Internal messages detail Spotify's lax health content policy; the company told staff multiple Joe Rogan podcast episodes “didn't meet the threshold for removal”
just not that they are *designed* to cause death. Similarly, they allow podcasters to say wearing a mask is *ineffective*, just not that wearing masks will cause imminent, life-threatening harm.” https://twitter.com/... Robᵉʳᵗ Graham / @erratarob : So many people are correcting my use of the word “censorship”, with so far zero citing a source that matches their definition. So in this thread, let me cite some sources for my definition, which this is censorship. https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : Also: I spend a lot of time talking to executives about how their companies are structured and “our moderation shop is run by the head of PR” is just not one that comes up very often, or ever https://twitter.com/... Dylan Reeve / @dylanreeve : The trick, it seems, to avoid having to censor your $100m podcast man, is to write policies so broad that only the very most dramatically extreme people would breach them. https://twitter.com/... Maddie Stone / @themadstone : First off, at least three of these content guidelines were clearly put in place since the start of the pandemic. Second, these are the rules you write if you want to say you have guidelines while allowing most vaccine misinfo to get a free pass https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... @anildash : Years ago, a lot of people didn't understand why Prince hadn't put his catalog on services like Spotify. He explicitly mentioned to @MMLunlimited that he didn't like the algorithmic suggestions that streaming platforms used to suggest content. https://www.ebony.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : It is not unheard of that trust & safety would report up to comms... but... definitely not very common. It is telling quite a lot about different companies about where they place their trust & safety teams: legal? policy? operations? comms? https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : The only potential analog is Nick Clegg, whose title at Meta is “VP of global affairs and communications,” but 1. He is Nick Clegg 2. It is extremely controversial 3. Everyone knows Zuck makes the final calls and 4. They literally set up an external court system for moderation Nilay Patel / @reckless : The thing that really gets me is Spotify claims to have removed *20,000* podcast episodes that violated these even these lax rules. Our information environment is just so broken https://twitter.com/... Matt Pearce / @mattdpearce : It sounds like if Spotify employees weren't demanding answers on what the hell the company policy is, we wouldn't have gotten this explanation into the light of day. https://twitter.com/... Kim Zetter / @kimzetter : Spoiler: the policy is so narrow in scope that unless Rogan denied the existence of COVID or told people vaccines will kill them he's not in violation. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer