506- Censorship in Podcasting — dangers to podcasters

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we observe that there is an oncoming movement from various groups that want to put censorship into Podcasting. One such group is AP (Associated Press). And there have been others that have echoed the mandate to put censorship into podcasts — very much like the censorship and lack of free speech and shutting down voices and messages and passionate themes of the social media by the billionaire oligarchs from Silicon Valley.

Even though Adam Curry of the podcast No Agenda has told us in his show that it is difficult and almost impossible to censor a protocol, as opposed to censoring a userid or posts from a social media platform or sites like google, YouTube, facebook, twitter, etc., the movement is still trying to influence the advertisers and others in charge of tools and companies that provide services to podcasters.

For this podcaster, podcasting was a method to convey your message and get your content published to the world without any censorship or interference from other resources like the FCC and other censoring organizations. That is what I really liked.

And, if you did not like the content, then you don’t have to listen, consume or subscribe to any podcast show. It was always the choice of the listener to discover, to obtain (either by downloading an episode or by streaming the audio) and to be influenced by the content of the chosen episode. The content was never forced upon a listener.

However, the ability of the podcasting environment to allow me, as a listener, to choose what I want to consume still is paramount in my mind. And I refuse to accept any censorship that gives anyone else the right to block my content or tell me what I can or cannot say or record or publish. Well, this does not include the determination either by the author of the episode and show to label the content as “explicit” or “safe” (or any other label) — which has been done since the beginning of the podosphere.

So, I hope and anticipate that podcasting in 2021 will NOT be subject to the post-election PURGE of persecution, censorship and prevention of publishing your content (i.e., free speech in podcasting). It is this hope that will allow me, as a podcaster, to continue to publish my content. As most podcasters publish their episodes with passion for their content, I also look forward to receiving content from others with whom I share a passion for the subject matter — whether it be podcast shows about podcasting, or podcast shows about tech, or podcast shows about entrpreneurs or any other topic.

Thus, I openly agree with Adam Curry that you cannot ban or censor a protocol. And I hope that podcasting can be the final frontier of free speech for content, and one that will allow us as podcasters to promote and publish content of which we find passion (regardless of the topic).

Thank you for your attention.