Is banning Joe Rogan from Spotify Censorship?

Donald Trump and Joe Rogan. Those names may seem very separated however, they share more similarities than one might realize.

If we want to understand why popular figures are being banned from social media platforms and whether this is censorship it’s important to fully understand cancel culture and what it can do. Cancel culture has been around for a long time, but in recent years has become a prevalent movement in our online society. Even if cancel culture is a large movement, it is often argued what cancel culture stands for. According to a study done by Pew Research, “Some 49% of those familiar with the term said it describes actions people take to hold others accountable. Some 14% of adults who had heard at least a fair amount about cancel culture described it as a form of censorship, such as a restriction on free speech or as history being erased”. 

In recent years we have seen an increase in celebrities being cancelled for their past actions. More recently, Joe Rogan, podcaster and announcer came under fire for past podcast episodes featuring misinformation and racist remarks. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a staff memo that “he believes Spotify is a platform, not a publisher, but acknowledges employees and others might think otherwise given its licensing agreement with Rogan”. Quotes like this can make one wonder if a platform can truly stay neutral or if the platform will always be unconsciously straying out of neutrality and if removing someone’s work counts as censorship?

David S. Cohen a professor at the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law explains perfectly in this 2021 article about the ongoing debate over whether cancel culture is censorship by saying that “This difference is everything. When a private business makes a business decision about the best way to market and sell their products, that’s the essence of capitalism and something companies do every minute of every day. That has nothing to do with censorship or free speech. But, when a government stops an individual from speaking — that’s exactly what censorship is” at its core, censorship is when a larger authority polices who can say or do what in a public space. When referring this back to Spotify and Joe Rogan one of the most common arguments is whether Spotify removing Joe Rogan Experience episodes is censorship. According to the quote, it would not be censorship because Joe Rogan is still free to say whatever he wants the only difference is he no longer has Spotify to spread misinformation.

When it comes to popular figures like Joe Rogan and his COVID-19 misinformation, sometimes people fail to see how dangerous and widespread misinformation can be. According to a survey done by Statistics Canada “During the first few months of this health crisis, 96% of Canadians who used the Internet to find information saw COVID-19 information that they suspected was misleading, false or inaccurate. Among these Canadians, one-quarter (25%) saw the suspected information multiple times a day, 14% saw it once a day and 29% saw it at least once a week. Just under one-third of Canadians (28%) said they rarely saw false information, and 4% reported never having seen any. In addition, regardless of gender, nearly two in five Canadians (40%) reported believing that the information they saw related to COVID-19 was true, then later realized that it was not”. 

No matter one’s political views or idea of the world, we would hope that everyone understands how dangerous this amount of COVID misinformation floating around can truly be. Maybe Joe Rogan Experience episodes being deleted from Spotify can be seen as a wake-up call to the repercussions of feeding dangerous ideas to an impressionable audience.