Joe Rogan was forced to break convention and upload the full three-hour podcast with Donald Trump onto social media platform X this week.
Rogan’s decision came amid controversy surrounding the podcast’s performance among YouTube searches. When “Joe Rogan Trump” is typed in to the video streaming platform, the full podcast does not appear under any search results. This is despite the video accruing over 40 million views in under a week.
Other users reported issues with “Joe Rogan Donald Trump” as a search query on the Google-owned, although the lesser-used “Joe Rogan – Donald Trump” request with a hyphen did yield a successful search.
Google’s Gemini AI also faced similar issues. A request for the podcast prompted an error message stating, “I can’t help with responses on elections and political figures right now,” despite freely sharing information on Kamala Harris’ “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
Rogan said there had been an “issue” with the Trump podcast’s performance on YouTube. He also reposted a video from David Heinemeier Hansson, chief technical officer of software firm 37signals, saying it “would be beyond bonkers if they’re actively trying to suppress” the podcast.
The issue was later “fixed” on YouTube. Of course, in this context “fixed” means reversing their own suppression after getting caught.
However, problems persisted on Google’s AI system.
It’s not the first time that Google, which has heavily donated to the Democrat campaign throughout this election, has been accused of election interference by conservatives on social media. The company was investigated by a GOP Sen. after search results relating to the first assassination attempt on Trump were omitted earlier this year.
