Sooner or later, every popular internet platform has to come up with an answer to the question of what it actually is. Neutral conduit for information, no matter how dubious, or a conscientious platform where fact is separated from lie?
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok have been asked this question before. Recently, the Swedish music platform Spotify can also be added to that list.
The reason in short: the controversial, but also immensely popular podcast host Joe Rogan, who signed a deal of more than one hundred million dollars with Spotify in 2020, has been the subject of increasing criticism since the end of last year because of the space he has in his podcast. (The Joe Rogan Experience) offers to guests who openly doubt the usefulness of corona vaccines.
The outcry about this misinformation has grown to such an extent that musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell – who both contracted polio in their youth because vaccines against the virus were not yet available – decided to remove their music from the platform. Also the English Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, who last year their own podcast deal with Spotify, stirred and asked the music platform to make changes that would counter the disinformation surrounding corona even better.
‘Spotify previously only passed on music from artists to consumers,’ says José van Dijck, professor of Media and Digital Society at Utrecht University. ‘Now it also makes podcasts in-house. The platform has thus taken on a major risk. Podcasts revolve around the spoken word, which logically increases the chance of controversy.’
For a long time, Spotify (with 172 million paying subscribers) could watch from a safe distance as the world’s Facebooks and Twitters were pointed out as the biggest spreaders of disinformation and conspiracy theories. That started to change from 2018, when Spotify opened its own platform to third-party podcast makers. In addition, Spotify started successful podcast production companies such as Loudr and Gimlet Media and paid staggering sums of money to celebrities—from Rogan, to the Obamas and Prince Harry—to create podcasts for the company.
How far the disinformation can go on the platform becomes clear, among other things, when you browse the dark caverns of the podcast world. For example, search Spotify for the so-called Kalergi plan, the conspiracy theory that states that Western leaders want to displace white Europeans through ‘mass immigration’. Spotify shows you a variety of podcasts that treat this conspiracy theory without a critical note.
But the biggest risk of controversy was Spotify with Joe Rogan. This has not only to do with Rogan’s meandering interview style – who seeks out social and political taboos from left to right – but also with the working relationship that the podcast host has with Spotify. Rogan is under contract with Spotify for a hefty sum. That makes Spotify, critics say, directly responsible for the content of The Joe Rogan Experiencewhich reaches approximately 11 million listeners per episode.
Last Sunday the director of Spotify, Daniel Ek, tried to counter this criticism by to set that the company does not want to act as a ‘censor’ of content. Spotify did launch a stricter list of bans, including: calling for violence against individuals or groups, claiming that corona is a hoax and that vaccines are deadly. It remained unclear what these tightened guidelines mean for podcasts that freely discuss the Kalergi plan and for existing episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience in which the necessary vaccine skepticism is reviewed.
While far from perfect, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are a thing more decisive been in the fight against disinformation and conspiracy theories. With a strict moderation policy and adapted algorithms, they manage to keep a significant amount of harmful material out. Also, from the start of the corona pandemic, these platforms have collaboration sought with institutes such as the World Health Organization (WHO) to combat disinformation about corona. Spotify only announced this week that every podcast about the coronavirus will link to a so-called Covid-19 hub, where reliable scientific information about the corona virus can be found.
The question now is what could induce Spotify to take even stricter action against harmful material on its own platform. For ad-driven social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, this has been a mix of social, political and financial pressures. But in the case of Spotify, those pressures don’t quite work, says José van Dijck.
‘Experience shows that subscriber-driven platforms like Spotify suffer less from these kinds of controversies. Calls for a boycott among subscribers seem less effective. Spotify is safer in that regard than, for example, YouTube, which earns its money from advertisements. Advertisers are more sensitive to controversy.’
The same applies to Spotify: announce a few small plasters for the bleeding, sit still, and then wait for the storm to pass. An example is also subscription-driven Netflix. That came in October last year under fire because of the transphobic jokes that stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle made in a lucrative Netflix special. The criticism led internal at Netflix to much commotion among transgender employees. But in terms of subscriber numbers, the company felt hardly a bit of pain. And Dave Chappelle’s special is still on offer.
Clearing seems to be in sight for Spotify in any case. Last Sunday, Joe Rogan promised in a remorseful Instagram video get well soon. He promised to bring more “balance” to his podcast, by having more facts on hand and inviting medical experts with less controversial views.