It’s no surprise to me that the singer-songwriter Neil Young followed through on his threat to pull his music from Spotify in protest of the Covid misinformation spouted by that streaming service’s brightest star, Joe Rogan.
Young’s move is certainly a grand gesture, but if the goal was to shame Spotify into cleaning up its act, it likely won’t work. There just aren’t enough quality alternatives to force the issue.
Consider Rogan’s own recent power move. He got crabby about Twitter and with great flourish tweeted — yes, the irony is thick — that people should join him over at Gettr, the conservative social media site run by the former Trumpie Jason Miller. But he quickly found Gettr to be lacking, calling the technology there “fugazi” and another word, unprintable here.
It’s largely been more conservative figures doing the “my boots were made for walking” thing about tech platforms, complaining of censorship even as they blatantly and intentionally break the platforms’ rules. And with just a small group of players dominating social media, we can expect such futile acts of rebellion to be repeated.
