Super woke Hollywood couple Harry and Meghan have thrown another tantrum, this time over streaming service Spotify’s apparently unacceptable spreading of what they deem “Covid-19 misinformation’’.
The pair famous for their love of privacy have a $24 million production deal with Spotify and have joined other celebrities including music legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to voice their “concerns” about “dangerous” and “perceptive content” on the platform.
A statement from the couple’s charity Archewell was shared online by journalist Omid Scobie this weekend:
‘Last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all too real consequences of Covid-19 misinformation on its platform.
‘We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis.’
The row began over the alleged spreading of Covid vaccine misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast which is streamed on the platform. During a discussion on the show, it was suggested that the vaccines could be putting people’s lives at risk.
Despite their concerns, Harry and Meghan nobly decided to continue to work with Spotify and not to return the $24 million. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young both pulled their songs from the streaming service in protest, with others including Bruce Springsteen threatening to follow suit.
The Sussexes have been very active in their encouragement of vaccine uptake, even acting as hosts for the Global Citizen’s VAX LIVE event and Harry is also involved in Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder which aims to tackle the publishing of ‘misinformation’.
Spotify has since bowed to the celebrity tantrums and yesterday assured the cancel culture mob that it will shut down any discussion about Covid which doesn’t suit the agenda.
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s co-founder and CEO took to Twitter to assure us all that free speech will be censured more successfully in the future:
There’s been a lot of conversation about information regarding COVID-19 on Spotify. We’ve heard the criticism and we’re implementing changes to help combat misinformation. https://t.co/ic8jfR1RNR
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) January 30, 2022
Included in the Tweet is a link to Spotify’s updated ‘Platform Rules’, which now state that content “that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health” is prohibited under the ‘Dangerous Content’ section. Breaking these rules “may result in the violative content being removed from Spotify. Repeated or egregious violations may result in accounts being suspended and/or terminated”.
Of course, what kind of a discussion would constitute as posing a “direct threat to public health” is down to Spotify to determine.
While we all may have our own very strong ideas about the correct way of dealing with Covid-19 and the safety of the vaccines, the shutting down of peaceful free speech is a dangerous and slippery slope.
It does nothing save force ideas and discussion underground, harvest resentment and reinforce the notion that the powers that be are purposefully obstructing the sharing of alternative views about the vaccines.
In my view, the really ‘concerning’ point here is not the streaming of a podcast about vaccine uptake reluctancy, but the frightening knowledge that a pair of entitled, moaning snowflakes only have to stamp their feet and we ‘peasants’ are silenced.
Who can say where it will end?
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News
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