For several days, Spotify has been at the heart of a controversy and under fire from critics. Two artists, Neil Young, American-Canadian folk rock legend and Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer, decided to leave the platform respectively on January 26 and 28, accusing him of the presence of conspiratorial podcasts against vaccination. The Swedish streaming giant tried to react by announcing new measures to combat this misinformation.
Spotify at the heart of a controversy that is gradually gaining momentum
It was Neil Young who initiated the movement against Spotify by asking it to stop hosting controversial American host Joe Rogan, the number one podcast listener on Spotify in 2021. The latter is accused of having criticized vaccination and promoting ivermectin, an unauthorized treatment for Covid-19. Nearly 200 American health professionals were outraged after he received Robert Malone on his show, a doctor much appreciated by anti-vaccines.
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Not having won his case, he decided to leave the platform and no longer leave his titles on the platform, stating that ” Spotify has become a place for potentially deadly Covid misinformation. Lies sold for money “. The gesture was appreciated by the president of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. This controversy led to the unsubscription of several thousand users, the departure of Joni Mitchell and the fall in the market value of the Swedish group.
This is not the first time that an online platform has faced a similar controversy. Even before the appearance of Covid-19, in 2019, YouTube had decided to remove advertising (and therefore the possibility of earning money) from anti-vaccination videos. More recently, it was Joe Biden who accused Facebook of not taking action against antivax publications, which did not fail to make the social network react.
Several measures announced by the president of Spotify to fight misinformation
In a blog post published on January 30, 2022, Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek announced some measures against misinformation on his platform.
There’s been a lot of conversation about information regarding COVID-19 on Spotify. We’ve heard the criticism and we’re implementing changes to help combat misinformation. https://t.co/ic8jfR1RNR
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) January 30, 2022
At the beginning of his article, Daniel Ek indicates that he is against censorship, ” There are a lot of people and views on Spotify that I strongly disagree with. he says. He also adds that his platform should not take the position of content censor, but that it must still ensure that users can be aware of the rules established and the sanctions envisaged in the event of violation.
Daniel Ek announced that all podcasts discussing covid-19 will be accompanied by links that will guide users to sourced factual and scientific information, “ Based on the feedback we have had over the past few weeks, it has become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information from the medical and scientific communities. “.
Spotify is also showing transparency since it has published on its site the rules that it usually reserves for its creators. If one of the rules is broken, such as the denial of the existence of a disease for example, Sportsman can take sanctions up to exclusion. The company also wants to test new ways to signal to podcast creators what is and isn’t okay to say, but doesn’t mention any penalty or exclusion mechanism.
As for Joe Regan, for the time being, Spotify would consider internally that the conditions are not met for an exclusion.