Days after veteran rocker Neil Young decided to remove his music from Spotify over misinformation about his Covid-19, now also the musician Joni Mitchell says he is also withdrawing her work of the streaming platform.
Mitchell announced her decision shortly statement on its website on Friday and said that false information from Spotify cost people their lives.
Like Neil Young, he mentioned one open letter on Spotify, signed by 270 scientists and practitioners published in mid-January, calling on the streaming platform to adopt a clear and public policy on misinformation.
Although Spotify claims to apply detailed policies in the content it hosts and has removed more than 20.000 episodes of covid-19-related podcasts since the pandemic began, it does not appear to have a consistent misinformation policy on its rules, unlike other major platforms.
Remember that it all started when a week ago the veteran rocker Neil Young announced that he did not want his music to appear on the same platform as anti-vaccine podcaster Joe Rogan, who has a $ 100 million deal with the service.
The Spotify show, known as the Joe Rogan Experience, has around 11 million listeners and regularly hosts people discussing everything from Covid-19 and the pandemic to race and climate change. change.
The misinformation about Covid-19 on Spotify came to the fore from a December episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience", the platform's most popular podcast. In the episode, Rogan interviews Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who was blocked from Twitter because it promoted misinformation about vaccines and a common source of conspiracy theories and false information.
In that episode, Malone told Rogan that "mass formation psychosis" (an unfounded concept that is not considered a legitimate scientific idea) has hypnotized people into believing in the effectiveness of vaccines. He also reiterated a popular and false claim that hospitals diagnose deaths from Covid-19 for financial reasons.
While Spotify's response to Mitchell's departure is awaited, the streaming platform is unlikely to act against Rogan. However, the streaming platform could be forced to take a tougher line on misinformation if more artists and users decide to leave. We have to wait and see.
