeing with them..Mr. Rogan's existence ought to make you feel better about our society, though. His success speaks to a desire by his large audience for contradictory, dissenting, off-kilter, even absurd views..Audiences seek controversy not just to open their minds, not just to annoy their betters, but because to hear impertinent, unapproved talk feels like freedom..It's worth a whole other column, and unfortunately a lengthy one, to disentangle the magical thinking of Covid ideology, which got Mr. Rogan in trouble in the first place. Let's be satisfied with an example. All through Monday evening's show, National Public Radio teased a segment about school parents who—get this—are both pro-vaccine and anti-mask. Heads explode, as if masks and vaccines aren't different tools with different uses. Somehow they have to be regarded as ideological totems and embraced as a package..The flight of liberal writers to Substack and other non-mainstream venues in the Covid era is often misinterpreted: It's not because they've had a conservative awakening. They are simply repulsed by such NPR-style stupidity..A final point about Covid ideology. The allegation most repeated against Mr. Rogan is that he has been soft on the need of healthy young people to seek vaccination..Though Mr. Young and Ms. Mitchell are Canadian by birth, they are perhaps fully naturalized in the attitude, manifested by $100 trillion in U.S. unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare, that there's nothing the young don't owe the old..Yes, there are many counterexamples, including many readers of my age who emailed me early in the pandemic to complain that the lockdowns were blighting the prospects of their teenage and 20-something children. But the predatory intergenerational layer of Covid ideology is real and worth mentioning too..* Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. He writes the twice-weekly "Business World" column that appears on the paper's op-ed page on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Spotify and Rogan are the real adults – with insight from The Wall Street Journal

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