What Spotify should learn from the Joe Rogan affair | The Economist - 0 views
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Yet he has broken no laws, nor even, Spotify seems to believe, the company’s content rules.
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As a matter of principle, Mr Rogan should be able to speak. As a commercial question, Spotify has made a publisher’s gamble that his wildly popular show will attract more customers than it repels—just as Netflix recently bet that Dave Chappelle’s risqué comedy show would tickle more subscribers than it turned off. The gamble is, in the most literal sense, Spotify’s business.
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The result is that the content mix on audio platforms is starting to look less like the curated library of Netflix and more like the infinite hotch-potch of YouTube. Unlike other social networks, however, audio platforms have little experience in moderating content.
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Most of the 3.2m podcasters on Spotify are not like Mr Rogan, who sold his show to the company in 2020 for a reported $100m. The vast majority are amateurs,
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On the one hand, most consumers want protection from the most harmful content, the best example being the incitement to violence, which even America’s First Amendment condemns.
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On the other hand, few want tech executives to become censors. Plenty of good music features bad language, disturbing ideas and violence. Some podcasts will stoke controversy. Free speech must be the default.
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The vaccines bust-up is their first taste of an argument that other social networks have grappled with for years and which is now coming to audio.
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Apple, the next-biggest streamer, has content guidelines for podcasts but a rough style guide for music. Amazon, the third-largest, has published even less in the way of rules. And whereas Facebook and co release regular reports on what content they have taken down and why, the audio streamers are opaque.
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Amid the Rogan crisis, Spotify casually mentioned that it had removed 20,000 other podcast episodes over covid misinformation. What else is it taking down? No one knows
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But clear, predictable rules can protect speech as much as containing it. Rules determine not just what is banned, but also help defend what is allowed.
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The social networks are far from perfect, but rules that are open to public scrutiny can gradually be improved on.
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By contrast, the failure to spell out what is and isn’t allowed risks having a chilling effect, in which people steer clear of controversy for fear of triggering the unpredictable censor.
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The lack of well-defined rules encourages an ongoing free-for-all of the sort seen this week, in which critics hope that by withdrawing their business or shouting loudly enough, they can force companies to cancel acts they disapprove of.
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As platforms like Spotify open their gates to more user-generated content, the same free-speech battles are coming to audio. Streamers should get their rules ready now, and prepare for the next, inevitable explosion.