What does memoryholing mean?

Some episodes are no longer available, as if Spotify wants everyone to forget that they even exist. Episodes featuring Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones etc. In other words, guests that offend the progressive attitudes of Silicon Valley

Rejecting people that promote the "Sandy Hook was fake!" conspiracy theory and even harassing the parents of murdered children isn't a way to avoid offending the "progressive attitudes of Silicon Valley". It's just common decency. ... Can we at least set the bar at that level -- that we _don't_ harass the parents of murdered children for clicks?

"We must remove that stuff because those ideas are dangerous/offensive, and if you disagree with removing it then you must agree with that filth!" is extremely helpful to the sorts of people who do edgy stuff to attract attention and then try to memoryhole it once they get a big audience.

I think the truth is the opposite: there are no dangerous ideas. "Sandy Hook was fake!" is stupid and wrong, but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I think this is naïve. Taking Sandy Hook as the example, do you think Alex Jones' discussion on Rogan increased or decreased its spread?

It's very easy to pick up new conspiracies for a conspiracy-minded person. It's very hard to drop them.

What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns", which is exactly what the kind of behavior you're promoting attempts to accomplish.

You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.

> What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns" > You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.

There is ample evidence since at least World War I, that both 'positive' PSA type information and 'negative' propaganda/counter information/psy ops absolutely have an effect.

Reminder that the Wakefield fraud in 1998, on M.M.R. vaccines and autism, started a negative sentiment towards vaccination and is directly attributed to the measles outbreaks (and deaths) across the developed world (Amplified by Oprah's platform). [1]

Reminder that still today many people will claim carrots give you better vision (they are indeed healthy). This was a counter-info operation from the British, claiming they were providing Air Control with carrots, in order to hide the existing of newly invented RADAR technology against German Bombers. [2]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand...

The argument isn't that false information doesn't have an effect. It's that your attempts to manipulate people through censorship has the opposite effect.

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

I know about psyops, but what is "PSA type information"? (What is "PSA" for?)

(Agreed btw that most humans are easy to manipulate. How interesting about the carrots, I like to eat, for the eyes partly)

I made the mistake to assume the acronym PSA was known.

Public Service Announcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service_announcement

Ok thanks :-) (I guess it is in the US)

So we just be happy with the every growing cult that the children who were murdered were crisis actors? Nah, think we can do better than that.

And keeping Jones off of Rogan would've accomplished what? Someone who thinks the gummint is out to git 'em would believe a different 'gummint is out to gitcha' conspiracy theory instead?

I don't think you can win that battle. The 'Proctor & Gamble are satan worshipers' meme spread across the country before the internet existed. You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.

>You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.

You can do both. There is evidence that deplatforming works. It isn't perfectly effective, but not giving cranks access to the biggest megaphones and most virulent information-spreading engines in human history does in fact seem to inhibit their ability to spread. Doing so doesn't stop anyone from engaging with or ridiculing them.

But, point of order, we've been "engaging and ridiculing" for years now, it hasn't worked yet. Everyone says sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as far as I can see, this particular strain of infection feeds on sunlight.

"Deplatforming" works, because what you just did is use a nicer sounding euphemism for censorship. Obviously with censorship you can hinder the spread of information, regimes like the CCP do this very successfully. The question is at what cost, and who decides what is misinformation? Does it actually result in a net positive for society over time?

The most livable societies I know are all open societies. Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation. Maybe saying we need more restrictions on speech is a dangerous idea. Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?

>The most livable societies I know are all open societies.

If by "open" societies you mean societies in which no form of "censorship" is practiced by any entity, at any level, then no, you do not, because such societies do not exist. Even the United States has limits placed on speech at the Federal level (the level limited by the First Amendment) and elsewhere. Even public squares are regulated. And on top of everything else, society itself imposes "censorship" through cultural and social norms.

Certainly speech on private property can be regulated. You can't go into a restaurant and start campaigning or venting about the government. Platforms on the web, which are also private property, have always been likewise regulated by their owners. I guarantee this is the case in whatever livable societies you're referring to.

>Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation.

