Spotify vs Neil Young: What are the false claims made on the Joe Rogan podcast?

The streaming platform Spotify will be removing music by Canadian-American singer Neil Young after the feud over Joe Rogan’s podcast, according to reports.

The move comes a day after the musician had said he did not wish his music to be streamed on the platform which hosted Joe Rogan’s podcast containing controversial claims regarding COVID-19 vaccination.

“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” he had said in the now-deleted post from Monday.

Also Read: Read Neil Young’s open letter to Spotify on Joe Rogan’s podcast

Spotify says it is honoring Young’s request by deciding to remove his music. A spokesperson from the company told The Washington Post in a 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-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Also Read: Who is Neil Young?

The 76-year-old singer had earlier urged his managers to remove his music from the platform because Rogan’s podcast had been ‘spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe this disinformation spread by them’, according to Rolling Stone. 

What did the letter say?

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule. With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE [the Joe Rogan Experience] which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

The letter has since disappeared from view on Young’s website. 

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Why is ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ controversial?

The popular podcast, called ‘The Joe Rogan Experience, is known to have consistently made false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. A group of 270 experts including doctors, nurses and scientists had expressed their discontent regarding the content of the podcast in an open letter to Spotify, according to a report by The Guardian. 

The letter mentioned a particular episode featuring Dr Robert Malone, a virologist who had researched on the mRNA technology used in COVID vaccines, but is now critical of the current treatments in use against the infection.A

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Rogan and Malone were both condemned for promoting conspiracy theories and claims. One such claim was that hospitals had financial incentives to wrongly declare deaths as being caused by the virus. The virologist had also said that receiving the vaccine puts people who have already had the infection at higher risk, and that leaders and politicians across the globe had ‘hypnotised’ people into getting vaccinated, equating this to the rise of Nazi party in 1930s Germany. 

Malone has been banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation but has become a hero in the anti-vaccine community.

Rogan had earlier been reported as saying that he was not an ‘anti-vax’ person. “I believe they’re safe and encourage many people to take them,” he said, while also reiterating that young people did not “need” the vaccine, reported The Guardian.

“I’m not a doctor,” he had said, adding, “I’m not a respected source of information, even for me.”