Spotify: a rock icon’s revolt
In one corner was Joe Rogan, the comedian turned “provocative podcaster”, said Travis M. Andrews in The Washington Post. In the other was Neil Young, the “rock legend with a lifelong passion for progressive causes”. Last week, Young demanded that Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, be removed from the world’s largest music streaming service – on the grounds that it promoted “fake information about vaccines”. Rogan has encouraged young, healthy people not to get vaccinated; he has aired Covid conspiracy theories; and has praised ivermectin, an animal worming pill with no known antiviral benefits popular among anti-vaxxer types. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” Young declared. He got his wish. Two days later, Spotify began the process of removing the rocker’s music from its service.
It was no contest, said Sarah Man a vis in the New Statesman. Young’s hits get a lot of airtime on Spotify (he earned more than $300,000 from it last year). But Rogan is one of its most successful podcasters, who draws in 11 million listeners per episode; his Spotify deal is reportedly worth $100m. When push comes to shove, tech platforms like Spotify go with the money – even if that means spreading misinformation. The company faced a backlash: many customers cancelled their accounts; its share price tanked. Rogan put out a semi-apology (“Do I get things wrong? Absolutely!”). And Spotify’s chief executive Daniel Ek said that it would beef up its “platform rules”, and put advisory notices on controversial Covid content. But it was all too little, too late. “We are more than two years into the pandemic, and misinformation has been a problem on Spotify for the better part of a decade.”
Who made Young the judge of the truth about Covid, asked Toby Young in The Spectator. Rogan has been criticised for saying “think twice about giving these jabs to your kids”. But that’s hardly misinformation: there are well-established (if small) risks to taking them. And though some of the views expressed on his show are plain wrong, it doesn’t follow that banning them is right. The remedy for falsehood is more free speech, not silence. Covid has become “a free speech nightmare”, said Stephen Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. Whether on masks, lockdowns or vaccines, it is “difficult to know where to draw the line” between disinformation and reasonable dissent. It’s worth remembering there is seldom an unshakeable consensus. “Scientific theories are called theories for a reason.”