Spotify Responds To Outrage About Spreading Misinformation Regarding COVID-19 On Its Platform

Spotify is expected to continue to improve its content regarding COVID-19. (photo: doc. spotify)

JAKARTA - After the departure of musicians and singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell from Spotify, the streaming music platform is now taking action. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the company will publish legacy platform rules, to be more transparent about policies governing content on the platform more broadly.

"Personally, there are many views on Spotify that I strongly disagree with. It's important to me that we don't take the position of censoring content while also ensuring that there are rules and consequences for those who violate them," Daniel said in his official post on Spotify's website.

Daniel went on to explain how each podcast episode about COVID-19 will now be accompanied by a content advisor.

"This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Center, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information shared by scientists, doctors, academics and public health authorities around the world, and links to resources. trusted," said Daniel.

Launching Sky News, Monday, January 31, the company will also start publishing its platform rules, which are developed by an internal team together with a number of outside experts and updated regularly.

Later, the rules will tell contributors not to promote harmful, deceptive, sensitive, or illegal content on Spotify. Not only that, content that violates the rules can result in content that violates being removed from Spotify.

“The company will start testing ways to highlight our platform rules in our creator and publisher tools to raise awareness of what is acceptable and help creators understand their accountability for the content they post on our platform,” explains Daniel.

Young and Mitchell began pulling their music off Spotify when Joe Rogan spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine through his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

However, according to Engadget, Spotify defended its practice against misinformation and said it had pulled over 20,000 episodes of podcasts related to COVID-19. Despite all that, Rogan's podcast is still available on the platform.

Spotify's actions are also apparently not liked by its employees, and they are annoyed with the company's partnership with Rogan because of his views on COVID-19.

Previously, the company's head of global communications, Dustee Jenkins, reportedly discussed the concerns on Spotify's Slack and notified employees that a team had reviewed several episodes of the controversial Joe Rogan Experience and found that they did not meet the threshold for deletion.

He named the team members who conducted the internal review some of the best experts in their field and also said that Spotify was working with third parties to help it develop its policies.

"What Spotify hasn't done is move quickly enough to share this policy externally, and is working to address it as soon as possible," Jenkins said.