Hundreds of medical professionals want Spotify to address the medical misinformation that is taking place on its streaming platform. An open letter from 270 doctors, scientists, and other health professionals say that throughout the pandemic, “Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine.” However, the letter does not ask Spotify to pull The Joe Rogan Experience, but suggests that the company needs to “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform,” according to Deadline.
The letter comes after a recent episode that featured Dr. Robert Malone which they cited as an example of Spotify’s “failure to mitigate the damage it is causing.” It notes that Malone “compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust”. Malon has even been suspended from Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation and used Rogan’s show and platform to spread more “falsehoods.” Malone claimed that “mass formation psychosis” was causing people to believe that vaccines work, Rolling Stone reports. Malone even claimed that the Biden administration was keeping quiet the proof that ivermectin works as a treatment for COVID.
Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, tells Rolling Stone that she sees Rogan as a “menace to public health” because he has constantly provided a platform to the “fringe ideas” of anti-vaxxers, creating a “false balance.”
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