There have been quite a few issues regarding Joe Rogan and some of his podcast episodes seeming to be censored by Spotify. Now the commentator and comedian responds to a recent situation, mocking those who point to a larger conspiracy.
The start to Spotify’s 9-figure relationship with Rogan and his podcast has been a rocky one at best. Initially there were concerns about a large portion of his podcast episodes that were missing from his catalog when it was moved to Spotify. Then there was a portion of Spotify employees who were threatening to strike if there was not some sort of control and censorship of Joe’s podcasts. Of course, this was not much of a concern for the UFC commentator, who did not hesitate to mock those who were in an uproar.
View this post on Instagram
Joe Rogan Addresses Deleted Alex Jones Podcast
One of the more controversial people to appear on the Joe Rogan Experience, and also someone who’s podcasts with Joe were missing in the aforementioned issue with the old catalog, is conspiratorial internet personality Alex Jones. The two recently did another podcast alongside comedian Tim Dillon, but fans noticed something strange shortly after it aired on Spotify. Apparently while it was there at first, the podcast suddenly disappeared, making some speculate that this was a ploy from a rogue Spotify employee to censor the episode.
Joe Rogan's podcast #1555 with Alex Jones just magically disappeared from Spotify. pic.twitter.com/4lj5SMYm21
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) October 29, 2020
Rest assured however, that this podcast is back up and able to be listened to. Rogan took to his Instagram to explain the mishap, dismissing any conspiracies that this was on purpose. He explained that this was all an issue with the cache on the podcast, a problem that is being addressed.
“The conspiracy about the show with the conspiracy theorist…” Rogan wrote.
“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. It works for me now, but some folks are still having trouble seeing it. They’re working on it.
It IS however f–king classic and amazing that this glitch only shows up in the Alex Jones episode.”
Defending Alex Jones
There are a lot of fair criticisms to make about Joe Rogan and his sometimes fluid relationship with fact checking. However it is worth noting that he is working to do better, addressing when he gets certain issues incorrect. This spanned in the podcast with Alex Jones, who has gained notoriety for his tendency to spew baseless conspiracies, but this time on JRE, Joe made sure to fact check the majority of his claims during the podcast. He did not hesitate to bring this up to the people who were criticizing after the fact, pointing to the evidence of the claims Alex was making.
“I knew people were going to criticize the content of the podcast without even listening and I was right,” Rogan wrote on Instagram. “That’s why I fact checked every single crazy thing he said, and all of them were verified. People have said he spread ‘anti-covid vaccine conspiracy theories’ because he said that 80% of the people who were given one of the vaccines got sick. Here’s the video of Bill Gates admitting it himself.
Now, I’m NOT anti vaccine, and if a safe and effective covid vaccine is created I’ll take it and encourage others to take it, but I wanted to put this video up to validate what he said.
He said a lot of crazy, but accurate things, and that’s what I’ve been saying about him for years. He’s most certainly f–ked up in the past, but this episode and the subjects he exposed highlight why I chose to have him on.”
Regardless of how you feel about Joe Rogan or Alex Jones, there is a piece of irony that can be take away from this situation. It is something Joe points out, in that there are people forming conspiracies about a guy who talks about conspiracies. Perhaps this just points to a larger issue of how easily the internet can misconstrue information.
