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Round 70 episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast mysteriously disappeared from Spotify on Friday, as noticed by JREMissing.com, an online instrument that tracks lacking episodes. The present (and Spotify’s relationship to it) have confronted heavy criticism over the previous few weeks, however there’s no clear connection between that and the lacking episodes, neither is there any instantly obvious hyperlink between the episodes that had been eliminated.
For anybody who’s taken the sanity-preserving step of muting the phrase “Joe Rogan” on Twitter, right here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening: Spotify, which has been the unique house of The Joe Rogan Expertise for the reason that streaming large reportedly paid $100 million for the pleasure in 2020, has taken quite a lot of warmth from folks accusing Rogan’s present of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines (amongst many different issues). Musicians like Neil Younger, Joni Mitchell, and India Arie have pulled their music from the platform in protest, and Rogan himself has apologized to Spotify over the backlash it’s dealing with (whereas additionally defending his present).
Spotify has additionally addressed the controversy, making its content material moderation insurance policies public, and holding a tense city corridor to defend the corporate’s relationship with Rogan to workers.
All of that’s the reason it’s only a bit bizarre {that a} bunch of episodes have gone lacking with seemingly no clarification. (To be clear, the time period “a bunch” is relative — the present has over 1,700 numbered episodes.) A spot verify achieved by The Verge on the information from JRE Lacking confirmed that the episodes had been certainly not on Spotify, though that they had been accessible to subscribers as not too long ago as final yr.
Spotify didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for touch upon why the episodes had been eliminated, and a lot of the explanations that instantly leap to thoughts don’t appear to carry water. The episodes eliminated on Friday aren’t new — the newest one featured Gad Saad and aired in 2018, and the oldest was episode 4 of the present from 2010. On condition that the episodes had been launched years earlier than the pandemic, they’re unlikely to comprise any of the COVID misinformation that’s induced the current controversy.
It’s virtually actually not a scenario the place the visitors requested the episodes be taken all the way down to keep away from additional affiliation with Rogan, both — there are nonetheless seven episodes that includes Saad in Spotify’s archives, and a Twitter thread from Michael Malice appears to indicate he didn’t have something to do with the episodes he featured in being taken down.
This isn’t the primary time episodes have been faraway from the JRE archives — Insider reviews that over 40 episodes disappeared in April final yr. It was unclear why it occurred on the time, however the scenario is even stranger now given the… effectively, all the pieces that’s happening.
Joe Rogan additionally didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for remark. We’ll you’ll want to let you understand if we hear again from him or Spotify.
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