Spotify and Joe Rogan thrusted into the content moderation wars

Spotify is under fire after Joe Rogan’s podcast spread misinformation on the streaming platform

Today's expression: Call out
Explore more: Lesson #447
March 3, 2022:

Spotify came under fire after Joe Rogan, who has an exclusive podcast deal with the streaming service, spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on his podcast. Social media sites have been in the spotlight for content moderation for years, but audio content has been able to escape it – until now. Plus, learn “call out.”

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Hey, Spotify: Welcome to the content moderation wars!

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 447 for Thursday, March 3, 2022. It’s great to have you with us as always. JR is the producer and he has uploaded the full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/447.

Coming up today: Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and others demanded their music be pulled from Spotify, after they accused Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan of spreading COVID misinformation. And just like that Spotify has been pulled into the content moderation wars. The expression we’ll talk about today is “call out,” and JR has a song of the week. Let’s get going.

Spotify, Joe Rogan, and content moderation wars

Daniel Ek started a music streaming service in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2006. He was motivated by the idea that consumers wanted fast access to music, but didn’t want to have to steal it from peer-to-peer sites like Napster, which had recently been shut down. He called his new service “Spotify,” and it now has 165 million paying subscribers worldwide.

As Spotify has grown, so has its ambition. Today , it strives to be the place where you can access all the audio that matters to you—not just music. That vision led Spotify to place a big bet on podcasts. At first, it simply opened its platform to podcasts, so individual podcasters like me could upload our episodes with just a few clicks of a mouse. That was in late 2018.

But in 2019 and especially in 2020, Spotify started to land its own podcast deals. The company signed exclusive contracts with big-name podcasters like Bill Simmons and Esther Perel, so their shows could only be heard on Spotify, not on other apps or platforms. Spotify also went after celebrities, proposing that they start their own Spotify-exclusive podcasts. That’s how Michelle Obama, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and Kim Kardashian all became Spotify exclusives. But the biggest deal by far came in 2020: Spotify paid $100 million for the rights to the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts ever, with about 11 million listeners.

These exclusive contracts meant that Spotify was no longer just a platform; it was no longer just a place where other people uploaded content, like they do to YouTube or Facebook. Now, like it or not, Spotify was a content producer.

For a while, things seemed to be going well. But then, 76-year-old rocker Neil Young, pressed “publish” on a post to his personal blog. In that post, he called out Joe Rogan for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. And Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: Either you publish Joe Rogan, or you publish me. But you can’t have Neil Young songs on your platform if you also have Joe Rogan.

At first, the record label that controls Neil Young’s songs didn’t know what to do. But eventually, they got on board . Warner Records sent a letter to Spotify, formally requesting they take down Neil Young’s songs. Spotify complied.

Then, other musicians started to follow Neil Young’s lead. The 78-year-old folk singer Joni Mitchell requested that her music be removed from Spotify. Singers India Arie and Niles Lofgren did the same. Podcaster Brené Brown, who had an exclusive deal with Spotify, paused publishing new episodes, citing her conflict in values with Joe Rogan.

All of a sudden, Spotify found itself having to defend its $100-million star, and to insist that it, Spotify, wasn’t responsible for what people were saying on its platform. That made some sense back when Spotify was a neutral platform. But in this case, the offending material came from a person with exclusive deal with Spotify. Critics of the company said that if Spotify is going to create its own content, then it can’t hide behind the defense that it’s simply a platform for others.

For its part, Spotify said that it’s not involved in the content on its exclusive deals; nobody at Spotify has any role in producing The Joe Rogan Experience. Further, Spotify said that it had removed 20,000 podcast episodes due to misinformation over COVID-19 and that it has a team of content moderators. They have also taken down over 40 old Joe Rogan episodes, though none were COVID-related.

But Spotify executives quickly realized that defense wasn’t enough. They started reaching out directly to some of their most popular musicians and podcasters to address their concerns. And they began to attach labels to podcast episodes that discuss COVID-19. Spotify created a new page with vetted health and safety content. And Joe Rogan himself published a video on his personal Instagram account saying that he’ll be more balanced with controversial topics in the future.

The controversy seems to have died down , for now. No more artists have pulled their music. The podcaster Brené Brown has begun publishing again. People are starting to realize that Neil Young may have done this to promote his new satellite radio channel. The controversy is out of the news. But this will surely be a temporary lull; how long until another podcaster says something to offend a musician?

Spotify and other audio publishers will now have to follow in the footsteps of Facebook and social media sites, who have all had to employ armies of people to moderate content. Spotify and others should publish transparent guidelines that say what’s acceptable on their platforms, and then strive to enforce those in an even-handed way.

A slippery slope

You have to imagine that Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey probably cracked open a beer and popped a bag of popcorn to watch Daniel Ek squirm in the spotlight over content moderation. Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have had to content with this issue for years, but audio has been able to escape it until now.

I think this whole trend of saying, “You Spotify can’t stream my music because you also stream something I disagree with” is dangerous but also illogical. Neil Young, for example, has spread misinformation about genetically modified food, saying it causes terrible diseases, when none of that has been proven. He called GMO food “poison” in a song called The Monsanto Years. Should other singers pull their music from Apple Music because Apple also hosts a Neil Young song with scientific and medical misinformation? Should platforms like Spotify have to create special warning labels for every type of questionable content? Should there be a GMO resource center and warning label on Spotify to combat Neil Young misinformation about genetically modified food? When would this stop?

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Expression: Call out