Courtney Radsch Discusses Spotify’s Disinformation Policy on Al Jazeera

Regulators do not need to decide what is correct and what is incorrect information, but they should compel platforms to have certain safeguards in place, such as content moderation guidelines, CMDS Fellow Courtney Radsch told Al Jazeera in a program on Spotify’s disinformation scandal.

Courtney Radsch discussed the issue on Al Jazeera’s program Inside Story with Jeffrey Lazarus from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Catalina Goanta from Utrecht University.

She said it was shocking that two years into the pandemic and four years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Spotify did not have a content moderation policy. She does not think regulators need to decide what is correct and what is incorrect information. But regulators should compel platforms to have certain safeguards, such as clear content moderation guidelines, in place.

She also called for independent oversight. “We need independent researchers that have access to the content moderation data and how it is acted on by the platform,” she said, arguing that independent access to data is needed so that "we can do the research that will show what kind of interventions are effective" against disinformation.