By Joel Mathis The Week

The author and podcaster Roxane Gay has joined the (so far, small) exodus of artists who are choosing to leave Spotify rather than share a platform with Joe Rogan and his COVID misinformation. “It was a difficult decision — there are a lot of listeners on the platform,” she wrote Thursday in The New York Times, “and I may never recoup that audience elsewhere.”

This isn’t the first time Gay has taken this kind of stand. In 2017, she pulled a forthcoming book from the publisher Simon & Schuster after that company gave a six-figure book deal to right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. (The contract was later canceled after he got too provocative.) On Thursday, Gay explained her departure from Spotify by looking back at that incident.

Yiannopoulos “had every right to air his political beliefs, but he didn’t have a right to a lucrative book contract,” she wrote. “Nor did I, for that matter. The right I did have was to decide who I wanted to do business with.”

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