Yes, the slippery slope argument, all forms of censorship must inevitably lead to arbitrary censorship something something Orwell something Stalinist purges. At this point it's been invoked so often that it's become something of a thought-terminating cliche. All I can say is I don't believe that the ability of site owners and moderators to police and control content - an ability they've had forever mind you - will somehow inevitably lead to the boot stomping on our heads forever. If you disagree we'll have to agree to disagree.

After all, as stated earlier, there are no societies in which no form of censorship occurs. If the slippery slope argument were valid, all societies would currently be dictatorships. That societies exist which you consider "open" suggests that

>Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?

Lobby whom? We're talking about the policies of specific private entities, you're the one who predictably brought up CCP style authoritarianism despite no one actually arguing for governments to "deplatform" anyone from society. But sure - if you think my speech is doing real world harm in the same way as Alex Jones or anti-vaxxers, feel free to "lobby" the mods about it. That would, after all, be your free speech right would it not?

And yet increasing cases of such censorship are exactly what we observe. A recent extreme example was an Oxford professor of epidemiology who had his post removed for 'false information'. They're also outright banning all News in Australia now: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/02/18/exper...

>feel free to "lobby" the mods about it.

Sure, we both know they won't remove you. If I were an elite and actually had the power to have your voice removed from all popular platforms, as well as access to Visa transactions and banking etc. like it happened to Jones, you'd still support it, right?

It's of course known these Silicon Valley corporations aren't really multi-billion dollar businesses, but collectivized people who have personhood and free speech rights. By creating oligopolies and controlling what information we view, they only exercise their rights as citizens the world.

> There is evidence that deplatforming works.

'Works' in what sense? Does it make the sort of people who believe this stuff less credulous? Or does it just make them less likely to listen to the specific blowhard being deplatformed, and less likely to believe the specific conspiracy theory being peddled? It's not like there's a shortage; both conspiracy theories and con-men are fungible.

(And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true. If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?)

Let me ask you this - if deplatforming doesn't work, what are all of the people concerned about it worried about?

It works in the sense that it deprives people of the power-multiplying capabilities of large platforms to spread disinformation. It doesn't stop the spread, but it does slow the spread. Yes, Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists would still exist without Alex Jones egging them on, but there would have been fewer of them, and they might not have been so invested in the meme that they decided to harass victims of the shooting.

>And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true.

Yes, that's why I'm making it against the first group, and not the second or third. I'm saying if you're spreading patently ridiculous nonsense like "Sandy Hook was a hoax," and that ridiculous nonsense is doing actual societal harm, it's perfectly legitimate for platforms to decide that you should take your big breadboard and tinfoil hat elsewhere.

>If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?

I'm not supporting deplatforming in the case of simple political disagreement, so in that case, no.

I think the main thing we disagree on is: I don't think Alex Jones has any power, or changes anyone's mind. He doesn't have a silver tongue, a deft wit, or evidence on his side. He's just a schmuck who tosses out bullshit to see what sticks.

What you're dancing around, though, is that you can't talk about why this particular piece of bullshit sticks if you're pretending it's apolitical. The Sandy Hook hoax idea, as I understand it, is the theory that there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights, and they staged a fake school shooting to gain support. Right?

Well, you can pin the second bit on Alex Jones, at least partly, but the other part, the "there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights" part, that's a meme that the mainstream right has been pushing relentlessly for something like two generations. And it is not a conspiracy theory; it's literally true (albeit often exaggerated).

So my point, the reason I think deplatforming Jones would be ineffectual, is that the damage is already done. A generation has been convinced that the anti-gun brigade is so powerful and pernicious that faking a school shooting is something they might realistically do. That is the problem. I don't know if that problem is solveable, but I don't think deplatforming people like Alex Jones really affects it.

This description of Alex Jones doesn't sit well with the fact that Jones was a friend of a sitting POTUS and has thousands of fanatical listeners driving around with 'InfoWars' bumperstickers. He may be a blithering loon but he's also powerful and influential.

Looking at things through a consequentialist soda straw like that is a terrible way to make decisions -- it is like trying to decide if I will drive or walk solely based on the number of birds I might kill. Decisions are much larger than this single aspect.

