It’s been a long time since then Spotify ceased to be an exclusively music platform and podcasts, live audio streamsaudiobooks and even Text-to-speech conversion using artificial intelligence.
However, new content is also new challenges and controversies to be faced. And so far, anything to do with it is not good at all. false information and fake news
try to fix it with Security Advisory Council, a kind of the council of wise men who will regulate the ethics of contentbut without specifying whether that means it will also manage podcasts and live streams.
Spotify bets heavily on podcasts by paying more than $100 million to obtain the exclusivity of the controversial Joe Rogan, But everything went wrong when this character started using racial slurs and misinforming with anti-vaccine and anti-science statements.
in the face of protests Spotify refuses to censor podcastclaims freedom of expression and claims that these are just a tool that does not control what others post. The problem is, he paid a million for his special Joe Rogan podcast and therefore responsible for its content.
Reluctantly, Spotify removes 100 episodes for Rogan’s racist insultshowever, it refused to censor those related to disinformation about Covid-19 and replaced it with a label to access accurate information about the disease.
These measures were not enough for musician Neil Youg, the couple of Barack and Michelle Obama and other celebrities who left Spotify.
Many users complain that one thing is freedom of expression, ideas are free and something else. manipulate or misinform with lies that are easily disintegrated by science or facts. But we live in a time where even immutable facts are questioned, and this is a real danger that takes us back to the Middle Ages.
Spotify seems to have thought of it better. As reported by TechCrunch, it decided Establishing a Security Advisory Council It consists of 17 members from civil organizations.
These include the digital civil rights advocacy organization Center for Democracy and Technology, the Dangerous Speech Project, which deals with violent conversations online, and Kinzen, which works to protect communities from online hate speech.
Law Professor Dr. Mary Anne Franks, Associate Professor of Communications and Journalism at the University of Suffolk, Dr. Jonas Kaiser and Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Dr. Tanu Mitra has already been confirmed.
Spotify is clarifying this in the coming months It will also include experts from different languages and regions.
This council of wise men will not censor certain contentbut it will mark the ethical lines that anyone wishing to stream on Spotify must abide by.
“The council’s mission is to help Spotify improve its policies by respecting the creators’ expressions. You will advise our teams in key areas such as security policy and feature development and guide our approach to equity, impact and academic research.“, explains Spotify in a statement.
A suggestion that is not very clear since Facebook/Meta has a similar advisory council and we have already seen what it does. We’ll see What is the maneuverability of this expert group?and how long they let it work.
Source: Computer Hoy
