The 1960s were known for political activism that moved issues, so it’s fitting that two musical icons from that era have used the power of protest to achieve a small victory against pandemic disinformation. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell last week pulled their music from Spotify to protest podcaster Joe Rogan’s spreading of false and dangerous lies regarding the coronavirus on the platform.
Spotify has responded by vowing to put up content warnings, and Rogan says he will start including mainstream expert voices in his interviews. Those raising free speech concerns are missing the broader point when they claim this is censorship: The musicians’ protest is free speech, and it has prompted the beginnings of change. Other musicians should step up.
Rogan’s worst offense against sound science has been turning Dr. Robert Malone into a superstar of the anti-vaccination movement. Malone promotes the myth that coronavirus vaccines are ineffective and dangerous. To promote this lie, he once publicized a video claiming the vaccine had killed a young high school athlete (in fact, the youth had died of unrelated causes years earlier). Malone also publicized a scientific study claiming to show vaccines are dangerous, without revealing the study had been retracted by its authors for factual errors.
Malone’s antics are especially problematic because he used to be a respected immunologist, which, to too many listeners out there, puts the veneer of scientific legitimacy on his disinformation. Why Malone has decided to go down this path is unclear, but the lies were severe enough to get him banned from Twitter late last year. Rogan subsequently conducted a now-infamous interview in which Malone compared pandemic restrictions to pre-World War II repression by the Nazis.
To review: The coronavirus vaccines have now been administered to millions of people globally for more than a year, with close to zero reported instances of serious side effects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that vaccination (with boosters) is upwards of 90% effective at preventing omicron hospitalization; overwhelmed hospitals today are filled almost exclusively with the unvaccinated. These are facts, confirmed by the vast majority of the medical community. What’s coming from the naysayers aren’t valid counterarguments but plain old disinformation.
In announcing last week he was withdrawing his music from Spotify, Young noted that Rogan’s listeners “believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong.” That’s an important point: Just by letting Rogan’s show spew disinformation on its platform, Spotify lends it undeserved legitimacy.
The solutions of putting up warning labels and presenting mainstream voices alongside the kooks are by no means perfect — lies are lies, regardless of their context — but it’s a step in the right direction. Now maybe more protests from more musicians can prompt a next step of getting disinformation off the platform completely.