Tech

Spotify’s problem is bigger than Joe Rogan


From musicians arrive , Spotify is under attack from all sides. The outrage over Joe Rogan’s podcast and Spotify’s subsequent misinformation policies and actions has occurred both internally and externally. Much of the backlash is warranted because Spotify didn’t give advance notice about Rogan’s podcast content or general misinformation. And the lack of transparency is why the company’s current problems are so much bigger than that of a mass creator.

By now, you may have heard anything else about the Joe Rogan story. The popular podcast host has been controversial for years, but criticism has grown after a December 31 episode featured . While speaking with Rogan, Dr. Malone made a number of baseless claims about the COVID-19 vaccine, including: suffered by many in the United States. After the episode was posted, hundreds of doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators sent a letter to Spotify urging Spotify to create a clear misinformation policy and take “responsibility.” responsibility to reduce the spread” of such content.

When the team posted the letter online, Engadget reached out to Spotify to ask if the company had a misinformation policy, how it acted on misinformation, and whether it was reviewing it. any action against Malone’s episode of JRE. The company did not respond. Two weeks later, CEO Daniel Ek wrote a statement on the matter and on a Sunday afternoon. It is not clear if Ek has plans to publish the policy across the entire platform or if it will react to why some episodes of Rogan’s podcast have not been removed yet.

During the company’s Q4 2021 earnings press conference last week, Ek took responsibility . “We should have done it sooner and it was on me,” he admitted. the same day, the CEO explained that Spotify is not a publisher, so it had no creative control ahead of Rogan’s show. He said that since JRE As licensed content, it does not have the same oversight as for podcasts by The Ringer or Gimlet – the production companies Spotify owns. “We don’t approve his guests first, and like any other creator, we take his content when he publishes it and then we review it,” Ek said. and if such content violates our policies, we will take appropriate enforcement actions.

LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 20, 2021 - The Engineer Room is located next to the main studio,
A control room at Spotify’s “Pod City”.

Genaro Molina via Getty Images

Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan that Spotify “does not accept any meaningful responsibility, other than adding a few disclaimers, all of which are reminiscent of how Facebook has, for years, shied away from responsibility for spreading too much many harmful lies.” And part of the shirk comes in the form of Spotify arguing for a platform versus a publisher.

Spotify is a publisher, no matter what it says to the contrary. $100 million payout reported to close the book JRE as a monopoly gives more responsibility for its content than a program from “any other creator.” Ek argued in that same speech to employees that “exclusiveness does not have equal endorsement” and that the solution was to ensure “a broader set of oligopolies that express even more voices.” . These two statements indicate that Spotify is working to build the foundation as the house nears completion.

According to Ek, a treasure trove of exclusivity has helped make Spotify the number one podcast app in the US. Over the past few years, the company has purchased podcast production studios such as , and , implements exclusive programs for its service throughout the process. It has amassed a wealth of talent, including the most globally popular podcast on Spotify on Joe Rogan’s show. Certainly seems like the behavior of a publisher.

One of Spotify’s is Anchor, that makes creating and publishing programs easy. The company has since leveraged its strong advertising setup for shows on the service, and Anchor has regularly featured arrive . It’s literally a place where anyone can publish a podcast, and it’s helped Spotify add more than a million shows to its library. At the end of 2020, Spotify says Anchor accounts for 70% of its podcasts, .

Spotify The Ringer

Billy Steele / Engadget

However, Anchor’s platform policy hasn’t been updated yet . There was no mention of COVID-19 misinformation, with the exception of an entry that prohibits any content that “conflicts with the Terms, as defined by Spotify, collectively (‘Deprecated Content’) ).” Right now, that would include Spotify’s recently announced policies. However, until recently, those guidelines were not made public and Anchor did not explicitly display Spotify’s policies. Now it’s doing the same when you upload a program.

“Spotify’s platform rules apply to all content on Spotify, including Anchor,” a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget. “We started highlighting our Platform Rules in our creator and publisher tools on February 2nd to raise awareness of what’s acceptable and help creators understand their accountability for the content they post on our platform.”

The lack of transparent guidelines is Spotify’s biggest problem. The issue extends beyond Joe Rogan and covers the entire platform. When asked to comment on from the service (at his request), the company said it had a “detailed content policy, and we’ve removed more than 20,000 episodes of COVID-19-related podcasts since the start of the pandemic.” Those policies were not made public until four days later. Furthermore, when Engadget asked for information about “over 20,000” podcasts that had been retrieved, Spotify did not respond.

For now, we only know about of content actions. So what happens when a creator who doesn’t get paid a lot endorses opinions similar to those shared by Joe Rogan or his guests on JRE? You know, the people the company said “didn’t meet the threshold for removal.” During last week’s earnings call, Ek was adamant that Spotify doesn’t “change our policies based on one creator, nor do we change our policies based on any media cycle or call.” call from anyone else”. However, Rogan’s show will return in July 2020 highlighting the numerous times the podcast host has violated “old-fashioned” rules of violence or hatred against marginalized communities and misinformation. COVID-19.

Spotify is talking about the situation to employees more than to the public, and has no sensitive information or trade secrets. By settling a major private controversy, which was eventually covered by the press, the company further eroded the trust it had left. The company has not publicly confirmed that it removed more than 70 episodes before the Spotify deal in Joe Rogan’s podcast because of racist language, including the use of the n-word, last weekend at Rogan’s request . But again, internally. Why not let an unnamed spokesperson confirm the details when asked? Especially for Rogan himself in an apology video. The company also needs to be public about podcast removals and disclose what their review process is.

LOS ANGELES, CA - November 20, 2021 - Studio 4 will be used for the audio and video podcast inside,
A studio inside Spotify’s “Pod City”

Genaro Molina via Getty Images

Spotify has created a content policy, so it’s clearly looking at how to protect its platform. But what is currently only a local solution needs to be expanded, interpreted and modified immediately before more damage is done. It’s ambiguous at a time when some specifics would go a long way. This isn’t about campaigning for the company to “silence” Joe Rogan about his COVID views or anyone else getting it wrong on the podcast. It is clear that the company will not do so under the terms of its existing agreement with the landlord. But a warning label that is generic and essentially rationalizes its actions privately is not enough.

Of course, Spotify isn’t the first big tech company to hide behind the “platform” label, especially when it comes to content responsibility. Facebook is perhaps the biggest example, as it has argued that . CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the company bears some responsibility for what’s on the site but was . Facebook has also argued that it is a publisher to take such a stance . Twitter has also made a similar case, most notably when asked about related to a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. “Is Twitter a publisher? No we are not. We distribute information,” then-CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress. Section 230, applicable law for things that users post, allowing companies to make arguments. And that’s a big reason seeing .

Ek that “voice cancellation is a slippery slope,” and it is true. The point is that it’s the CEO’s job to find “the balance,” whether that’s with different perspectives or by balancing Unless that balance is accompanied by more transparency and oversight, more volume won’t solve anything.

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