Spotify users are leaving in droves, as the streaming service continues to stick by podcaster Joe Rogan. The company is criticized for hosting Rogan and his guests' unfounded claims concerning Covid-19, including that vaccines are dangerous for those who have already had the virus, and doctors are being paid to inflate the death rates.
#Spotifydeleted and #ByeByeSpotify are trending days after the issue was highlighted by musician Neil Young, who gave Spotify the ultimatum of either removing his library of music, or Rogan's podcast. Spotify went with the former, and Young's discography is no longer available.
Spotify has been receiving such an influx of cancellations and complaints that it overwhelmed the customer support service yesterday, with the service receiving too many deletion requests to handle. Spotify's stock prices have also taken a hit, down almost 30 percent since this time last month.
When Rogan had Covid-19 himself, he became a proponent of the debunked ivermectin treatment. The FDA currently only approves the use of ivermectin in humans in small doses to treat parasitic worms and certain skin conditions. Anything over the doses used in these scenarios is dangerous in humans, and even more so when some are turning to ivermectin used in horses, in order to "treat" themselves from home. Widespread ivermectin use has led to hospitalisations and even deaths. There were 1,440 cases of ivermectin poisoning reported in 2021.
Rogan, for his part, has insisted that listeners should not be coming to him for medical advice. Ironically, one of the recent shares on his Twitter account is about anti-vaccine views being "censored", despite the fact that Spotify is very clearly backing him. His show remains very much available on Spotify and YouTube. The latter admittedly has taken down one episode, but this was likely due to the fact that his guest spread bizarre claims about the public being under "mass psychosis", and likened modern-day America to Nazi Germany.