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| Joe Rogan and Moxie Marlinspike on The Joe Rogan Experience's first Spotify Exclusive episode (Credit: The Joe Rogan Experience) |
The Joe Rogan Experience, Spotify's most listened to podcast of 2020, officially became "A Spotify Exclusive" yesterday as host Joe Rogan kicked off his $100M deal with the audio-streaming platform with guest Moxie Marlinspike.
Despite Rogan having a handful of big names to pick from, he went with what most listeners would say is a very fitting pick in a former Twitter employee for an even more fitting topic: censorship.
Signal, Marlinspike's company, is described as "the most encrypted" way of messaging, compared to an SMS text message being the least secure way of messaging, Marlinspike noted.
Marlinspike's real name is Matthew Rosenfeld. He is a cryptographer who used to work for Twitter. He wanted to start an app that had a good business model and wasn't motivated by large amounts of money, which is why it's a non-profit. He both fears and believes advertisers and investors are the route to violating free speech on other platforms.
Marlinspike told Rogan Signal has "20-something employees." Rogan brought up how a lot of big companies don't treat their low level employees very well, even referring to them as "slaves," and are therefore hypocrites because they all have many public relations initiatives but should try to start with their own problems.
Around halfway through the episode the censorship debate starts. It never gets hostile, but you can tell Marlinspike doesn't answer all of Rogan's questions. When Rogan wants to know if his guest thinks it's okay that some social media companies take things down, the Signal owner says the companies shouldn't let misinformation get so popular in the first place.
I don't want to spoil the rest and will let you listen yourself.
Rogan's beliefs and values on the podcast stem from the 1st Amendment. It was interesting to hear Marlinspike not agree with him totally on the subject because the defense of censorship is always a confusing argument, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Many have speculated that this new chapter of 'JRE' will hold Rogan back, but that didn't seem to be the case in "Episode #1572" and hopefully won't change in future episodes, as "not holding back" is the theme of the show.
'The Podcast Beat' is something I have been thinking about doing for a while now and I thought there was no better time to cover an episode than with the biggest podcast starting a new chapter.
If you have any requests or suggestions for other shows to cover let me know in the comments or @johnnymaffei12 on Twitter!