What this letter is effectively saying is that you can't share an opinion on anything, even if you have expertise in a field, if it at all goes against the Cathedral.<p>I don't give a <i>damn</i> if someone is wrong. I listen to people who are wrong all the time because that's the only way to sometimes find out if <i>you</i> are wrong yourself.<p>If you read the letter from these doctors, which is linked to in the WP article, all it does is assert that Malone's positions are wrong and dangerous. Are they? Is the fact that you can find a variety of doctors to openly disagree with Malone actually worth something?<p>In actuality, the list of individuals who signed this open letter is <i>padded</i>; I see a nurse practitioner, a science teacher, a PhD student, a medical student, a registered nurse, a nurse practitioner, another registered nurse, a licensed clinical worker... I could go on and on.<p>So is my ability to listen to people to be dictated by nurse practitioners and med school students? <i>Get real.</i><p>When people aren't allowed to hear different opinions or contrary facts, and they aren't supposed to make their own decision that deviates from the mainstream in any way, <i>they are cattle</i>.<p>Although this was pretty much the only JRE episode I bothered to listen to on Spotify in quite some time, I hope Spotify ignores this tripe.
This reminds me of those "scientists" who asserted—with zero evidence—that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin. Not coincidentally, they all turned out to be associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.<p>I'm more interested in hearing arguments supported by evidence than having blind, lemminglike faith in self-proclaimed experts.
Not a big fan of Rogan, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with people speaking their mind, within legal limits; calls for violence etc. We as a society should exercise our greatest restraint for silencing speech, but we are accelerating the silence.
Interesting how the list of names attached to the open letter is mostly not doctors as the article claims.<p>For reference: <a href="https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-letter-to-spotify/" rel="nofollow">https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-l...</a>
I’ve listened to a (very) few Rohan podcasts. He’s not a great interviewer but he has some great guests.<p>But COVID Rogan is something else entirely. He’s gone pure contrarian conspiracy theorist on everything. Many of the things he’s saying are easily disprovable and his guests are even telling him he’s wrong, but he won’t let it go. It’s sad that this is one of the most popular podcasts out there. Stunning that he’s piping misinformation directly to so many people.<p>His conspiracies aren’t even logically consistent. For example, he’s a proponent of monoclonal antibodies because he received them, but strictly against the vaccine because he didn’t. He claims “they” are withholding the monoclonal antibodies to drive more people to the vaccine, while shrugging off the fact that both are made by “big pharma” (in some cases the same companies), and that monoclonal antibodies are orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult to make.
I’d really like to know how “calling out Spotify” is any different from cancel culture. Unless it is specifically your job to spread the truth, I’m not worried one bit if you allow wrong voices to be heard. For instance if the director of the CDC was lying to the public, that would be a scandal, such as if they said they intentionally lied about masks working. But if there was anything middle school teachers have taught us it was that you can’t believe everything you see on the internet or on TV or that a celebrity says. It’s sad really that these people think the public is too stupid to do this and take everything they read with a grain of salt.
“Throughout the covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine.”<p>I don't think they're properly evaluating the distrust created by banning such information. People have far less trust for the pro-vaccine data when they are aware that they do not have equal access to the alternative data. This is amplified when the "misinformation" label is routinely expanded to include not just the contested details, but whole conversations that include things like data directly from the CDC and FDA that other sources do not. Yet the bans are the opposite of surgical.<p>But I think that the worse thing is that people hear the horror stories by word of mouth, over and over again. I certain have. But in the current environment, where online discussion of those stories is suppressed, they do not hear the frequently convincing and valuable rebuttals, because those are often suppressed too for including the claims they are rebutting.<p>"Shut up" is not a persuasive rhetorical technique.
