One of the top music streaming services, Spotify, has been attempting to position itself as a top platform for podcasts as well. To date, the firm has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this effort.
As part of the most recent development, Spotify has revealed that it would pay an unknown sum to acquire Kinzen, a Dublin-based start-up that provides content moderation services. The entire Kinzen staff, including the company’s management, will now work for Spotify.
Since 2020, Spotify has collaborated with Kinzen, and the music streaming service has now bought the start-up. By combining machine learning and human knowledge, the technology will be used to better filter podcasts and other audio content.
In 2017, Iine Kerr, Mark Little, and Paul Watson created Kinzen with the goal of focusing on guarding public discourse from harmful falsehoods. It provides platforms with planning tools by providing early alerts about developing narratives and trends that could pose a risk of disinformation.
The investigation covers a wide range of topics, including dangerous disinformation in numerous markets and languages, as well as medical misinformation, antisemitism, racist content, climate misinformation, and violent extremism.
Kinzen, according to Spotify, is particularly significant since it can scan content in hundreds of languages and dialects, enabling the company to identify new risks across markets.
After facing criticism over “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he was accused of disseminating false information about COVID-19, earlier this year, it appears that the acquisition is a part of the company’s efforts to deal with dangerous content on its site.
