Joe Rogan has come under public scrutiny for spreading harmful misinformation about Covid-19 on his wildly famous podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Except for Spotify, which has made a deal with Rogan to make the show a Spotify exclusive. Outrage peaked recently, when singer Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: either Joe Rogan’s show leaves the platform or his music does. In poor taste, Spotify decided to do the latter, showing that their loyalties lie to the controversial and publicly harmful.
The episode that sparked the controversy dates back to December, featuring virologist Dr. Robert Malone and Rogan engaging in a misinformative conversation about the efficacy of Covid vaccines. The severity of Rogan’s impact should have been recognized and addressed back in January when the episode spurred 270 health and science experts to sign an open letter to Spotify demanding the show’s removal due how misleading and harmful this information is.
Spotify has recently met a lot of turbulence since then as other artists are following in Young’s footsteps, removing their content from the platform in protest of Rogan’s show. These artists include Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Thousands of tweets have reflected outcry over the decision, claiming they’ve canceled their Spotify subscriptions. Though Spotify will very likely survive this onslaught of disapproval it should reevaluate this decision if it upsets so many of its patrons. The logical response to any large scale dissatisfaction toward a mega-company like Spotify is compromise. But Spotify is remaining steadfast to its distasteful business move.
On February 3, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek voiced his defense for the Joe Rogan Experience on the platform. Essentially, it was an edgier product in the streaming service market because it was the most-searched podcast on the platform prior to becoming a Spotify exclusive. What followed was an attempt to deter blame through claiming that because Spotify does not have creative authority of the show it should not be to blame. Rather than trying to own up to the poor decision and reach a solution Ek tried to play the victim with a “don’t shoot the messenger” narrative.
Ek also claims that there are a number of episodes of the show that are not present on the platform for being too controversial. However, the episode with Malone that sparked the dilemma: If a platform has to remove multiple episodes of a podcast for insensitive content, that should be a clear indicator that it shouldn’t be fit for the platform at all. Moreover, if there is still damaging information from a podcast even after a sweep has been conducted, that platform should seriously reconsider its guidelines to ensure public safety.
This isn’t just an issue of offensive content, this is an issue of global wellbeing. In a particularly tense period where everyone’s health is on the line it is imperative that everyone is equipped with the proper information that will keep them safe. Especially given how divisive vaccines have become. But as long as this type of misinformation spreads, people are led to believe in certain actions that will put many at risk and only prolong the pandemic. It’s one thing to hurt someone’s feelings, but to potentially hurt millions of people’s livelihood is on a whole new level of insensitivity and irresponsibility. Anyone who promotes such things should not have a means of sharing it publicly. Any platform that is willing to promote it should not profit from it.
