Joe Rogan in a spot of bother

The Spotify controversy shows science should not be treated like a Fear Factor contestant

By Hari Kumar

The cyberworld continues to be rocked by controversies. The latest is a row over the podcasts of the music streaming service, Spotify.

Started sixteen years ago as an app that lets you stream your favourite music and discover new talents, this Swedish venture has been gradually expanding its area into podcasts.

In 2020, it made a big move by signing a US$100 million deal with Joe Rogan, who boasts of the largest fanbase among podcasters.

Now Spotify is facing backlash over some of Rogan’s interviews.

In a joint statement in January this year, over 270 doctors and scientists accused Spotify of spreading Covid misinformation.   

Then, the protests went to another level when singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchel, who both had suffered polio when they were young, withdrew their songs from the platform accusing Spotify of aiding people who campaign against vaccines.

Videos of Rogan using the racist slur “nigger” several times surfaced, and the debate went viral as right- and left-wing activists started flooding the internet with their take on his podcasts. Even former President Donald Trump pitched in, and soon it became a national debate in the US.

This has brought immense pressure on Rogan, whose long interviews, some of which go over four hours were followed by millions across the world.

To be fair to Rogan, he never openly advocated against vaccinations. Instead, he stood steadfast about the right to give everyone a platform. He argued that freedom of expression was absolute but indicated that he needed to work harder to challenge claims by his guests.

At the same time, he believed that if you are young and healthy, there is no need for vaccination. He also gave airtime to some of the most notorious names on the internet who spread conspiracy theories and let them have a free ride as millions listened.

After the joint statement by doctors and scientists, followed by the shock move by Young and Mitchel, Rogan made some rethink and admitted he had made mistakes in the past, and he would try to clean up his act.

However, such statements failed to appease most of his critics, and things began spinning out of control.

The former stand-up comedian who later moved to television as host of that creepy Fear Factor show – which made participants do bizarre chores to test their mettle – and became a commentator for cage fighting found his niche when he began podcasting his interviews in 2009. He always picked subjects that interested him, not just what was on the news for interviews.

Within a decade, he gained a solid fan base to rival some of the biggest media houses.

His interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk was reportedly downloaded 30 million times while others constantly crossed the multi-million mark. In addition, the video of Musk smoking a marijuana joint during the long chat also went viral on the internet.

The lengthy interviews done by Rogan were always recorded on video and uploaded on YouTube. His guests were as diverse as the US Democratic Party heavyweight, Bernie Sanders, to right-wing radio host Alex Jones.

When Rogan hosted the anti-vaccine campaigner Robert Malone – who was already banned by some social media platforms, including Twitter – on his show and claimed the global inoculation campaign was a mass hypnosis conspiracy, things hit the fan. And, like all social media stars, he came under fire as the divisive society in the United States continued its vitriolic spin.

This whole saga brings the role of new media, like blogs, YouTube, and podcasts, and the lack of any editorial control over their output once again to the discussion. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are already facing a backlash.

While the assaults were mainly over events in the US, the impact of such unregulated internet forums is a matter of concern to countries across the world, especially in Asia.

China reins in dissent while openly encouraging platforms aligned to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to act as attack dogs against its internal and external opponents.

In China, the internet platforms have to hire thousands of content monitors to keep pace with the CCP diktats, some of which are deliberately left vague to the pressure of the hapless workers.

“Chinese moderators don’t have clear community guidelines at their disposal, and often walk a tightrope trying to determine and purge politically sensitive content, usually without explicit directions from Beijing on what’s a definite no-no,” reported Bloomberg.

After a young moderator in China died of heart problems, which some alleged was due to overwork and stress, Bilibili, a major streaming site in the country, said “it will hire an additional 1,000 moderators this year to alleviate pressure on existing staff, and step up health checks for employees”.

In India, where the government uses every tool in its box to rein in critical media, a plethora of influencers fill the space with communal venom and target religious communities, breaking all existing media rules. Some YouTubers (not elevating their status by naming them) whip up communal angles even in events like the Olympics. Some of the so-called mainstream media like Republic Television are even worse. In any other society, they would be classified as lunatic raves.

None of the rules meant for the mass media apply to them, and several channels manufacture “news” almost daily to complement the government narrative.

 This toxic atmosphere has created political havoc in several societies, and the arrival of the Covid-19 saw the rot spread to the field of science and medicine.

“It is fashionable, these days, to think of the internet as something that mostly spreads nonsense and misery, rather than the earlier, more optimistic idea of an electronic repository for knowledge,” said The Economist recently.

The novel coronavirus mutating and spreading across the globe is difficult enough for even virologists to understand and predict. However, a constant change that the virus is undergoing and the resulting adjustments of countermeasures have given perfect-storm conditions for anti-vaxxers, quackery experts, and conspiracy theorists to form unofficial alliances around the globe.

With health and research becoming a staple of the daily news routine, the misinformation is in full flow. Treating scientific research as absolutes led to confusion and disbelief as parameters shifted.

As the Science magazine editor-in-chief, Holden Thorp wrote recently, this was partly due to scientists trying to explain things in a capsule form suited for the current 24-hour news cycles.

“The hashtag #VaccinesWork means to scientists that vaccination induces an immune response that decreases disease severity, but to some of the public, it may mean that vaccination completely prevents infection. Now, anti-vaxxers are using breakthrough infection cases with the Omicron variant to sow doubt.”

 “Those who communicate science may tend to be drawn to absolutes out of fear of seeming indecisive,” wrote Thorp.

In such a confusing circumstance, those reaching a sizeable audience (even if it pales in comparison to Rogan’s multi-millions) have a responsibility that comes with the visibility and the fortunes they achieve, whether it is YouTube, Spotify, or some other platform.

Rogan’s claim that he is not an expert and should not be held liable for some of the things that came out through his podcasts could have gained some traction if it were normal times.

But we are in the middle of a pandemic right now, and Rogan should not treat science and medicine like contestants in a Fear Factor episode.