What Should Spotify Do About Joe Rogan

What Should Spotify Do About Joe Rogan?

The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast in the world, hosted by Joe Rogan. He brings in millions of viewers and is a big revenue source for Spotify. His unique guests make the podcast special, but it can also make things controversial. Spotify has been put in an awkward position, because the general public wants them to do something about some of his wilder episodes and guests, but at the same time they shouldn't limit speech of someone expressing their ideas and someone who probably brings in millions of dollars for them per year.

The first thing to dissect is what Joe Rogan said to cause an uproar. The fact is that Joe Rogan himself wasn't anything more than an enabler of his guest, Dr. Robert Malone. Dr. Malone, a man with much experience with mRNA technology like vaccines, stated that taking a vaccine after having contracted Covid-19 in the past puts you at a higher risk than people who had Covid-19 and didn't take the vaccine after. For the most part, this is pure misinformation, and even the CDC explains that people who have Covid-19 will be safer getting the vaccine after they recover from the virus than people who don't get the vaccine after being sick. 

Looking at it from the other side of the table, Dr. Malone could've been referring to an unstable moment for the body after it has fought off the virus where it has a very weak immune system. Even if this is true, the way he presented this information leads the general public to believe that they shouldn't take the vaccine at all after they get Covid-19, and it also allows for viral video clips to be made to spread this misinformation. 

As for what Spotify should do, it's a very odd scenario. Of course cancel culture was quick to jump on this and even professionals who want to help have tried to pressure Spotify into handling this. While this episode is a dangerous piece of misinformation, completely removing it would be morally wrong. However, Spotify's current plan to just label podcasts as misinformation is not effective enough as many viewers will hear/see the clip of Dr. Malone outside of Spotify. 

One idea for what they could do is putting a live disclaimer on the video of his podcast while dangerous misinformation is being spread, like misinformation about Covid-19. This is only necessary for big podcasters like Joe Rogan, because they have the biggest and farthest impact, and narrowing it to only big podcasters requires less moderation and time. Another thing they could do is stopping it at the source. Encouraging these podcasters to not spread dangerous misinformation would make Spotify a much safer space. This could be done calmly by a simple, yet stern message to these podcasters, or a harsher method by having a financial punishment like removing their revenue for the episode. In the case of Joe Rogan, who is rumored to have a 100 million dollar deal with Spotify, they could add a clause in his contract stopping him from spreading misinformation, and costs him millions if he breaches the contract.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/21/1074442185/joe-rogan-doctor-covid-podcast-spotify-misinformation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/02/actual-joe-rogan-coronavirus-misinformation/

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html#:~:text=Vaccination%20helps%20protect%20you%20even,ve%20already%20had%20COVID%2D19.