Politics Aside: Podcast Censorship Is Not A Thing

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host, Tracy. Today on Feed you'd Brand, we're talking about how podcast censorship is not a thing.

So I've been getting a lot of questions.

Yeah, I've been getting a lot of questions, too, because this is a big topic and we're going to try and make some sense of all of it. But let's just say we work with lots of people from every imaginable point on the pendulum of extreme right to extreme left and everything in the middle. Podcasting is a safe haven of free speech, and it's part of what we love about it. We get people often who have been kicked off YouTube, kicked off Facebook, or suspended or something. But has that ever happened to a podcast that we've been involved with, Tracy, to your knowledge?

Not once. Not once ever. But I also want to say it has nothing to do with your politics. It has to do with the topics, the niche, and some of the other things that are going on. And it's not necessarily politically based, especially in podcasting. Right. So that's also something is most of the people who we find are kicked off of Facebook, Instagram, other places like that were kicked off because they had a subject matter that was not monetized. Facebook makes money off of ads. So if your topic is too hot for them or too controversial for them, then they're not going to make as much money. So they don't really care about kicking you out. And that's really the difference here is podcast monetization doesn't work like that. The ads run for most of the networks and everything before the podcast airs. So they don't really care what's going to come next because it doesn't have anything to do with that for their purposes.

Well, usually the subject matter the platform may consider to be controversial or something that the network just whatever the platform is, I'm Talking like a YouTube or a Facebook or who knows what else. It's usually because they have a policy of some kind they've established. And these are private companies. They're allowed to make up their own policies and for whatever reason they deem your content, whether it's a single video or a single episode or a lot of your content, if it happens repeatedly, they might take your whole YouTube channel down, suspend your YouTube channel, or suspend your entire Facebook account. You know, those are just the two that come to mind that I've seen and heard it happening on the most.

But it usually happens on like more of like health podcasts or I don't usually hear it on political podcasts. Just to let you know that, that, that's. We do not see that on Facebook and YouTube and other things. But we do see it with health topics, social topics in general. Right. We just don't see it happen on politics.

These sort of topics do tend to be discussed on political related podcasts, but it's certainly not exclusive to that. I mean, I'll give you one example is depending on what you would say about vaccines for or against, and if they also deem there to be some misinformation or disinformation in some of your content, they have their own policies and each platform is their own judge and jury on this. And they have every right to do. It's a private platform. It's not DBS public airwaves. It's not governed by, you know, the FCC like a national organization or any other organization.

Right. Because it has to do with the way that they make money. So that's what we want to say is create this big differentiation and understanding between. Podcasting is not a social platform and it doesn't make its advertising money. It doesn't make money in general for a lot of people, like because there's no ads running on many, many shows. But it doesn't make money for the platform itself. On what you say in the show, what the topic of your post is in micro content way, it doesn't make money that way. It doesn't make money off of typing in the topics and getting results like it does on YouTube. It's just very different in how we make money in podcasting. Right. The podcasting industry in general and the player apps themselves, they make money off of more content. The amount of content, the amount of time you spend in platform, that's when they make more money because they run ads off of the very front for the most part of the shows that are happening. So they don't want to take any shows down. It's just not in their best interest to do it. That's why it's not a thing.

Well, and especially with Podcasting. You know, podcasting is unique to all these other platforms because with all the other platforms you have to take that video and upload it directly to Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn. I guess I don't necessarily see a lot of controversial stuff going up on LinkedIn, but I'm sure it happens. At some point you have to upload it directly to that platform. Podcasting is entirely different where you're distributing your show in a one to many sense, many different apps at once through an RSS feed. And all of those apps want all the content they can get. And they, for the most part, in my experience, Tracy, I'll just speak for myself. Do not judge the content. The only difference is if you've properly marked it as explicit. If it's mature subject matter, that's their only issue and mostly only Apple. But I think other apps pay attention to that too. That if you have mature subject matter in your episodes that are being communicated in your show, if you don't market as explicit, if somebody complains, that can cause you problems and get content taken down. But it's not because of what you said, it's because you didn't classify it and give a warning to parents who might have young ears in the car while you're listening to a podcast, for example. So that's a little different.

But I rarely see it even still happening unless you failed to Mark, and unless somebody complained. Right, right. Like it still doesn't even happen unless somebody complained. And as long as you cure it. I've never seen them take anyone down either. So as long as you then go and market, they don't care.

