Joe Rogan has job security & a commitment to showing both sides of Covid conspiracies

Last week, Neil Young told Spotify to choose between him or Joe Rogan. Spotify chose their guy, Joe Rogan, the one they have under contract for $100 million. Over the weekend, Joni Mitchell followed Young and pulled her music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s anti-vaccine bullsh-t and his general Covid-misinformation vibe. This weekend, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex also made a statement saying that they’ve always cared a lot about Covid education and science, and they shared their concerns with Spotify regarding Rogan back in April of last year. The point is that Spotify has actually been feeling some pressure to do or say something about Rogan. Which is why Spotify CEO Daniel Ek made a lengthy statement about all of this – you can see the full piece here. Here’s are the biggest takeaways:

Based on the feedback over the last several weeks, it’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely-accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time. These issues are incredibly complex.

Today we are publishing our long-standing Platform Rules. These policies were developed by our internal team in concert with a number of outside experts and are updated regularly to reflect the changing safety landscape. These are rules of the road to guide all of our creators—from those we work with exclusively to those whose work is shared across multiple platforms. You can now find them on our newsroom, and they’ll live permanently on the main Spotify website. They are being localized into various languages to help our users understand how Spotify assesses all content on our platform.

We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19. This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources. This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days. To our knowledge, this content advisory is the first of its kind by a major podcast platform.

[From Spotify]

Basically, Spotify is saying that they’re going to be more transparent about what their Covid policies are and how they expect content-providers to adhere to certain baseline standards about medical advice and scientific advice. As others have pointed out, it’s not like Rogan is merely off somewhere, producing content and Spotify is merely a content-purchaser. Rogan is the “jewel” of Spotify, and Spotify is literally producing Rogan’s show.

As for Rogan, Spotify got in touch with him and he made his own dumbf–k statement. He apologized – “I’m very sorry that they feel that way” – for Young and Mitchell pulling their music, and he says he’s fine with Spotify putting disclaimers on his show. He promises to make an effort to “balance out” his show and: “I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure what’s going on…” He’s still committed to Both-Sides-ing the pandemic. As in, but what if Covid is a hoax to make money and what if vaccines are designed to kill us all?? One of his latest interviews was with UFC champion Julianna Pena, who said just that, and she based her comments on interviews Rogan had done previously with other bonkers Covid conspiracists. My point is that Spotify needs to deplatform him, plain and simple.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.