The controversy is different, in many ways, from the other conflicts between online stars and the companies that give them a platform.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A popular internet personality, beloved by millions for his irreverent, anti-establishment commentary, becomes the subject of a heated backlash after critics accuse him of promoting dangerous misinformation. The controversy engulfs the creator’s biggest platform, which has rules prohibiting dangerous misinformation and now faces pressure to enforce them against one of its highest-profile users. Hoping to ride out the storm, the platform’s chief executive publishes a blog post about the importance of free speech, declining to punish the rule-breaker but promising to introduce new features that will promote higher-quality information. Still, the backlash intensifies. Civil rights groups organize a boycott. Advertisers pull their campaigns. A hashtag trends. The platform’s employees threaten to walk out. Days later, the chief executive is forced to choose between barring a popular creator — and face the fury of his fans — or being seen as a hypocrite and an enabler of dangerous behavior. If this scenario sounds familiar, it’s because a version of it has occurred on every major internet media platform over the last half decade. Facebook and Alex Jones, Twitter and Donald Trump, YouTube and PewDiePie, Netflix and Dave Chappelle: Every major platform has found itself trapped, at some point, between this particular rock and a hard place. Now, it’s Spotify’s turn. The audio giant has faced calls for weeks to take action against Joe Rogan, the mega-popular podcast host, after Mr. Rogan was accused of promoting Covid-19 misinformation on his show, including hosting a guest who had been barred by Twitter for spreading false information about Covid-19 vaccines. This month, a group of hundreds of medical experts urged Spotify to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation, saying that Mr. Rogan had a “concerning history” of promoting falsehoods about the virus. So far, the backlash cycle is hitting most of the usual notes. Critics have compared snippets of Mr. Rogan’s interviews with Spotify’s stated rules, which prohibit material “that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive content about Covid-19.” Two folk-rock legends, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, led the boycott, pulling their catalogs from Spotify last week in protest of the platform’s decision to support Mr. Rogan. Brené Brown, another popular host, soon followed, saying she would not release new episodes of her Spotify-exclusive podcast “until further notice.” Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, published the requisite blog post on Sunday, defending the company’s commitment to free expression and saying that “it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor.
