First he goes, then someone else’s podcast seems … sketchy, and there’s that slippery slope. Rogan should stay on Spotify, though with his $100m salary sensibly brought in line with that of, let’s say, an NPR intern. But I myself believe that free speech is indivisible.

I admire the musicians who have withdrawn their music from Spotify in protest over the spread of Covid misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

For this, a much more challenging approach is needed, which accepts Rogan and Spotify for what they ultimately are, nihilist capitalists driven by greed, and focuses primarily on their potential audiences instead.Ĭas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgiaįrancine Prose: ‘Don’t silence Rogan. But it does not weaken the breeding ground. It shifted the cost-benefit analysis of the controversy and pushes grifters like Rogan and their promoters like Spotify away from the most egregious disinformation. This is not to say that the boycott of Neil Young and other artists wasn’t useful – it was. As long as there is a mass demand, you can neither ban nor boycott your way out of disinformation.

The real problem is not the supply of disinformation but the demand for it. In fact, this problem is much larger than a disinformation-spreading grifter with millions of listeners. Just like the current Republican party, they live off liberal outrage rather than any consistent political message. The symptom of a society in which pandering to a mostly rightwing, but certainly anti-left, minority can be highly profitable. Joe Rogan is not the problem, he is the symptom.

Obviously, that will not end the disinformation on his show, on Spotify, or on the many other platforms (like YouTube).

Spotify and joe rogan