One of the worst fallouts from the pandemic and the Trump presidency
is the autocratic power that has been seized by a relatively small
group who share a lot of the same political views to be the judge
and jury on what is true.<p>It has grown from early mild assertion into a politically grounded smug
movement who loves calling out, cancelling, and mocking those who dont
share their world view.<p>All if that is more or less what you can except for any politically fraction
to seize on. Churches, Guilds whatever is an entity seeking to control speech<p>The real terror is in the fact that a large part of the population do not only
tolerate it, but to some extent reinforces it and welcomes it.<p>In times when society is going through something dramatic and frighting
demagogs pop out of their caverns and hope to become the prophet.<p>For a fraction to decide and dictate to all what is truth may perhaps
start benign but it will metastasize and corrupt into a autocratic
demand for the population to conform unquestionably to the prescribed
dogma.<p>This is never healthy for society, and the longer it is allowed
to grow. It will grow. This type of dictatorial power does not
reach a steady state, it grows into every crevice of society.
The conflict that arises from society ridding itself of it
can become something similar to a civil war.<p>In the US today there are two (major) fractions that claim to
hold the truth. If you do not adhere fully with one side,
you will be labelled as a traitor and belonging to the
other side.<p>This again creates an Overton window where the public is
led to believe that these two views are the only views
that exist. Black and white. Your sports team vs mine.
etc.<p>This has to stop and the only ones who can stop it are the people.
Thankfully we do not have to live our lives with a radio that
has only one channel (or in this case perhaps two)
We dont have to give our adherence to one or the other.
We can make the choice to ignore them.
I think the difference here isn't just that Spotify is hosting this content. It's that Spotify is actively recommending it to people.<p>There's a difference between self discovery of content vs when a platform highlights one above others.
First off, I do think he spread less than 100% truth. I also think vaccines works. But...without vaccines death is rather low at around 4%. Had we allow Wuhan variant covid to spread earlier, alpha, beta, delta, omicron, IHG, deltacron, etc would be neglible and tolerable by public as we would have achieve natural herd immunity by now. What the medical professions failed to highlight is 80% has no symptom and recover just like ordinary flu. Most testings done where underreported causing 4% to appear bigger than necessary. Look at Singapore data that do testings very crazily to some extend (though China probably more but less reliable than SG). Death rate is near 0% and severe cases are extremely low for all variants. Also, medical professions are self-censored. There are doctors they differ opinions to general Fauzi-sponsored one and they will be heavily ostracised. Hence if you have these 200+ doctors against Joe, there at least substantial quiet minority doctors for Joe as well but can't voice their opinions. My personal GP also always remind me to take vaccines if the risk of death/complication is higher than risk of vaccines. Chicken pox vaccines and rabies vaccines are good examples. You can opt not to take Chicken pox vaccine and won't matter much in your life except maybe some scars and agingles later on. You need to take rabies vaccine when you got bitten but doesn't meant you should take it every 3mths to be fully protected for all situation. What we are doing now with covid is very excessive. Doctors (hospitals) are being paid by governments for covid patients with almost no upper bound consteaint. It is in their best interest to maintain these revenue even if doctors work to death. Economics. What is missing here is "measured approach". You do things when it is necessary. You escalate when needed and you de-escalate when things improve. What is the point of omicron wave when it is significantly less severe. Why keep reporting infection rates and deleting any mention of 1. ICU cases and 2. Deaths? HPV has 90% infection rates and proven to cause many cancers, but people isn't exactly dying from it like covid or even flu. Why then we didn't do social distancing for HPV which makes Omicron looks like noobs.
> “Though Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy,” the group wrote in the letter<p>What would a Spotify misinformation policy look like? Who decides what misinformation is?<p>In March 2020 telling people to wear masks was misinformation. A month later telling people <i>not</i> to wear masks was misinformation. I always prefer receiving my misinformation earlier rather than later.
Joe Rogan:
“If you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I’ll go no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. You should — 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,”<p>Also Joe Rogan:
“(I) threw the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds, (including) monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, Z-Pak, prednisone — everything. I also got an NAD drip and a vitamin drip, and I did that three days in a row. Here we are on Wednesday, and I feel great.”