Spotify does nothing as Joe Rogan peddles vaccine misinformation

After Baylor microbiology professor and public well being advocate Peter Hotez, MD Ph.D. tweeted out a Motherboard article about Spotify’s lack of moderation of Joe Rogan’s misinformation after a podcast episode with visitor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rogan challenged him to debate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, proposing a $100,000 donation to a charity of Hotez’s selecting if he agreed.

In the episode, Rogan and Kennedy hit all of the pandemic classics: conspiracy theories about vaccines, 5G and Wi-Fi expertise, and ivermectin. All frequent tropes of covid pandemic conspiracy theories.

Twitter’s proprietor Elon Musk joined the Twitter fray, accusing Hotez of “hating charity” by not accepting the talk, and after hours of Elon and Rogan stans taunting Hotez, the professor tweeted, “I was just was stalked in front of my home by a couple of antivaxers taunting me to debate RFKJr.”

That provides a troubling new dynamic to this story, significantly within the context of the Motherboard story that began this, which touched on Spotify’s contortions to permit Rogan’s misinformation to stay on the platform. In the article, a Spotify spokesperson is quoted as saying that as a result of Rogan and Kennedy by no means stated covid vaccines had been designed to kill individuals, the episode wasn’t in violation of the principles.

Spotify signed a $100 million cope with Rogan over three years in the past, and established a brand new set of misinformation insurance policies after a number of high-profile stars had their music faraway from the platform in protest of Rogan’s vaccine claims, which had beforehand gone unaddressed by Spotify.

Even with the insurance policies in place, conspiracies highlighted on The Joe Rogan Experience can go viral as social media spreads the claims. To date, in response to JREmissing, a web site that tracks episodes of the podcast which were eliminated, 111 episodes have been taken down.

Since Hotez’s unique tweet, Rogan tweeted and retweeted criticisms and insinuations about Hotez — who has been a visitor on the podcast previously — just a few occasions over the following a number of hours previous to Hotez’s tweet about being stalked.

We’ve reached out to Spotify for touch upon the story and can replace with a response if we get one.

Update June 18, 2023, 2:56ET PT: Updated the headline and added extra particulars concerning the latest Rogan podcast episode.