Spotify Acquires Company That Detects Harmful Content In Podcasts (engadget.com) 104
Spotify has purchased a company called Kinzen to help it detect and address harmful content in podcasts and other audio formats. Engadget reports: Kinzen uses machine learning and human expertise to analyze possibly harmful content and hate speech across multiple languages, Spotify said in a statement. It added that Kinzen will "help us more effectively deliver a safe, enjoyable experience on our platform around the world" and that the company's tech is especially suited to podcasts and other audio formats.
The two companies have actually been working together since 2020, with the aim of preventing misinformation in election-related content. They forged their partnership before Joe Rogan started spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his Spotify-exclusive show, which is said to be the most-listened-to podcast on the planet. There was a significant backlash against Rogan and Spotify earlier this year. [...] It may be the case that Spotify sees employing Kinzen's tech as a means to help it avoid similar PR catastrophes in the future.
The two companies have actually been working together since 2020, with the aim of preventing misinformation in election-related content. They forged their partnership before Joe Rogan started spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his Spotify-exclusive show, which is said to be the most-listened-to podcast on the planet. There was a significant backlash against Rogan and Spotify earlier this year. [...] It may be the case that Spotify sees employing Kinzen's tech as a means to help it avoid similar PR catastrophes in the future.
Well I guess that's it (Score:2, Funny)
I kid, I kid... I'm not gonna miss Joe Rogan.
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This kind of tech needs to die. The instant and insane need to abuse it, just shows the current generation of engineers and capitalists have no business having it.
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I mean, if you don't like something, turn it off, but listening to it will not "cause you harm".
Geez , people, toughen up just a little bit.
Sticks and stones, you know?
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You haven't paid attention outside the ecosystem of the Great Fauci then.
Right now, Joe Rogan is likely to have saved more lives than Fauci. Fauci may have killed more people than CoronaDoom.
Check with your local Mortuary and see how business is going. Mortuaries around the world have had gangbuster business for the last year. In Jan 2021, the body count started growing. They were down before Jan 2021, but something happened in Jan 2021 that caused people to start dying a little more often.
It has not yet re
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Indeed. There are nations which are literally banning the vaccines outside of high risk groups. I never listened to Joe Rogan (and rarely listen to any talking head) so I don't know what he said exactly but those skeptical of the vaccines have ultimately proven to be correct. There are strong indicators (the Pfizer docs) that key players knew better all along but their motive isn't established.
This is far from the only example either. Most of the 'misinformation' topics which have since been settled have ha
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Their motive was money or power, it couldn't be anything else.
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I mean, c'mon. This is an entertainment podcast....
Maybe it's just me, I'm old school, but I would expect grown adults to listen/read from more respectable resources for their own health, you know?
Anyone that take their "news" from one source, especially an entertainmen
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So it's like all those people who want to ban books [theguardian.com]. If you don't like it, don't read it.
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While I don't agree with banning of books, for adults...I think it is wholly appropriate to measure what materials are available to children and gauge what is presented to them based on their ages and what their parents want them exposed to.
There's a bit difference between the two.
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So you are not one of those people who "celebrate diversity"?
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Re:Well I guess that's it (Score:5, Informative)
Joe Rogan could leave, and that would be the end of Spotify.
Joe Rogan leaving would certainly not end Spotify. They're still one of the most popular music subscription services out there.
It would, however, dent the shit out of their hopes to become the mainstream podcasting platform of choice.
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There are a lot of Spotify users who do not use the service to listen to podcasts. Making it a pure music platform and investing that podcast money into better recommendation algorithms and paying artists could appeal to those people. Me, I get tired of seeing podcasts getting pushed on me every time I start Spotify.
There are better platforms for listening to podcasts anyway, and one of the big draws of po
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While I agree that there are superior implementations for podcast listening, I don't think it makes them better. I think focusing on implementation to rate podcast services misses the point. Spotify has a number of characteristics that optimally positions it for podcasting. They are: a) it has a large non-political user base, making it both harder to turn into an echo chamber (i.e., ban all the nonbelievers) and to smear an
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If they're superior, why are they not better?
ahead of the curve (Score:3)
"Hitler was right. About teddys being cuddly".
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Cryptologisms. That's what they'll do.
100%. I listened to about 30 minutes of a whackamole show run by the family of a conspiracy broadcaster who died of COVID. A solid five minutes was spent "cleverly" hinting at words they'd be using to avoid saying words that they believed would get them delisted.
