What the Joe Rogan podcast controversy says about the online misinformation ecosystem — NPR

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"An open letter urging Spotify to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation has gained the signatures of more than a thousand doctors, scientists and health professionals spurred by growing concerns over anti-vaccine rhetoric on the audio app's hit podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

The medical and scientific experts slammed Rogan's track record of airing false claims about the coronavirus pandemic, vaccines and unproven treatments, calling it "a sociological issue of devastating proportions." Spotify, they say, has enabled him.

While audio apps so far have escaped the scrutiny that has befallen social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the pressure on Spotify illustrates how podcasts have emerged as an influential source of misinformation.

In a December episode of his podcast, Rogan interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, a scientist who worked on early research into the mRNA technology behind top COVID-19 vaccines, but who is now critical of the mRNA vaccines.

Malone made baseless and disproven claims, including falsely stating that getting vaccinated puts people who already have had COVID-19 at higher risk.

The episode immediately raised alarm bells for Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago's School of Public Health, who signed the letter. She is part of a community of experts who debunk medical misinformation on social media, and she says she received hundreds of messages from followers about Rogan's Malone interview.

"Their friends and family were sending it to them as evidence that the vaccines are dangerous and that they shouldn't get it," she said. "It provides a sense of false balance, like there's two sides to the scientific evidence when, really, there is not. The overwhelming evidence is that the vaccines are safe and that they're effective."...