Some people hearing a crazy idea might adopt it. Some might criticize it. Some might learn how crazy ideas work. Some might adopt it for a little while, then reject it, and be wiser through the experience. Someone who goes on a crusade to fix this one falsehood might be exposed to it. You cannot know what all effects the sum of a discussion has.

But I can certainly tell you this: censorship doesn't work. It didn't work in ancient Rome. It didn't work in the Holy Roman Empire. It didn't work in Soviet Russia. It doesn't work in Communist China. It's not working right now for vaccine disinformation. Driving crazy ideas underground does not make them disappear, and it does not make them unpopular -- it makes them spread without criticism. And in fact, telling people they can't do something generally makes them want to do it. It appears to work for a little while, but I cannot think of a single historical case in which this actually worked out. Somehow the banned ideas always seem to survive beyond the death of the regime that banned them.

We will always have crazy ideas. We will always have crazy people that buy them. Depriving them of respectability is perhaps a little helpful, but opens up a different danger: just who gets to decide what and who is crazy? I didn't vote for you, and I didn't vote for Spotify either.

> but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure

Hasn't everything about the past ~5 years proven this to be completely fake?

>Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

This quip implies two things.

1. Is that all publicity is equivalent. Rogan is no James Randi. He's much more likely to nod along with anything a guest says than debunk it. His podcast is entertainment, not a crucible for the truth.

2. Is that every time we broadcast nonsense that fewer people believe it and society as a whole becomes wiser. If this were true, then when the ex-President talked about drinking bleach you'd expect bleach ingestion calls to 911 to decrease. In reality they increased at least on a short timescale. On a long enough timescale, maybe the anti vaccination population will fall below the level it was when Dr. Wakefield published his infamous anti vaccination paper. Given the last few decades of suffering, I'd guess there are better ways to educate the public.

I think you've misunderstood which direction I imagine the sunlight going here.

1. You seem to think that Joe Rogan is not very reliable or trustworthy. How do you know that? Because of past interviews where he nodded along with a crackpot, right? Isn't that valuable information? Doesn't that help you evaluate new information you get from him?

2. The choice we are faced with is not, "Should we allow nonsense to be broadcasted"; it is "What should we do in response to it." In each of these cases, I think it's pretty important to be aware of what happened.

If you could time travel back to, say, 2000, and you had a choice of either trying to "bury" Wakefield's work to keep people from hearing about it or to promote the idea that his work was bunk, which would you choose? I think the latter would be more effective, wouldn't it?

Interviewing influential figures is important.

Interviewing libelous crackpots gives them influence. Without interviews, they're seldom influential.

I'm pretty sure Alex Jones has a big platform for himself.

This is the exact opposite of what’s happening.

Because there’s so little cross pollination today everyone lives in a bubble. If your Facebook is full of right-wing stuff, you only watch Fox News and only listen to Larry Elder, you’ve got an echo chamber, breeding ground for radicalization.

Having a wide variety of guests actually fights that. You listen to Bernie Sanders, then Alex Jones, then Ben Shapiro, then Edward Snowden. Rogan breaks the echo chamber. People who might only listen to Alex Jones have a chance at listening to Bernie.

Why? Why do I suddenly need to know everyone's take about everything? Why is it important that we know what our favourite actor thinks about Trump?

Everything is publicity. It's not achieving some important social need, its driving people towards new products. Interviewing Alex Jones isn't doing anything except making more people know what an Alex Jones is.

So they have a chance to explain their actions to see what influenced them and if they are justified.

Seemingly chance after chance after chance.

Is that why the kardashians are so famous, because their continued media presence is our opportunity to see if they make sense? No, they are just crap and giving them more sunlight just gives them more undue fame, money, and power.

Do you think the kind of interview Rogan does is similar to the typical interview the Kardashians appear in?

Rogan called Jones out on that in one episode.

I, for one, prefer free speech to deplatforming. Who gets to say what’s right or wrong — you?

Surely a company choosing not to publish certain material falls under the umbrella of their free speech rights? Or are we all for compelled speech now? If someone has a podcast that Spotify carries and then say they think the Holocaust was a good thing, is Spotify committing a sin by removing that episode or kicking that person off their platform?

Pro tip: needing to make up a scenario of Nazis usually means you're creating a straw man.

