Everyone should think that the policy issues have been solved.
The company is currently facing a double-edged exodus as, on the one hand, celebrated artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are pulling their work off the platform while, on the other hand, so many users are canceling their paid Premium subscriptions that the unsubscribe feature is reportedly struggling to keep up Young laid his decision at the feet of Joe Rogan, who is a controversial host on a streaming service.
In the midst of all this upheaval, Spotify responded on Sunday with a publicly available version of its platform rules and a clarification on how it will treat the COVID-19 discussions moving forward.
More than 250 scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators signed on to a call for the company to clarify its policies and take action against the mass-mis.
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The Sunday announcement by Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify, made no mention of Rogan or his show, nor did it address the specifics of any recent events that led to the move.
You have had a lot of questions over the last few days about our platform policies and the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. This led to questions about their application to serious issues.
The post acknowledges that the company has 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.
We are working to add a content advisory to any episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19. The COVID-19 Hub is 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.
The COVID-19 Hub is similar to a streaming service. Rather than linking to outside sources, the hub gathers together series from various sources that focus on public health matters and the Pandemic. Rogan's show is not included.
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Rogan's proclivity for junk science is being put on the same footing as any deeply researched, science-first podcasts tackling the same topic. By lumping all conversations together under one umbrella, Spotify gets to say, "Some of this is right and some of this isn't, and we're giving you the tools to decide for yourself."
Spotify is implicitly putting Rogan's proclivity for junk science on the same footing as any deeply researched, science-first podcast tackling the same topic.
A noble idea, but one that doesn't live up to its ideal. Rogan and his guests have a lot of people in their audience who are willing to take what they say at face value. Many of those same people have spent years, whether they realize it or not, as soldiers in a war on truth and reality. They've already bought into Rogan's idea of being ignorant, so they can't stick a bunch of audio hours in front of them.
The newly published platform rules don't promise a safer environment. The section of the rules that govern COVID-19 is filled with vague, easily subverted language that reads like a bunch of loopholes for people like Rogan to leap through.
Content creators are not allowed to call COVID-19 a hoax or encourage the consumption of bleach products to cure diseases.
It all sounds good until you look closer. Content creators may not be able to call COVID a hoax, but they can still draw an equivalency between the illness at the heart of our global Pandemic and the seasonal flu. Since the beginning of the year, only one of them has killed more than 5 million people. It won't disrupt efforts to make people doubt vaccine effectiveness or safety if you disallow any suggestion that the vaccines are designed to cause death. The bleach thing was one dumb news moment for Donald Trump, but it was also something that was quickly denounced.
The calls for Spotify to take action may be framed around the company's sorely lacking public-facing platform rules and policies, but the intent behind those calls is much simpler and more straightforward: de-platforming. They can have Rogan or Young, that's what Young said when he called for his own music to be taken down. Not both.
It's left the company with a mess of its own making because it is unwilling to take that step. Content advisories don't clean that up. Rogan could easily bounce back from a de-platforming, his show was popular before the deal, and he is not the only one who preys on people's ignorantness. It is possible to find Steve Bannon's show on Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and elsewhere.
Rogan is a public menace because of his commitment to spreading harmful ideas. Even if a de-platforming fails to shut him down completely, the host who commands a loyal audience that brings in millions of weekly listens will continue to be treated like a serious person for as long as platforms like Spotify continue to give him oxygen.
