Spotify hosted the podcasts of Equality and Reconciliation, the journal of Alain Soral, who has been convicted of anti-Semitism. The platform deleted them, especially after Numerama echoed their presence.
The podcasts ofEquality and Reconciliation, the site founded by the essayist multi-convicted for anti-Semitism Alain Soral, and those of Facts & Documents, are no longer available on Spotify.
Both sites are known to publish anti-Semitic content, and Faits & Documents is the source of transphobic fake news about Brigitte Macron. They had been freely publishing podcasts on the streaming platform for several months, as Numerama had revealed in a first article. Spotify has deleted the pages of ERFM (name of the radio station of Equality and Reconciliation), and Facts & Documents. But other pages and podcasts with anti-Semitic and anti-vaccine content remain.
Spotify is having a rough start to the year. Since the shattering departure of Neil Young from the platform, because of the presence of Joe Rogan’s podcast, other artists have chosen to migrate to other services. Spotify’s choices and actions have since been particularly scrutinized. As Numerama pointed out, it’s possible for anyone to publish their podcast on the platform — and it hasn’t yet managed to implement an effective moderation system.
Alain Soral’s podcasts are deleted
Alain Soral’s podcasts were removed from the platform on the morning of February 9, Spotify France’s communications director told Fact & Furious, because they ” violated their terms of service “.
Still according to Fact & Furious, Spotify France’s communications director clarified that ” Dieudonné’s channel was currently being listened to by the moderation team from the streaming service. She also reportedly said that Spotify users have the “ ability to report any content they find offensive “. Although true, this sentence is still to be taken with a grain of salt: as we wrote in our previous article, it is not possible to report podcasts directly on the app. Users must go to a page external to the app, which is not clearly indicated, and which is only in English.
Spotify’s decision comes more than a week after our disclosures. The DéQodeurs channel, which shares content related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, was also present on the streaming platform, but was removed very quickly after our report.
No moderation on podcasts
However, there is still some extreme content on the platform. The podcasts of Thierry Casasnovas, an anti-vaccine crudivore suspected of sectarian aberration, are thus still available, in particular his “investigation on vaccination” – and this while the Spotify teams announced to Fact & Furious that they had ” already removed content in violation of their moderation policy”. The podcasts of the far-right group Action Française are still online, as are those of Breizh Info, a far-right site that regularly broadcasts fake news.
There are probably other podcasts with anti-Semitic or anti-vaccine content available on Spotify. Since 2018, anyone can publish their podcast on the platform for free. However, there is no effective moderation system for audio content at the moment.
In 2021, the platform explained to The Verge magazine to use” algorithmic and human detection measures to ensure that the content on the platform respects the rules “. Contacted by us, Spotify did not answer our questions about the number of moderators employed to verify podcasts.
Music streaming sites can thus find themselves hosting many episodes that do not comply with their terms of use, without necessarily being aware of it. This was particularly the case for Deezer, where Numerama had also found the podcast of the DéQodeurs group. Contacted,the French platform had told us that it had removed this content. But the conspiratorial podcast still appears on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, and Google Music.