The first to slam the door was Neil Young, the singer-songwriter, composer and interpreter of classics such as “Heart of Gold”, announced that he would withdraw his songs from Spotify, if the most powerful music streaming platform of the moment, did not unsubscribe from the podcast of Joe Rogan, a controversial anti-vaccine activist. The musician left his ultimatum: “Either Rogan or Young. But not both.”
And Spotify chose Rogan, making it clear that listening to extremist groups is more important traffic on the platform than rock classics: Joni Mitchell followed in Young’s footsteps and withdrew his music from Spotify as a protest against the broadcast of the popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience”, accused of promoting conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and encouraging not to get vaccinated.
“I have decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people’s lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical community, “said the Canadian singer-songwriter on her website where she shared a statement to the almost 300 scientists that a few weeks ago they warned Spotify that it was allowing the dissemination of messages that “damage confidence” in medical research.
Answer
The scandal hit Spotify, accused of spreading fake news such as Facebook, and the CEO of the pre-recorded music and programming platform, daniel ek, had to come out and show his face: “There has been a lot of conversation about information about covid-19 on Spotify. We have heard the criticism and are making changes to help combat misinformation,” Ek wrote on Twitter.
He added: “We are working to add a content notice to any podcast episode that includes a discussion of covid-19.” “We launched several educational resources and campaigns to create awareness and we developed and promoted a global information center for covid-19″, concluded the head of Spotify.
For many, a lukewarm response, which does not recognize the barbarities promoted by “The Joe Rogan Experience”, a podcast of trumpist profile who usually interviews characters from the American extreme right such as Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes or Chris D’Elia, and anti-vaccine doctors such as the virologist Robert Malone (whose Twitter account was closed for spreading fake news about the pandemic), which compared anti-Covid measures to the Holocaust.
Rogan, famous for hosting the program “Fear Factor” (MTV), joined the platform in September 2020 after a millionaire contract (Spotify paid an estimated amount of 100 million dollars) that he assured his extremist public: the company’s shares soared 7% when the announcement was made public.
Politics
Powerful economic reason to try to put out the fire without losing listeners: “we have a Big responsibility when it comes to finding a balance between security for listeners and freedom for creators”, remarked Spotify, which claims to have eliminated 20,000 podcasts related to Covid since the start of the pandemic.
But not Rogan’s, who also militates transphobia: Spotify already had to come out to defend Rogan when he interviewed the author abigail shrier, journalist for The Wall Street Journal and author of “Irreversible Damage”, a controversial book in against education with a gender perspective.
In the opposite direction, Youtube The energetic week was shown in crossing out those who misinform about Covid-19 on the video platform: vetoed the channels political commentator Dan Bongino, who works as a panelist for the trumpist Fox News.
And he announced that he will ban more channels that repeatedly violate the rules of use, regardless of the number of followers they have: Bongino managed two channels that had about one million subscribers, and criticized the actions as “censorship” by tech companies.
“When a channel receives a notice about content that is against our terms of service, do not publish or use another channel to avoid the suspension,” explained Ruth Porat, executive of Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube and the giant Google.
Banned
Since the outbreak of the pandemic and the revolutionized US elections of 2020, social networks have taken steps to reduce misinformation, especially from influential figures with millions of followers.
The ex-president donald trump He remains banned on Facebook and Instagram, and will remain so until at least January 2023, after he was temporarily suspended for spreading false information about the elections he lost to Joe Biden. “This penalty only applies to our services. Trump is and will remain free to express himself publicly through other means.
Our approach reflects the way in which we try to balance the values of freedom of expression and security in our services, for all users”, explained in the middle of last year the company that commands mark zuckerberg, investigated by the US Congress precisely because of the influence it had on the 2016 elections, by facilitating the dissemination of fake news paid for by various Russian-financed apocryphal content mills.
And it’s not the only news network that has made millions from anti-vaccine content. At the top of the list is substack, the subscription newsletter platform that is increasingly a mecca for conspiracy and frequently misleading theories about the coronavirus. There, Joseph MercolaOsteopath, alternative medicine advocate and prominent anti-vaccine advocate – whose statements have already been blacked out by YouTube and Facebook – warned that “the unvaccinated could soon be incarcerated in government-run camps.”
Profits
Protected by his “tolerance for the publication of writers with whom we do not agree”, Substack makes millions of dollars from misinformation: Mercola is one of the 10 most popular authors on the platform that was founded in 2017, and is part of a growing crop of subscription-based services.
The San Francisco-based company’s mission is “to help creators, authors and other influencers get paid to build more intimate relationships with devoted audiences,” they define. Readers pay per month to subscribe to a certain author who keeps 90% of the revenue, while Substack keeps 10%.
According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit organization that focuses on combating disinformation, Substack earns at least $2.5 million a year from just five anti-vaccine leaders They have amassed tens of thousands of subscribers, each paying $50 a month.
Substack declined to comment, but shortly after the platform was queried by The Washington Post, CEO Chris Best wrote: “The more powerful institutions try to control what can and cannot be said in public, the more people will be ready. to create alternative narratives about what is true, driven by the belief that there is a conspiracy to suppress important information.”
Joan Donovan, research director of the Technology and Social Change Project at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy, noted that the attitude of companies like Substack only invites further scrutiny: “The Substack brand is tied to its creators more controversial. His inaction in the face of a creator who has caused so much damage makes it impossible to separate bad actors from a bad product.”
