Joe Rogan’s Controversial Crusade
Is a company responsible for the content on a social media platform? Or is it the responsibility of the one posting it? The hot topic in the online world at the moment is Joe Rogan and his controversial podcasts and relations to Spotify. A podcaster with a hefty following of 190 million + people, Joe has the power to influence all of those people with just the words out of his mouth. To those who don’t follow him, he has done nothing, but spout lies while saying all sorts of slurs. Yet to his followers, well it would not be a surprise if they followed his every word, like a commander to their soldiers. People argued that cancelling Joe Rogan would be censoring free speech. This makes sense to an extent, however when that free speech has racial slurs in it, should it really be allowed? Spotify, claiming to be neutral and not be responsible for Joe’s actions, had stood their ground until a few days prior to writing this. “Spotify has taken down dozens of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience amid the ongoing controversy over the podcast’s spread of COVID misinformation. (Source)” Joe’s podcasts had slowly been deleted off Spotify. Personally, my opinion on the issue is that Joe has caused mass chaos and most likely ruined some people’s lives. While Joe is the cause of this, Spotify is also at fault for continuing to let Joe release podcasts on Spotify for as long as they did. However what is done can most likely not be undone. The pressure was starting to be put on Spotify when “several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show.” Stated this New York Times article. In my opinion I think both Spotify and Joe are responsible for this mess. If there is some form of law regarding what can and cannot be made public then both parties should be tried accordingly in a court of law. “What we have, then, is a problem that is both unique to the internet and reflective of the giant problem of the internet as a whole.”(Source). To sum it up, Joe and Spotify have blamed others for what is their fault. As well as openly distribute false information regarding Covid as well as in the past have said racial slurs in his podcasts. As stated previously, my personal view on this is that it is not okay and should be prohibited on any platform no matter what platform it is and Spotify should be held responsible for their mistakes as well as Joe.