Correct. I mean, we've dealt with so many podcasts, Tracy, and the title of this episode, I think is very accurate. Podcast censorship is not a thing because we just don't see it happening. We don't see them being censored.

Well, it's not a thing because we don't see it because we're looking for it. Right. Because our clients would complain if they got shut down. It's not a thing because there's no one there. This is what I'm going to say to you. There's no one there governing it on the other side. They don't care what you say. Their incentive isn't to monitor it.

Yeah, there's no podcast content police, or to put it another way, no legal controlling authority, no moderators. It is still podcasting. You can have an independent show, pretty much say anything you want within it. Now, I'm sure somebody hearing this is going to say, all right, let's test that. Let's go do something ultra extreme.

Let's be really clear. You're still governed by laws. We have a podcast episode we did with Maria Speth, who is an attorney who we respect tremendously, talking about defamation and some other things. So you can get yourself in hot water, but it's not going to get your show shut down. Right. Lots of podcasters have been sued. Right. We've seen it many, many times.

Sure. I think the bigger issues podcasters run across are copyright issues, either with, you know, music that they are playing in their episodes that they may or may not have the rights to, or, you know, either within the episodes or maybe an intro and outro music. And we've talked about those things in the past.

Also clips of something I've seen people play musical clips or other clips of somebody else's stuff that can get you into hot water as well.

But as an issue of free speech, which means your own speech, you and or anyone else willingly participating in creating the content of the episode, you are free to say what you want. And there are multiple places to distribute your content to be heard. I think one of the issues here too, Tracy, is that it's not pushed on people.

That's the real thing. Yeah.

People have to know about your show, then they may find it organically through searching. Obviously that's something we work very hard to do and optimize for our podcasters. But they also hear about it from a friend or they see mention about the show on social media and they have to go seek it out. They've got to go find it either on a website, which is another place you can distribute your content. And we all know from our experience in websites, there's everything under the sun available on the Internet, even legal and not legal, but, you know, I mean, dark web type stuff. Right. If you know how to do it. But even on the free, open public Internet, there's all kinds of content available there. So, I mean, there is a home for your podcast content on a website and in the, I would say vast, vast majority of podcast listening apps, and I just have not seen individual apps take down a show very much. And that doesn't mean I have to have seen it for it to happen. Like you said, Tracy, I mean, it's probably happened.

I only know of one show in all the time that I've been doing this, since it's been a decade. Right. I only know one show that ever got shut down by Spotify and they were in violation of playlisting. It was a music based podcast and Spotify at that time was a higher percentage of music. They barely stepped into podcasting at the time. And so they were accused of playlisting, which is basically like putting together music pieces. And that's what they did was they would highlight women musicians and then they would have multiple pieces and they play the entire music. Right. They wouldn't just play a little clip of it and have a critique. They were actually playing the entire piece of music and talking about it. And so that was accused of being a playlist and they were shut down.

But that's because Spotify was first a music streaming platform though, Right?

Right. And they were in violation of the terms and conditions of how Spotify, what Spotify considers a playlist. They were supposed to use the playlist function within Spotify. And so it was just violation of that. That's the only time I've ever heard of it. And it was before she became her client. So like it wasn't even after that.

But even so that was largely for economic reasons because Spotify has to pay money to ASCAP and bmi, which are the two organizations that deal with music royalties every time something is played. And when you played music on a podcast, it was outside of that system. And so they had no way to account for how many times it was playing and pay the royalties and all that.

Right, right. And they had no way to know that she already had rights to play it. And it already been like it just wasn't. There wasn't a system for it.

So.

But this is my point to you, Tom, is that what you were pointing out is it's a money based.

Right.

And again, when the economics aren't in place to censor something and shut it down, it's not going to happen. And there is no monetization model that works for cutting down the number of episodes, cutting down the number of podcasters out there. They need more content, not less. So if they were accused of censorship in the podcast industry, it would work against them.

