The tricky territory of free speech

What happens when a great musician butts heads with a great podcaster? The platform that hosts both is embarrassed and it becomes a test case for free speech. Neil Young has been a legend for over 50 years. Joe Rogan is a genius who’s redefined podcasting. Mr Rogan started life as a martial artist, moved into sports commentary, and then comedy. From there, he arrived at podcasting and was among the first to realise listeners do engage with long podcasts. Spotify hosted both these stars. Mr Young used to generate over 6 million listens per month on Spotify. Mr Rogan’s podcasts each average over 11 million listeners.  (Disclosure: I listen to both.) Both possess personal fortunes in the nine figures. 

Politically, Mr Young is a diehard liberal as his oeuvre attests. Mr Rogan says he’s socially liberal, and lists confusing preferences. He supports same sex marriage, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, recreational drug use, universal health care, and universal basic income. He also supports the right to bear arms, and to buy guns without licenses, and criticises “military adventurism in US foreign policy”. He’s willing to interview anybody and let them say anything. His only criteria is that listeners should be engaged. Rogan has a deal, said to be worth $100 million, with Spotify to give the platform exclusive access to The Joe Rogan Experience. 
 

The face-off occurred because Mr Rogan cultivates anti-vaxxers. He’s given these cranks lots of airtime, and their views have reached the large audiences he commands. His podcasts have discouraged vaccination, and promoted ivermectin, a cattle de-worming drug as an anti-Covid specific.  Mr Rogan has also hosted many other crackpots, and pseudoscientists. He’s had Bigfoot “researchers” (Bigfoot is the US version of the Yeti) and UFO-watchers on his shows. But Bigfoot believers are harmless. Anti-vaxxers cause harm. They harm themselves. They can be super-spreaders, harming others. There’s overwhelming evidence that the unvaxxed are far more likely to be infected, far more likely to suffer serious Covid symptoms, and have far higher mortality rates. By putting pressure on the healthcare system, they crowd out other patients too. 

In December, a group of 270 doctors wrote an open letter to Spotify asking it to moderate Covid misinformation on the platform. That letter said: “It is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this to thrive”. Then, Mr Young got into the act saying he would quit Spotify, unless they muffled Mr Rogan’s anti-science messaging. Mr Young said: “Spotify has become the home of life threatening Covid misinformation. Lies being sold for money.” Mr Young also estimated approximately 60 per cent of his income comes from Spotify, but that, as mentioned above, scarcely matters to him. Spotify had a serious problem. It chose to hang onto its golden goose, Mr Rogan, while letting Mr Young go with many public expressions of regret. In a statement Spotify said: “… 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.” But Spotify has not only not censored Mr Rogan; it has not even labelled his anti-vax podcasts with warnings that the views expressed are not consistent with scientific facts. 

Free speech absolutists (Disclosure: I’m one) generally don’t censor pseudoscience. It’s ok to claim the Sun moves around the Earth, for example. You’re an idiot if you believe this but that’s your problem. But free speech advocates do draw the line at incitement to murder, or to suicide. For example, it would not be ok to advise drivers (or pedestrians) to ignore traffic lights.  

Labelling a podcast is not the same as censoring it. Most online platforms have moved, reluctantly perhaps, to labelling the more outrageous conspiracy theories. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, after he persistently made false claims.

After Mr Young pulled out, Spotify has been hit with a spate of cancellations, which have overwhelmed its customer support. The stock has dropped 20 per cent.

This is tricky territory. But more people probably died during the pandemic due to a refusal to vaccinate, than due to jumping traffic lights. Arguably advocating vaccination-avoidance edges into the category of incitement to self-harm. Perhaps even to incitement of suicide.