Podcasting is a technical method and a genre of creating and disseminating content on the internet to about as wide an audience that there is (potentially – everyone and anyone online) – but still one that has the (un)fortunate distinction of being somewhat underrated. And certainly – still out of the reach of most advertising metrics, not to mention, most censors.
This has helped podcasts grow, and in many instances has also helped their creators monetize exponentially – but also establish credibility as a free speech platform.
But in time, as this media has flourished, capturing the hearts and minds of both creators and consumers – it has also drawn the attention of a host of usual anti-free media and anti-free speech suspects, such as massive global digital platforms. Those motivated, it would seem from the outside, by little more than a relentless drive for profits – and whatever government or other master needs to be served in order to achieve that absolute end goal.
Now, enter Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming platform. The music industry in general, streaming, in particular, is a really tough, dog-eat-dog business. From there, conventional wisdom would suggest that anyone who manages to carve out a place for themselves in that particular racket, let alone dominate it, must have something of a ruthless streak to it – in short, a company or corporation willing to do just about anything to get to the top, and stay there.
That’s perhaps not good news at all for podcasting, that rare open-standards platform that still manages to effectively stand its own ground against a swell of online centralization and content control.
In fact, according to Hong Kong-based security observer Jane Manchun Wong, Spotify has turned its sights toward podcasting and would like to introduce a feature to regulate it – apparently by giving its users the ability to “report” content.
“Spotify is testing ability to report podcast episodes,” Wong wrote, and then quickly course-corrected herself to tweet the following: “Update: Spotify is testing a new report flow in general, not just for podcast episodes.”
The only question now is: should this clarification leave us more, or less concerned about the state of uncensored information flow on the internet, such as, but not limited to, that still provided by podcasting?
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