Yeah, I agree there. You know, when you also think about it. And again, so for those of you that want to be heard, want to have a voice, want to get your message out, and you struggle on social media and we have some customers like that at Potatoes. Podcasting is a safe space for you. We make no judgments at politize about anybody's content. That's not our role. Our role is to provide support and help podcasters voices to be heard and distributed properly. But what I want to say Here is, even if someone took aim at your show, for some reason, they were mad enough, upset enough, whatever, and they wanted to try to get your show taken down, they would be playing a very complex game of whack a mole to do it. I mean, you really. They'd have to laser focus on one app and be enough of a squeaky wheel to try to convince that app to take your show down. And then if that happened successfully, which I think is an extraordinarily big if. I really don't think they would take it down, then you got to go on to the next one. And you'd be going through dozens and dozens of apps trying to get this done. No one has that much time and energy to do that, really. And the government isn't going to do it either, because it's a free speech issue. They're not going to touch it.

Right. Again, look at this. If you take a look at the political spectrum as well, right? And Joe Rogan made some missteps, according to lots of the producers at Spotify themselves. The own employees complained about what he was saying about health issues. It didn't get shut down. He didn't get shut down.

No.

I think he increased his monetization.

Usually the controversial topics and the ones that get amplified for things like this do end up making more money or being heard more.

Right. That didn't work. Then we had. We had an issue because we were getting phone calls that were really trying to call Spotify, but for some reason they were calling Potatoes, mainly because we have a phone number and they don't.

Oh, I remember that. That was because of Joe Rogan. Was.

It was totally because of Joe Rogan. And people would call up Joe because.

Something Joe Rogan did controversial. Gosh, it was like, what, five years ago or something?

It was at the height of the pandemic.

Okay. In the pandemic. And we had people. And sometimes, I mean, we do have phone support, which is a very unusual thing in the podcast hosting platform industry. Believe we're the only platform that has a customer support number. So people were googling Spotify customer support or Spotify phone number. And our phone number was coming up because we were the only relevant podcasting company that had a phone number. So people would call us, and if everybody's on the phone, it's going to go to voicemail. So a lot of people left the voicemail, didn't listen to hear that it was not being answered by Spotify, that were potatoes, and left this messy, nasty message saying, I'm canceling my premium subscription to Spotify because of this, what you allowed Joe Rogan to talk about didn't leave a phone number. We weren't going to take the time to call them back. But little did they know, they left a complaint, but with the wrong company.

Right. But the point is, is that it didn't leave a dent in anything and Spotify didn't cancel anything. Right. Because it's. They're going to be complainers on all sides. Right. It's always going to happen. Somebody's going to complain about something, but it has no monetization effect on them. That's worth it.

Yeah.

And so if they aren't going to shut it down there, they're definitely not going to shut you down. It's just not worth their time and energy. And they'd have to like exclude your feed. Like, it's complicated for them to even do that. So it's just not worth it to them to figure that out. And the next day you pop up a feed somewhere else and they'd have to go find that and shut that down. Because you can redo your show in a brand new feed now, you lose all your subscriber is and it's a big hassle if it happened, but it can be done. And so it's not like they can actually completely shut you down. They'd have to go find it again. It's no different. And this is what I want to. For those of you out there who understand Amazon.

Interesting analogy, Tracy. Okay, I like this one.

You can write a book on any subject on Amazon. And like as my grandmother used to call it, you can write smut, right? Like, you can write. And there is a lot of smut on Amazon, right? You can hear Nan just say that, right? Yeah, exactly. That's what you call it. And on Amazon, there's tons of it. But I have to go download that, buy it, I have to choose it. That's why they're never going to shut it down. There's a market for it. On the flip side of that, there's products out there, right? And there's tons of products out there. And sometimes they're knockoffs. So there's copyright problems, illegal goods, there's legal problems that you could still have. It's very similar to what you could. You could say something that's defamation, you could say something that you could use, something that's copyright infringement. Right. Those are still legal problems that you can still have on your podcast. That's on your content, that's on the product Itself, like it is on Amazon.

They'Re also pretty easy to avoid. I'm just saying these legal things, if, you know, you can navigate around those. Pretty easy.

Yeah. And we'll link to the episode with Maria's bus so you can find that. And you can, if you really are concerned about whether or not it's tipping over into defamation, you can hit listen to her talk about that because we're not lawyers. But the point is, is that on the podcast side, it's very similar to the product side. If you are doing something that maybe you listed it wrong, like, you know, you did some of those things and it gets taken down, you just put up investing it, you pop them up overnight. Those of us who have had products and we've had clients who had products because Tom and I used to help design and develop products. Clients who had products who it would happen to all the time, they would have a competitor that be coming in and making a complete knockoff of their stuff and they'd have to try to get it shut down. And the complexity of it was crazy. And it was like playing, as Tom referred to earlier, whack a mole. Because Amazon doesn't know what's coming in and going up. They're not approving anything. That's the same thing that happens on the podcast app side. They're not approving anything. We as podcasters and as podcast hosting companies are submitting the feeds. There's not really a review. There's a review of the basic first episode maybe, and I don't even think they even look at it.

