A Vice report says that Spotify employees are fighting against some of their executives for the company’s deal with the world’s most popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience” because they say that some episodes are “transphobic.”
Since May, Joe Rogan, who has approximately 9.5 million subscribers on YouTube, signed a contract with Spotify to podcast on the platform. However, it seems that this commercial agreement has not been to the liking of many of the employees of the streaming service, who have complained that Rogan’s podcasts are critical of transgender people.
At least, that is what the Vice news portal has reported, who received this information through three anonymous sources. However, as some of the most popular episodes of the show haven’t made it over to Spotify during the transition, a staff pushback against certain episodes could make sense.
According to them, on Wednesday, September 16, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek called a staff meeting to discuss Joe Rogan. And we say “again” because, according to the sources, this would be the tenth meeting held within the company to discuss the podcaster.
At these meetings, workers have provided a series of questions to be answered by Spotify executives, and a good part of the questions focus on questioning the company’s decision to allow podcasts that they think are “transphobic.”
Faced with the controversies and internal conflicts, Mr. Ek came to the defense of the company’s decisions, indicating that they are listening to each of the workers’ opinions, but that how they make changes is a little different from that of other companies.
In the past, Joe Rogan has slammed YouTube for its censorship of perspectives that are widely popular with the masses, but that fringe groups pressure the platform to censor.
Many thought that, with the move to Spotify, Rogan would have more freedom on the platform. Yet, the ideological problem is one that’s not tied to one platform – it’s one that’s prevalent across tech companies as a whole and Spotify isn’t necessarily immune.
Although nothing has been said about it, it is possible that in the future Spotify will have to take measures to curb Rogan’s speech – a move that will almost certainly anger fans.
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