Spotify embraces Big Tech’s “content advisory” labels

Spotify couldn’t afford to collapse under pressure and remove from its portfolio Joe Rogan, its biggest star, but it has in the past been quietly deleting a number of his podcast episodes to appease the ruling online censorship sensibilities, that have formed in the US and beyond over the past several years.

Now, in the wake of the unsuccessful bid by artist Neil Young to get rid of Rogan and his $100 million podcast from Spotify, for covering and conversations around the pandemic in a way Young didn’t like, the streaming platform is looking for ways other than directly undermining its own business to stay on the good side of the censorship monster.

For now, the demands Spotify will be meeting while still trying to appear as a good home for creators and not yet another cesspool of censorship masquerading as a major platform, is by adopting a series of measures eerily reminiscent of how Big Tech first introduced the slippery slope of its by now massive and unprecedented campaign of online censorship.