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Let me finish my Best Fiends game first. It's friends without the r.

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Rogan had ads on his podcast even before this partnership, and has had them for a long time now. I don't think that adtech is going away as long as there is a cost for the creator to make the content. Rogan (and other podcasters) have to pay for their studios somehow, and as long as the ads remain skippable (ex. at the beginning of the show like Joe has) I'm OK with it.

I don't care about ads, I care about walled gardens. Especially walled gardens that are designed to spy on you. Right now there are basically no metrics adtech companies have for how listeners behave, and this changes that.

Spotify doesn't add ads to music if you pay for it. I don't know about podcasts. If it was a viable business strategy for them to be paid-only, I think they would have done it, I'm pretty sure they make much more profit on paying customers than free ad-supported ones.

Again, ads are not the issue. The freedom to listen without being spied on is.

You really think your http requests aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every podcast is served via a CDN.

I download podcasts in bulk by downloading every available episode, and then listening in the offline audio player of my choice. I repeat every year or three when I catch up on a particular podcast. I'm unwilling to give any further information about myself to podcast publishers.

You really think your phone conversations aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every phonecall is set up via SS7.

For shows that do fresh ad reads every episode, I don't even skip them. Just the slight difference of not being pure repetition every time makes them so much more bearable.

I'm not sure why you think Youtube is "truly free". They run an enormous amount of advertising. Rogan's show has always been ad supported. Possibly you use an ad-blocker, like I do, and don't see them.

The Joe Rogan Experience is currently available on many different platforms, not just YouTube.

This, however, is an exclusive deal with Spotify, so you will only be able to get it from Spotify going forward. Hence less free.

It's not YouTube, but podcasting over rss feeds as a means of distribution that is 'free' in the pertinent sense.

Adtech would actually make it free. Arguably this is more like cable / Netflix than adtech

Now my podcast player and by extension adtech markets know what I listen to, when I listen to it, how long I listen, when I stop, when I fast forward/skip, etc., with no way to opt out. This is not freedom.

You have to pay for cable / Netflix. Spotify is free (with ads).

I pay for Spotify and don't get ads, so its not really adtech for me.

Paying for Spotify does not imply that they cease spying on you, only that they aren't using that information to serve you ads on their platform.