Spotify is well within their rights to pick and choose who to platform. I, personally, think de-platforming is counterproductive. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones may be trash human beings, but I don't think Spotify having Rogan's interview with him -- which by the way is a lot of Jones looking insane, and Joe challenging him every step of the way -- is in any way equivalent to "Spotify supports Alex Jones." Censoring people just pushes them to echo chambers.

who are 'we' to be the gatekeepers?

People are not morally monolithic -- having been awful in one moment doesn't mean they can't be helpful or insightful in the next. I wouldn't listen in to someone harassing grieving parents, but I might listen to someone who had done that, if they were talking about something else.

This sort of hyperventilating moralistic fear of certain people makes me laugh, in its similarity to Victorian or conservative Christian communities. You cannot possibly want anything to do with that vagabond! I don't know, he has some vices, but he also has some perspective I am enriched by hearing. You don't have to fear sinners. Don't imitate them, but your life will be richer if you're less of a prude.

Milo is a gadfly. He offends me sometimes, too. And sometimes he has stinging observations I don't hear anywhere else. I don't want to listen to him every day, but I would be poorer for having never made the acquaintance. Alex Jones is energetic and occasionally unhinged, and when he says something completely insane that also happens to be true, I find it a comedy experience like no other. But he can also be a wakeup call to some of the naive views I hold. I don't want to listen to him every day, either, but I would again be poorer if I never had.

But at the end of the day, I really resent gatekeepers who want to make these sorts of decisions for me. I read history -- which means I read lots of things lots of very evil people have written. I would actually rather have the opportunity to read and study Hitler's words than have them banned on the assumption that they are too dangerous for me. I would like to think I am wise enough to judge evil for what it is, and I would like to be able to prove that to myself against real villians of history. The versions I was given in elementary school hardly illustrate the dangers. Goodness knows I can't avoid encountering dangerous ideas in the real world anyway, so what is the point of trying to protect me? I would rather be strong than safe.

People are not children. They can handle reading history's dangerous ideas, and they can handle hearing society's dangerous ideas. It is better to encounter those ideas on Joe Rogan with thoughtful and open questioning and discussion, than to encounter them quiet and unopposed in private. Strong people are better than safe ones. Victorian moralizing and shunning didn't really work out for them either.

Which is funny to me because JRE is the reason we are rid of Milo. The JRE also didn’t do any favors for Candace Owens or Dave Rubin. I don’t see why they would memory hole those episodes but at least they’re on YouTube.

Yeh LOL sandy hook denial is for progressive silicon Valley types who aren't progressive. Maybe Spotify doesn't want to be the 'dive bar' of web platforms.

If you aren't offended by Alex Jones you got deeper issues, or perhaps are just ignorant to his white nationalist messaging.

I am offended by him and at the same time don't mind him having a platform to express his "opinions" which apparently is an unpopular opinion on this site.

That's straight up censorship.

>Milo Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed white supremacist

I think Milo is a scumbag, personally, but where did he self-proclaim that he's a white supremacist?

>Alex Jones testified to being a performance artist

No, he didn't. His lawyer attempted to argue that he was during a lawsuit, as a defense against full culpability for his actions. Lawyers (understandably) try to pull out everything they can to help their client. There's no evidence Jones himself has ever said this or thinks this.

Although most of his non-watchers seem to think he's just a con artist, after watching a cumulative dozens of hours of him on camera over the years, I'm convinced it's not an act and that he genuinely believes pretty much everything he's saying (except for cases where he's attempting to do a comedy bit). Unfortunately, a lot of people in the US believe all of the things he believes - and not necessarily because they're hearing it from him. They all drink from the same watering holes. In my opinion, this is why it's actually a lot more frightening than con artistry or performance art.

These people are too smart to literally say “yes I am [the bad thing]”, but Milo is not exactly subtle about where his sympathies lie: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...

On episode #1682 he talks about both figures. He was saying he does feel a responsibility to vet his guests so that he doesn’t just have crazies using his platform to spew vile, but ultimately that neither figure harms anyone just by being a guest on a podcast. He talked about how even if you hate Alex or Milo, you can still gain something from listening to them speak. Maybe you can figure out why you hate them, or maybe listening to them directly will make you understand them in a different light.

