Spotify listeners said that a recently published podcast by Joe Rogan with an interview of
conspiracy theorist Alex Jones disappeared from their app, leading many to believe it had been censored. Later Rogan said that it was due to a technical glitch, and then that explanation disappeared as well.
Rogan is one of the world’s most popular podcasters, but liberal employees at Spotify bristled when he signed a reportedly $100 million deal to move his popular podcast to their platform.
On Wednesday listeners
reported on social media that podcast #1555 with Jones had vanished from their apps.
Joe Rogan’s podcast #1555 with Alex Jones just magically disappeared from Spotify. https://t.co/4lj5SMYm21
— Caleb Hull (@Caleb Hull)1603938791.0
Many were concerned that the company had censored the episode in order to appease liberal critics of Rogan and Jones. Hours later, the episode reappeared without an explanation from Spotify.
On Thursday, Rogan himself
explained in an Instagram post that the deletion of the podcast had been a technical error.
“The conspiracy about the show with the conspiracy theorist…. The episode that was uploaded to Spotify had some cache issues, and it wasn’t working correctly on some devices so the engineers had Jamie re-upload it with the same date, thinking it would fix the problem but still play for everyone like it was never missing. Didn’t quite work out perfect, which led to my phone getting hit up by people thinking it was removed.”
Then that Instagram post disappeared.
Bloomberg
reported that employees had criticized the podcast episode over comments made by Jones against vaccination, but that Spotify stood its ground on allowing the episode to remain published.
On Thursday, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek
defended the podcast with Alex Jones in an interview with the Financial Times.
“We want creators to create. It’s what they do best. We’re not looking to play a role in what they should say,” he said.
TheBlaze has reached out to both Spotify and Joe Rogan for comment but neither responded in time for publication.
Here’s part of the podcast with Alex Jones [expletives included]:
Alex Jones on Bohemian Grove, Skull & Bones, Epstein
www.youtube.com