No, it's not a review of the content though. It's really just the technical compliance. And this is very technical. I apologize. For those of you not technical, I'll keep this short. The RSS feed, there is a technical standard. There has to be certain kinds of information in there, some minimum requirements, and if your feed doesn't meet the minimum requirements, they're going to reject. The show being submitted to the app has zero to do with the content, what was said in any episodes that are published in that feed.

So we've seen people who believe that Apple censoring them or Spotify is censoring them. And the reality is, is it's because they had a swear word in their title. They had a emoji somewhere or some non compliant thing because they were trying to be funny about how they were presenting it. And usually it's like a swear word with. Instead of the you they were putting in a emoji.

Right.

And trying to get away with it. And it was actually that. That was shutting them down, not the title.

Yeah. You know what, that's a really good point, Tracy, is that's the only place that I've seen, and I really don't think the smaller apps and all the Apple clone apps, I don't even know about Spotify, I'd be curious to see it. But I only have seen Apple reject a show. You're right. Because of expletive words being in the title of a show. I'm sure it might happen in episode two or. I don't really know that I've seen that as much. It's usually more the show title because again, they have a policy and a standard. And that's the only place, I think, Tracy, you're right. Where they might censor anything. It would be just in the title of the show. Just because on their platform they don't want certain words being used as the title of a show. And there are ways to be clever and try to get around with it and some work, and I think some don't or some won't. And that's going to be a little bit of a trial and error that any of you that are interested in doing that would have to do, because I think that the standard is a little bit subjective and Apple's going to be, again, their own judge and jury on that. But it's happened so rarely, I really don't see it much.

But that's not censorship.

It's not.

Censorship is stopping you from saying what you believe and stopping you from giving your voice to your free speech model. This is complying with the FCC regulations requiring with the broadcasting rules, complying with the terms and conditions of a website that you want to carry your podcast. It doesn't shut your podcast down. It didn't shut your feed down. It didn't change the fact that you could post that out there. It just changed the fact that the directory wouldn't take it in. That's it. So you want the directory to take it in because you want your voice to be heard. So comply with the rule about titling. It's not a big deal.

There are plenty of great titles to be written that don't have to contain some of the things that are forbidden by Apple. Let's just put it that way.

Well, I mean, look, one of the most popular podcasts 10 years ago when we were titling, ours was WTF, Marc Marone, Mark Morron. Yeah, yeah. And ours was WTFF, because we were playing off of that. But he didn't use the words, and it was not a problem at all. He swore in a lot of his episodes, I believe. Like, I think it was an ex. Yeah, it was marked explicit.

Tons of podcasters do. You can speak. I mean, honestly, you know, if anybody's ever watched the movie or read the book Howard Stern's Private Parts, you will learn about and see a lot of issues that he had with the fcc because his show was being broadcast over the live airwaves, and that is heavily regulated and governed by the government, and there are specific rules, and Howard would always push the edge of the rules. It made him very popular. It's why people would go watch him or listen to him. You know, actually, people that hated him, I. I understand. Listened to him more than people that liked him because they wanted to hear what he was going to say next. So people coming from radio to podcasting might have had a different experience. I mean, you would have a really. A liberated experience coming to podC podcasting and not have to worry about, you know, staying away from those. The seven famous dirty words or whatever, among other things. So, yeah, you can say whatever you want in podcasting. Truly and honestly, no one is going to censor you. No one's looking for it. No one's scanning for it, monitoring for it. It really doesn't happen. It would have to. Anything that gets in your way would have to come from a direct complaint of some kind from somebody.

And even then, there's not really a good system for it. Right. So, like, it just doesn't apply. So there are only a few minor rules, like marking your show for explicit. That's it. Explicit topics and explicit words.