Maybe this is a 1990s George Carlin thing to say, but so what if Milo offends people? Should we only be allowed to hear things that don’t offend us?

> Should we only be allowed to hear things that don’t offend us?

Absolutely not! That said, I also believe in intolerance of intolerance but don't have any good answers on how that is best played out.

> I also believe in intolerance of intolerance

I also like being able to justify intolerance towards anyone I want by labeling them "intolerant". Same as only caring about those I want to care about and only supporting free speech that I agree with. Makes everything much easier.

It can often be challenging to determine intent in written form, and more so in a forum context, but that reads as incredibly passive aggressive.

I'd be happy to debate this further if you were willing to do so in good faith rather than intentionally twisting my words. Otherwise, you can label me as "anti-free speech" and call it a day having won the war for freedom on the internet.

It wasn't just those two people. https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/ikf9at/full_list_...

Also how do you know that either of those people are what others have told you they are? If you're unable to listen to them because they've been depersoned everywhere, you have no way of knowing if they're truly as represented or have been character assassinated. I'm not trying to convince you that either of them aren't who you think they are (from what I've seen, you're not far off) but rather have you see that you could be wrong about them (or others in the future) if you are not allowed to hear them first hand and only get views of them filtered through others.

I would be thrilled if both of those people simply ceased to exist, but I think it's dishonest to delete and "forget" old episodes of a show because you later decide that the guests on those episodes were terrible people.

(I don't consider it material that presumably Spotify required deleting them as part of the deal. Rogan agreed to those terms, so clearly the money was more important to him.)

I’m hesitant to delete something from public consumption just because it’s offensive or not liked.

To be fair, Milo was pretty thought provoking.

>Milo Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed white supremacist

Pretty sure he said that while married to a black dude, so unless you can come up with something specific I think its comedy/trolling.

Right, so don't listen to those episodes. I, on the other hand, like hearing both sides so I can make an informed decision on why I disagree with whomever.

'So and so is bad, I heard it from X' has never been good for any human society.

Pretending the episodes don't exist is rewriting history.

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

Personal point- if I saw Alex Jones personally I would not want to be him. He has, for his own enrichment, destroyed personal relationships, caused me endless arguments with friends/family and is a walking detrament to society. I hate with a passion the garbage he spews to sell some garbage fake pills. But I still believe he has a right to be heard.

We need to educate people not shelter them.

Nobody has a right to be heard. He has a right to speak. People like Rogan have a megaphone and are choosing who to give it to. Would you choose Alex Jones?

Sure, Alex Jones is a crackpot but why should you, or anyone for that matter, be allowed to prevent others from speaking to an audience that has decided to listen?

What do you expect to happen when the balance of power, majority opinion, etc inevitably shifts and we find ourselves on the other side?

I don't think we should choose who gets to speak. What happens when you end up on the wrong-thinking side?

If you want to play the pedant fine, he has a right to speak.

But if people like you would stop judging who gets to speak and where we wouldn't have to depend on Joe Rogan's megaphone, now would we?

What happened? Liberalism used to have a solid footing on the essentials of the constitution. If your enemies or people you don't like don't have rights, you don't either. The ACLU used to understand this probably better than most organizations and today, like much of CA and NY, they're lost.

> The ACLU used to understand this probably better than most organizations and today, like much of CA and NY, they're lost

This is a line I've read from texts dating back to at least 1973 by conservative authors, nearly verbatim.

I think cultural mores change and conservatives have a hard time adapting.

Alternatively, they've simply been dishonest with themselves since just after WWII -- start with the nonsense about FDR allowing Pearl Harbor to happen -- because they believe the ends justify the means.

He's not white supremacists. He openly says he prefers black men and has on several podcasts. He's just not a typical gay man so he gets villified.

Deleting something produced in the past such that it cannot be found anymore.

Wiping and unacknowledging something's past existence. Think unpersons in 1984.

Some old episodes can be found at https://archive.org/details/jre-001-837

I didn't like them banning episodes too. There were internal movements from Spotify employees (liberal Silicon Valley workers) who wanted episodes completely censored and removed. Joe talked about it a few times and I read some articles.

