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I want the image above to show someone en route to cancel their Spotify account.
I recently wrote about how Neil Young said Spotify had to choose between serving his music or Joe Rogan's transphobic, antivax, and anti-Spotify-guideline podcast.
From this open letter to Spotify, courtesy of hundreds of doctors, professors, healthcare workers, and other medical professionals:
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. In episode #1757, Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Dr. Malone used the JRE platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have “hypnotized” the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited. Notably, Dr. Malone is one of two recent JRE guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust. These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.
The average age of JRE listeners is 24 years old and according to data from Washington State, unvaccinated 12-34 year olds are 12 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who are fully vaccinated. Dr. Malone’s interview has reached many tens of millions of listeners vulnerable to predatory medical misinformation. Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications. As scientists, we face backlash and resistance as the public grows to distrust our research and expertise. As educators and science communicators, we are tasked with repairing the public’s damaged understanding of science and medicine. As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast.
This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform. We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.
https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-letter-to-spotify/
Young's words ring true:
Young posted an update today thanking Warner. "I want to thank my truly great and supportive record company Warner Brothers-Reprise Records, for standing with me in my decision to pull all my music from Spotify. Thank You!" Young wrote. Young said this is "a huge loss for my record company to absorb" given that "Spotify represents 60 percent of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world."
"I could not continue to support Spotify's life-threatening misinformation to the music loving public... Spotify has become the home of life-threatening COVID misinformation. Lies being sold for money," Young also wrote.
Young wrote that before he went public about wanting his music off Spotify, "I was reminded by my own legal forces that, contractually, I did not have the control of my music to do that. I announced I was leaving anyway because I knew I was. I was prepared to do all I could and more just to make sure that happened."
Young, a long-time proponent of high-resolution music files, also wrote that "many other platforms, Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz, to name a few, present my music today in all its High-Resolution glory—the way it is intended to be heard, while unfortunately Spotify continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art."
Now, take in the quotes above. Then, take a deep breath and wear a mental gasmask against Spotify's statement:
We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.
Dominic Patten https://deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-rogan-covid-vaccines-1234920496/
In essence, Spotify say this:
- They've removed thousands of podcast episodes related to COVID-19, but they don't say why they're removed
- They're indirectly (and cowardly) saying they're keeping Rogan's podcast in spite of its content
A final summation of their words: 'We've removed some non-Joe-Rogan's-podcast-COVID-19-related podcast episodes, not because of what they contain, so we're not saying why we removed those episodes. We don't care about adhering to our own guidelines nor about anything other than money because we've spent many millions of dollars to have Joe Rogan's podcast be exclusively on Spotify. We're anti-intellectuals and will likely continue to break our own guidelines or just scrap them. Who cares.'
Thanks, Neil Young, for speaking out against Spotify.
As Noam Chomsky has said, it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.
Spotify are liars who only care about money. Would you be friends with Spotify if the company were a human being?