Just as another example you write, it usually comes from a legal issue. There was one other time that we took down an episode upon request from the creator. So just to let you know, we won't take down your show on potatoes for any reason. It's not our job. That's not what we're here to do. But a creator said, hey, can you take down this episode for me? And here was the thing. He was interviewed, actually was a guest of his was. He was interviewing on his show. And that guest had started a business and ran a business for many years with his spouse, and he went through a nasty divorce. And he talked about the business and the fact that he started it with his spouse, mentioned her by name. Well, in this nasty divorce, she demanded that that episode where he talked about her be taken down. And it wasn't even a legal issue. He got some advice, and I'M not a lawyer. But he was advised, you don't have to take this down from a legal perspective. You're only talking about her in the context of something in. But he said, you know what, this is such a legal headache for me. I really need the mention of that. About the spouse edit out of this episode. And if we can't do that, we just take the whole episode down. Because that was making the podcast creator, the host, the owner of the show's life easier. And it was their call it a business decision or a personal decision to do that. That's the most weird, complex thing I've ever heard about in podcasting.

For the most part, what you're going to do is you're actually going to take the model of self censorship. That is what is going to happen. The community is not censoring you. There is none of that going on. It is not a thing. But you will end up self censoring. At some point in the process, you will do some self censoring or not. You will make a conscious choice not to do that. Joe Rogan makes a conscious choice not to do that, Right? And it works for him and he makes a heck of a lot of money on it. But your money, your client base, your monetization from advertisements, should that come, might be harmed by choices that you make about what you talk about, about who you talk about, and about how you talk about them. So you have to make those choices yourself and decide, is this who I want to be in the world? And if the answer is yes, then go do it. We don't like to anchor our shows in time, but this episode was published today for a very specific reason. We chose this topic today because it's following a USA election. For those of you who are listening to us in other countries, America just had voted, had an election, and the results of those election is in. Actually, we weren't really sure it was going to be. When we went to go plan this episode, we thought we might be still waiting another few days before it. But the election is in. And here's what I want to say to you, all of you out there. No matter what the results are and how you feel about those results, now is the time to be podcasting. If you are so angry about the results, you should be podcasting. If you're so excited about the results and you want to make sure that your mission in the world happens, that your voice is heard, that you take advantage of it, then you better be podcasting. And here's what I'm going to say now is the time to double and triple down if you're already podcasting. Because those of us who are already podcasting have the incumbent advantage.

We've got listeners. We're out there in the apps, right?

We already are ranked, and it's our spot to lose. Now, in a lot of elections, incumbents are the ones who are targets. So you are the target. So if you fail to keep up your podcast, then, sorry, you're going to lose it. You're going to lose your position.

Listeners are going to go find other shows that are providing content that they want to hear.

That's right. Listeners are there waiting for shows right now. They are looking for it. There are more listeners than there are shows that are actively publishing. They are constantly looking. We had an episode, we just did about that within the last month. So that is occurring. If you started this podcast because you wanted your voice to be heard, you better darn well get back on the wagon and get it out there. It is time.

Tracey, you're right. It is time. And it's only been hours, not days, since the election was, let's say, called. Okay? And I already this morning have heard from multiple existing potatoes podcasters on the extreme right and the extreme left that have reached out to us and say, hey, I need some support. I gotta get this out now. I mean, they're doing it, they're recording it, they're putting it out now.

But here's the thing. The ones of you who stick around and keep publishing, you will be the ones who will win. That's why those of us who are OG podcasters, that's, you know, like, if you want to think of that, right? Those of us who've been podcasting for 10 years, we always win because we understand that it is still a long game. We also understand that you have to outpublish your competitors if you want to stay relevant. We also understand that we must publish every single week and we must be consistent and constant. So if you want to win here and you want your voice to rise above the others, publish daily. I'm not kidding. You publish daily. No, dude, we have podcasters who publish more than once a day. Right? Publish daily and get your voice out there.

That's unusual, but we do. We do have some that publish more than once a day. But the largest typical podcaster is a weekday, every weekday podcast.

But that's the minimum requirement to stay relevant is to do weekly. If you do monthly, minimum requirement to stay relevant and stay within and stay at the top of the charts. And that means the top of the recommendations from other people too, Right. It's not just the charts, because the charts are kind of well published the more you rise on the chart. So, like, that's a volume.

The people that publish daily naturally rise those charts faster. Just algorithmically. It's what happens. But weekly, like Tracy said, weekly is really what listeners are looking for, at minimum, is shows that are going to show up for them with new content every week.