The irony is that by moving to these liberal employees' platform, he's losing influence :)

By creating a crappy podcast platform they've ensured they get what they want and he ends up diminished.

> liberal employees

Unless Spotify publicly disclosed which employees said something along with their political beliefs, I think the best we can do here is describe them as Spotify employees.

Arguably there are reasons to dislike Joe's podcast for people all over the political spectrum.

Eh, liberals nowadays are much more likely to favor censorship than conservatives, which is ironic considering they're "liberal".

Also, it's Silicon Valley, liberals outnumber conservatives 10 to 1 so he's probably spot on with how he described them.

> memoryholing

Who talks like this??

People who have read Orwell's 1984.

memoryholing episodes == ?

Spotify didn't bring over the old episodes with people like Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

> “There were a few episodes they didn’t want on their platform,” Rogan said, per DMN. “And I was like, ‘OK, I don’t care.'” https://www.thewrap.com/spotify-deletes-joe-rogan-podcast-ep...

Kinda curious, do fans .. .care about that?

I guess some do but I don't think I ever listen to past podcasts that I've already listened to...

They don't burn books, they just remove them. Those episodes happened, and removing them is a form of gaslighting. If they find the content objectionable then putting a disclaimer, if it is objectionable enough then removing the entire series from the platform could be an option, but it is lost history. In this case the artist doesn't care, and probably is happy to sweep those episodes under the rug. It is like how Disney wishes they hadn't made "Song of the South".

Aren't they still available on YouTube / elsewhere?

The problem, as with every memory-holed episode ever, is that people watching/listening for the first time (or say they only use X platform to consume whatever) will never know they existed.

In other words, lying by omission is still lying.

Edit to add- just to show how unbelievably petty the reasoning can be- Tyler Perry threw a bitch-fit about an episode of Boondocks and had it pulled (as was an episode ripping on BET when they screamed). For something that was pure satire and a cartoon they not only had it pulled from airing, they now no longer list the episodes at all on Hulu/HBOMax, pretending they never existed at all, even re-numbering the episodes.

All because of Tyler Perry/Some BET exec's ego? GTFO.

We have Holocaust deniers while still having people alive that survived it. We have people constantly denying proven, recent history and some people think it's ok to censor shit and pretend it never happened and it'll be all roses and sunshine.

That seems strange though. YouTube isn't a library where I expect them to host anything uploaded forever under any circumstances.

That isn't what we are speaking about here. If youtube buys the rights to a show and uploads 'their version' of it with episodes missing and re-numbered so no one will notice any are missing, they are controlling a narrative.

They should at least have a disclaimer about the missing episodes.

This isn't some new idea here.

All of the old ones are on youtube anyways, so I would guess not. e.g. an alex jones one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdVso9FSkmE

I'm not particularly a "fan", but I do enjoy listening to some JRE episodes when he has interesting guests like Andrew Huberman. I don't care about losing access to old podcasts any more than I care about Netflix pulling certain movies. That's just the reality of all streaming services. Content gets removed all the time for all sorts of reasons. If you want to maintain access to something then you'll have to make a local copy on hardware you own.

It leads to that content never being produced. It’s a form of censorship.

I for example like to hear everything from the beginning of the pandemics.. it is quite interesting to see now how wrong/right the experts were.

If you're recommending someone should listen to a previous episode you might be interested that it is avaialable or not.

> Kinda curious, do fans .. .care about that?

Beyond bad faith concern trolling, I suspect not.

Shame. Not to condone these people, but since getting along with everyone was Joe Rogan's thing, I think they should've embraced it. But Joe was most likely not glad to preserve that part of his career either, otherwise I assume he would protest.

$100 million is a lot of incentive to not protest. The line between actually important and kinda important gets really well defined when you throw that much money on the table.

I'm guessing this:

> A memory hole is any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.

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

Memory hole is from 1984. It is where they put papers to be incinerated and forgotten. Spotify removed a few Joe Rogan episodes IIRC.

I believe GP is refering to the fact that Spotify has removed episodes from Joe Rogan's back catalog that have been deemed controversial [0].

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...

Removing certain old episodes from the catalogue (as if they never existed, so they become forgotten)