Following the Rogan Covid-19 controversy, Spotify forms a safety board to review its content moderation policies – TechCrunch

After finding myself drawn in a long story Regarding podcaster star Joe Rogan spreading COVID-19 vaccine-related misinformation on his show earlier this year, Spotify announced a new initiative that could help those in need. situations like this in the future. It has established a Safety Advisory Council, with the aim of making better decisions about content moderation and more generally formulating new policies in relation to that.

The commission will help the streaming platform finalize its policy to tackle harmful types of content. As the company expands into many other fields non-musical audio experiences, such as audio booksit is preparing for different types of content that could attract scrutiny.

Spotify is also aiming to test things like live sound and Text-to-speech AIand external agencies will also review company policy in these emerging areas.

The Safety Advisory Board will not make decisions about specific content or creators. Therefore, you cannot appeal Spotify’s decision on a particular incident.

This is in contrast to Facebook supervisory boardadvise the company on specific content takedown decisions and policies surrounding those decisions.

“At a high level, the board’s mission is to help Spotify develop its policies and products in a safe way while ensuring that we respect the expression of creators. Our board members will advise our teams in key areas such as policy development and safety features and guide our approach to equity, impact and academic research,” the company said in a statement.

The streaming service is exclusive to podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” but in general it sets itself as a foundationDisclaimer of responsibility for the content of the program.

Following backlash over the way themes were introduced into Rogan’s show, musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from the platform earlier this year. Spotify didn’t seem to respond at first, but eventually it started deleting more 100 episodes of the show Rogan’s for reasons such as the use of racial profanity. In March, it also began offering advice on COVID-19 related content to a larger audiencebut this is just a trademark – no censorship whatsoever – so it’s unclear what impact it will have on actual listening levels.

Founding members of the new committee include organizations such as the digital civil rights advocacy organization Center for Democracy and Technology; The Dangerous Speech Project, which works on violent online speech; and Kinzen, which work to protect communities from online hate speech. Initially there will be 17 people on the board.

The board also includes law professor, Dr. Mary Anne Franks; assistant professor of media and journalism at the University of Suffolk, Dr. Jonas Kaiser; and assistant professor at the University of Washington, Dr. Tanu Mitra.

Spotify notes that in the coming months, it aims to add more members to this board with different languages ​​and regional expertise.