Joe Rogan Episode Featuring Alex Jones Disappears From Spotify Due to Tech Glitch (UPDATED)

UPDATE 11:20 p.m.: The Joe Rogan-Alex Jones episode has been reposted to Spotify. In an Instagram post, Rogan clarified for fans that it was removed and re-uploaded due to a technical issue.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

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. It works for me now, but some folks are still having trouble seeing it. They’re working on it. It IS however fucking classic and amazing that this glitch only shows up in the Alex Jones episode.

A post shared by Joe Rogan (@joerogan) on Oct 28, 2020 at 8:13pm PDT

Read our original story below:

The streaming service Spotify removed an episode of podcaster Joe Rogan’s show on Wednesday after outcry over his Tuesday interview with Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Social media users began noticing the removal just after 10:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. The episode — #1,555 — was conspicuously absent from Spotify’s list. The preceding episode, #1,554 with rapper Kanye West, and the following episode, #1,556 with Intercept co-founder and journalist Glenn Greenwald, were still active.

The development comes after the InfoWars founder joined Rogan on Tuesday to talk about issues including Ghislaine Maxwell, QAnon, the allegations about Hunter Biden. But Jones and Rogan also shared numerous conspiracy theories on vaccines and, at one point, Rogan pulled up an article on a WHO polio vaccine program to misrepresent the effects, claiming that children who received the vaccine ended up getting the disease.

The episode’s apparent takedown also appears to be a reversal from Spotify’s position directly after the interview first aired, when an email leaked to BuzzFeed showed Spotify’s top legal officer Horacio Gutierrez telling employees what they should do if they felt offended.

“If a team member has concerns about any piece of content on our platform, you should encourage them to report it to Trust & Safety, because they are the experts on our team charged with reviewing content,” Gutierrez instructed employees. “However, it’s important that they aren’t simply flagging a piece of content just because of something they’ve read it online. It’s all too common that things are taken out of context.”

It isn’t the first time critics have objected to Rogan’s programming. As of September, Spotify employees had reportedly held more than 10 meetings to discuss their grievances with Rogan’s program and to demand more power to veto episodes they didn’t view as appropriate. Those objections centered, in part, on a comment Rogan made in which he criticized the media’s treatment of transgender issues, saying, “They are activists and they have this agenda, and the agenda is very ideologically driven that anybody who even thinks they might be trans should be trans, are trans, and the more trans people the better.”

Rogan signed a $100 million, multi-year licensing deal with Spotify in May. Guests who have appeared on his program in the past have included SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, and former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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