While the “Joe Rogan Experience” will remain available for streaming on Spotify, another daily podcast created by host Stew Peters was removed late last year for peddling COVID misinformation.
Spotify recently began labeling all podcasts that contain information regarding the pandemic and COVID, and said it had not found Rogan to have broken any rules.
But for Peters, a line was crossed, according to the streaming service.
“Spotify prohibits content on the platform which promotes dangerous false, or dangerous, deceptive content about COVID-19 that may cause offline harm and/or pose a direct threat to public health,” a Spotify spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “When content that violates this standard is identified, the appropriate enforcement action is taken.”
While Peters fit the mold of a right-wing conservative voice, such as those on Fox News and other pro-Trump media, he often went to extremes with ideas and rhetoric, including referencing COVID vaccines as a “military bioweapon.”
The Daily Beast also found that iHeartMedia removed “Patriotically Correct,” a different podcast hosted by Peters, from its platform.
When asked for comment by the Daily Beast, Peters said, ““iHeartRadio and Spotify have now shown the world, without shame, that they are the propaganda arm of the communist, globalist genocidal machine, hellbent on the destruction of freedom, Christianity, and truth.”
Peters’ removal from Spotify occurred before Joe Rogan’s podcast came under fire for misleading information about the vaccine by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and a rush of other artists and creators.
Rogan responded to the uproar with a 10-minute video on Instagram, explaining his thoughts and feelings about misinformation and more.
“If there’s anything that I’ve done that I could do better, it’s having more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones. I would most certainly be open to doing that. And I would like to talk to some people who have differing opinions on the podcasts in the future. I do all the scheduling myself and I don’t always get it right,” he said.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek talked to the company’s employees about Rogan’s content remaining on the streamer, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge.
“There are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive,” Ek said, according to The Verge report. “If we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with. Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas, and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad.”
To read more about developments at Spotify since the protests erupted, here is a story about its stock, and here is a story about their categorization updates.