Many people aren’t trying to break the rules they would stay within. And, you know, the very legitimate point that we should know what the rules are. S2: And so, you know, and if they wanted to alert Joe Rogan to their rules, I’m sure they had better channels than like trying to highlight it more on their platform in the interface or something like this is again a completely different situation to, for example, Facebook’s community standards, which govern what you and I can post on Facebook. S1: for, and it’s the only place to get the Joe Rogan experience right? It’s exactly the stuff that they were paying They can’t be surprised by the kind of content that he’s producing. S2: Their relationship with Joe Rogan is very different to any other content creator, right? Like they’re paying the guy, the guy. But Ek also put the onus back on creators to abide by the platform’s rules and quote understand their accountability. He also reportedly stressed to employees that Spotify doesn’t hear Rogan shows before they go live, and the company has removed some of Rogan’s back catalogue, including episodes with Alex Jones. He laid out some rules around COVID 19 and said Spotify might put content advisories on some shows. The CEO, Daniel Ek, admitted that the company hadn’t been transparent about its content policies. S1: Spotify tried to clarify its position. The platforms are prepared to play in terms of misinformation, false speech in the context of health than you do in the context of politics. And so you do see this much more active role. And you saw the major platforms all releasing COVID 19 misinformation policies where, you know, based on what the WHO said it was mis or disinformation started taking a lot more content down and then also started labeling a lot more content. And then sort of as a result of the public health emergency that sort of went out the window almost overnight. Who are we to judge what is true and what is false in the marketplace of ideas? You know, the best remedy for speech is more speech, that kind of thing. You know, before the pandemic started, they really had this. S2: It’s been fascinating because I think the pandemic itself has been a real inflection point for platforms in sort of the role that they’re prepared to play. I wonder, broadly speaking, how platforms and tech companies have been dealing with people like Malone over the course of the pandemic.

He’s now a pretty prominent anti-vax activist, and Malone gets banned from Twitter. This guy was at one point a vaccine scientist. S1: Let’s go through the latest controversy. And, of course, the Joe Rogan experience. But crucially, over the past few years, Spotify has leaned hard into podcasts that it distributes exclusively like Armchair Expert, Call Her Daddy. You can still stream music and curate playlists or find and listen to podcasts made by all sorts of people. An important thing to realize about Spotify is that as a company, it has many identities and it’s in the process of evolving. I’m Lizzie O’Leary and you’re listening to what next? TBD a show about technology, power and how the future will be determined. Yeah, we’ve done this dance before, but the steps are a little different this time. That’s very different to a whole bunch of other platforms in this space, and I think that people are starting to have a bit more of a nuanced conversation about that and how responsibility should differ based on the platform role. S2: This is a role that Spotify is playing. He’s being paid millions of dollars by Spotify. Joe Rogan isn’t somebody’s random uncle posting nutty things on Facebook or Twitter.

But Evelyn says there is a key difference here.

S1: It’s huge, in part because Rogan is arguably the most famous podcaster around, but also because once again, a big, popular platform is grappling with who gets to say what on their service.

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