Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell production company is pressurizing Spotify to change, and address the harms of COVID misinformation on their platform. 

The statement detailed how the erstwhile royal couple had reached out to Spotify last year about the dangers of COVID misinformation. While it didn’t call out famous podcaster Joe Rogan by name, it was in April 2021 that Rogan suggested people don’t need to take vaccines if they’re young and healthy. 

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These statements appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which is exclusive to Spotify. The statement from Archewell states, “Since the inception of Archewell, we have worked to address the real-time global misinformation crisis. Hundreds of millions of people are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day. Last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all-too-real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis. We look to Spotify to meet this moment and are committed to continuing our work together as it does”, as reported by Variety. 

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Notably, the fracas with Spotify allowing Joe Rogan’s podcast to stay on has led to famous musician Neil Young withdrawing his work from the platform. In his open letter, Young noted, “Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID”. Joni Mitchell has also followed suit. Dr Brené Brown, an author and researcher with an exclusive Spotify deal, also announced on Twitter, “I will not be releasing any podcasts until further notice. To our #UnlockingUs and #DaretoLead communities, I’m sorry and I’ll let you know if and when that changes.”

Notably, Harry and Markle have a multi-year deal with Spotify to release their podcasts. However, thus far, the duo has only released one Holiday special.