Spotify made a public statement last month announcing changes to platform rules. The changes aim to illustrate a novel lack of tolerance of misinformation and racism, yet the company demonstrates a passive stance on these issues by refusing to “silence” Joe Rogan. While caring for civil rights and ethics is what should drive such no-tolerance policies, these values had nothing to do with Spotify’s decision. Let’s be clear, the choice was purely financial.
In the statement, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek pledged an investment of $100 million to promote historically marginalized populations on the platform in response to Rogan’s use of racial slurs in his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. The podcast as a whole will not be taken down, though several episodes have been removed from the platform.
The series came under fire for promoting COVID-19 misinformation among other inflammatory topics, a movement catalyzed by rock star Neil Young leaving the platform in protest.
Spotify warned users that the company does not endorse some of the content on the platform, and that such content may not be to their liking. This sounds an awful lot like a cop-out and besides, giving Rogan a platform and paying him $100 million counts as endorsement.
You need outrage to generate traffic—Rogan understands this well. When criticized about the misinformation he spreads, he blamed listeners for taking his advice.
Sure, Rogan is allowed to say all the silly things he wants.
Just because I can use racial slurs doesn’t mean it’s okay. Just because we are allowed to spread misinformation legally doesn’t mean it can’t have devastating consequences.
A platform attempting to prevent these consequences is not censorship. It is only common sense. This is similar to many social media platforms’ policies that are put in place to “limit the spread of spam.” Spotify took down many episodes from the podcast after Rogan came under fire for using racial slurs in them: This is something Rogan has profusely apologized for. If both Rogan and Ek agree that condemning and removing episodes where he uses racial slurs is not censorship, wouldn’t it be Spotify’s responsibility to ensure consistency when it comes to deplatforming misinformation as well?
Deplatforming COVID-19 misinformation is not playing moral police—this is not some philosophical disagreement. Studies show the public’s response to COVID-19 is a time-sensitive situation—people’s trust in science during a pandemic response is a matter of life or death.
People don’t tend to check their sources before choosing to believe or to spread information. We know this. Rogan carelessly spewing misinformation to a large audience through a mainstream platform means that a number of people will trust and disseminate it.
You may argue that it is these people’s own fault for being stupid enough to believe misinformation, but I don’t think this applies when one’s decision to wear a mask or get vaccinated puts others at risk: Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
Maybe people who believe in misinformation will never be affected by its potential consequences. However, person A spreading misinformation can influence person B’s health outcomes, whether it be because it encourages them to also partake in those beliefs, or because they become needlessly infected due to A’s carelessness.
In short, we can’t simply deride those who take Rogan seriously because people who will take this seriously are all around us.
Those susceptible to misinformation will always exist. Not accounting for these people when building a platform is proven to be dangerous. Fake news leads to confirmation bias and harm to individual and public health. Most importantly, the more we tolerate misinformation’s presence in popular media, the harder it is to identify.
The Rogan controversy should never have happened. Spotify should have put finances aside in favour of ethical business, for once.
Featured image by Thibault Penin via Unsplash.
