Podcasting For The People
The low barrier to entry, paired with loose FCC regulation, makes podcasting a powerful medium for entrepreneurs, activists, hobbyists, and everyone in between.
Podcasting kicks YouTubing in the pants when it comes to freedom of speech. Podcasting is decentralized and largely unregulated. Since your podcast is distributed through an RSS feed to various directories, even if one directory pulls down an episode due to its specific terms of use, the episode will likely stay live on the other directories.
And for the most part, your podcast is unregulated - with the exception of content including defamation, strong obscenity, discrimination, copyright infringement, threats…you know - the obvious no-nos.
YouTube can not claim the same fame. And we all know how messy the world of social media and mass media is between censorship bots and political+monetary biases and corruption.
Now, just because we can say just about anything we want as podcast hosts and guests…does it mean we should? With great power comes great responsibility. The responsibility lies in spreading a productive, educational message…or maybe just having a good time and making people smile. Maybe both.
But, what about the dark looming thief of freedom of speech - cancel culture? Now, this is just my hot take, but I feel that podcasters have an extra coat of armor (however thick or thin) against cancel culture. Podcast listeners are more affluent and educated than the general U.S. population. So, I’m making a big assumption that more educated folks are less likely to start or jump on a given cancel culture bandwagon. In general, I feel that the longer-format and deeper thought process involved in podcasting makes a host or guest at least slightly less targetable as opposed to other media. Let’s also take into account that (unfortunately), thus far, podcasting is a much less interactive medium natively than social media or YouTube. All this said, of course, podcasters and guests have been cancelled, and that’s a whole other wormhole to dig deeper into.
In wrapping, no matter what your mission is as a podcaster, or what type of podcast you have, podcasting offers us all a platform to share our unique awesomeness with the world on a larger scale - in a largely organic and intimate fashion. Let’s not take that for granted!
Gratefully,
Zack
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