In a video posted to Instagram on Sunday, Joe Rogan addressed the “Spotify controversy” surrounding his podcast and pledged to try and “balance out” guest appearances in the future.
“I wanted to make a video to address some of the controversy that’s been going on over the past few days,” Rogan said in the beginning of the video.
“I wanted to make this video, first of all, because I think there’s a lot of people that have a distorted perception of what I do maybe based on soundbites, or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging,” Rogan said.
“The podcast has been accused of spreading ‘dangerous misinformation,’ specifically about two episodes. A little bit about some other ones, but specifically about two,” Rogan explained. “One with Dr. Peter McCullough, and one with Dr. Robert Malone.”
“Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is. I had them on and because of that, those episodes in particular, those episodes were labeled as being dangerous; they had dangerous misinformation in them.
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation,’ especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact,” Rogan said.
Spotify announced sweeping new rule changes on Sunday addressing “dangerous content” on its platform. The new rules will apply to musicians, podcasters, and other contributors and seeks to curtail content that it deems “dangerous,” “deceptive,” sensitive,” and “illegal.”
“Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health,” was also prohibited on the platform.
Spotify enacts new rules in response to Joe Rogan Podcast outcry
“One of the things that Spotify wants to do, that I agree with, is at the beginning of these controversial podcasts, specifically ones about Covid, is to put a disclaimer and say that you should speak with your physician and that these people and the opinions that they express are contrary to the opinions of the consensus of experts, which I think is very important,” Rogan said. “Sure, have that on there. I’m very happy with that.”
Rogan explained that the podcast consists of conversations with interesting people about interesting topics, and that he’s not trying to promote misinformation, or be controversial.
“I’m not trying to promote misinformation. I’m not trying be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations. I didn’t plan it. I can’t believe it’s as successful as it is,” he said.
“My pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints other people’s perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view. I don’t want to just show to contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so we can all figure out what’s going on. And not just about COVID,” Rogan said.
“I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much heat from it.”
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