So here's what we're. I'm going to predict. I'm going to make a prediction, right? The polls are not over. My prediction. It is that you will start hearing, Tom, from the 10% of our client base. And I looked at the number recently, the 10% of our client base who pod faded in the last three and a half years.

You think a lot of them are going to realize they need to get back on it or. Yeah, you're right. I mean, there are even people, that's what happens. That had great intentions to start a podcast and then only went so far and never actually followed through. And actually we. We heard from, I think one earlier today that I became aware of that is getting back on the horse and finally gonna do it right.

And so this is what I'm. I want you to hear is that if you made that mistake, like, so those of you who are like, oh, well, I got what I wanted, I got the president I wanted, I like, everything's good. I don't need a podcast. That's the mistake that you're making right there. Staying the course and continuing to podcast to make sure that your party gets elected in the next four years and it doesn't have a dip and we don't go up and down and you don't have all those things that your policies are getting across that all of those things are staying consistent now and not making the mistake that those that four years ago did when they pod faded because they thought they got what they wanted. That's a mistake. You must stay relevant every single week. You must stay consistent. So for those of you who are just starting out and maybe you didn't get very far into your podcast, maybe you're reengaging, you're getting finally set up. You're out of what Tom and I call the permanent potential, and you're off and running and you're ready to go again. Get to a hundred episodes as fast as possible. That's when you become an incumbent. When you hit a hundred episodes, it is hard to beat you. That's two years of podcasting. If you're only podcasting once a week. This is how Tom and I still outrank everyone ten years later on 3D printing, because we have 650 episodes, but we hit a hundred episodes within five months.

That's right. We were doing five days a week. And we actually did it, I believe, for two years before we dialed it back a little bit. We did it for longer than. That's how we accelerated, but it's how we got to literally a hundred thousand listeners in a very short period of time. It also happened to be a hot topic at a time when it was on the news. And, you know, there are lots of things that contribute to that.

And that's my point here. Hot topics, right? Like, right, Hot topics, hot timing. Take advantage of it. Do not lose your opportunity. You can always taper off once you hit a hundred episodes because you are the incumbent. That's what people miss out here. They do not understand the power that they built because they don't feel its urgency. It felt urgent when you were passionate about it. But keep going, Keep it going, keep it consistent, keep it constant. That is the way to combat volatility, cyclicalness, all of those things is to stay consistent and constant. And that is the way to win at podcasting.

And it's also the way to win at podcasting, regardless of if you have a controversial topic or you're talking anything about the times, politically, socially, or otherwise. I mean, just within your own niche, it could be baseball cards you talk about. It doesn't matter. I mean, whatever that niche is or in business, what you do for a living, sharing your wisdom with others, and I can think of health and wellness podcasts, all sorts of different podcasts. Anyway, whatever your niche is, the same principles apply there. And you can rise above the crowd of all the others that are getting lost in this noisy digital world of social, social media and provide a great value to listeners and get great value back for yourself.

So if you built a community, if you've built a website, if you've built a business, if you have coaching, if you have a group that you want to do, if you are covering any topics about women, if you're covering any topics about health, if you're covering any topics about politics, if you're covering any topics about immigration, if you're covering any topics about any type of social programming of any kind, sustainability, environmentalist, whatever, it might be out there on those types of subjects, and you are not podcasting right now. You are making a huge mistake in your business because it is the one place you can say you will not be censored. You can say whatever you think within.

Legal world, legal limits, let's say, making.

Sure you're staying on the legal limits, right? But you can say what you want about that and continue to make sure that your voice is heard, your community is building, your community is supported, and they're hearing your voice. That is my wonderful soapbox that you I can get on on podcasting, right? Like I have the ability to do that because I'm here on here podcasting. So think about what you want to be in the world, how you want to show up in the world and make it happen. Because there is nothing holding you back. There is no censorship. There is no reins on you, nothing.

Holding you back but you. That's right.

Remember I said self censorship before, right? You are the one stopping you. Not the world around you, not the social platform, no limits from Facebook. It's not happening here. It's not an excuse. Make sure your voices get heard. Podcast censorship is not a thing. Self censorship is.

All right, let's drop the mic there, Tracy. That was great. Hey, you can see the blog post for this episode with links to anything we discussed@podcastersunited.org and we will be back next time with another great episode. This has been Tom and Tracy Hazzard on feed your brand.

Heard something valuable today, but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.