There is no hate speech or harmful content. (Score:4, Insightful)
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There's content that's not age-appropriate or that parents should review before letting their minor children read or view it.
Would somebody pass this on to the New Zealand PM, please?
Re: There are no brains in kids these days (Score:2)
Re: There are no brains in kids these days (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you could thank the murderous criminal for video taping their confession via livestream, right before you execute them (if they still live). And, if you like, livestream that.
As an analog, you're basically complaining that someone is broadcasting unregistered/illegal pirate radio out of their house, and not following any of the FCC regulation. I mean, sure, it's illegal, that much was clearly obvious from the start. But what you're doing by hiding it is choosing to make it scarce, and what every economist knows by heart is that scarcity is the foundation of value.
Imho, these videos should be left up, modified as necessary to shield the identities of the victims, and given adequate ratings to protect children from happening across them by accident. But believe me, when someone wants to see something that exists on the Internet, they will find it. If your kid find videos on the Internet that you with they hadn't, the only person you have to blame is yourself for being a /afk parent.
Protectionism and pearl-clutching will not save the kids - only a good education can do that. Stop winging and start parenting.
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I am sorry but nothing will save the kids unless their parents actually want to get involved in their parenting, instead of turning it over to TV and the Internet.
Re:There is no hate speech or harmful content. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, unfortunately the people sitting on the nodes are enjoying the ability to censor anything they disagree with.
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Yeah that sure worked, didn't it? [amazon.com]
Yeah, harmful content should be banned, right? [amazon.com]
We need to think of the children! [amazon.com]
I was wondering how long it would take to Godwin this thread, thanks for proving me right.
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Burning books doesn't work, how's that?
The Nazi's burned books, but that didn't work.
The Allies burned their books, but that didn't work.
It's like pornography laws, which didn't eliminate pornography or trafficking.
The content is available. Amazon is a convenient outlet but there are others. [ebay.com]
If anything, the Internet has expanded the ability to circumvent content restrictions.
Simple enough?
Oh, more kids get killed by Vehicle accidents and guns than flammable clothing. [nejm.org]
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The Nazi book-burnings contributed to making German society aggressive, intolerant of difference, and genocidal. The Allied book-burnings contributed to making German society peaceful, welcoming of difference, and genocide-free. Both actions worked for their intended purpose. The one that destroyed helpful content had a harmful effect, and the one that destroyed harmful content had a helpful effect. They worked.
You seem to be saying that because people keep dumping poison in the river, that means it's
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I don't agree with that point. Maybe the fact that Germany was obliterated to rubble almost everywhere and split into pieces had something to do with them saying "hey, that was a fucking bad idea." An expensive lesson that the whole world had to learn. After all, history is written by the victors.
Right now we have "fact checkers" and companies trying to control as they call it "misinformation" which suppresses dissent and is contrary to reasonable arguments. The repercussions are that truth is never found
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Defeat and destruction aren't enough to change minds. A defeat can even solidify ideological commitments - look at the Serbians, for example, who held on to their defeat in the Battle of Kosovo for six centuries. If the Allies had left the Germans to their own ideological devices after WWII, a betrayal-and-revenge narrative was just as likely to set in as a peace-and-democracy narrative. The Holocaust could've disappeared down the memory hole - there were certainly many, many people who wanted it to disa
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And then who gets to decide what is harmful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it that what says a current politician might not be all that great?
Is it that what says the local religion might not be divine truth?
Is it that what says that those living across the border are also just normal people, very much like you and me?
Is it that what says it is fine to love in ways you like, assuming you are both mature enough to consent and do so?
This will only lead to censoring, which is the only thing that is truly harmful.
Re: And then who gets to decide what is harmful? (Score:1)
That's the disingenuous part about calling it "harmful"... it's an adjective that can drive anywhere and serve any agenda. A term like "undesired" would be a lot more honest.
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This will only lead to censoring, which is the only thing that is truly harmful.
Horseshit. There are many things more harmful than some dweeb's podcast being limited. I just hope for your sake that you don't have to deal with the consequences of such actions (such as suicides due to online bullying), or are you suggesting something that lead directly to someone's death is not truly "harmful"?
The internet is very full of harmful content. The in the know would say "well it is obvious to me that was harmful so the person should have known..." to which one obviously needs to state, if it w
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This will only lead to censoring, which is the only thing that is truly harmful.
Horseshit. There are many things more harmful than some dweeb's podcast being limited.
None of which can be remedied through censorship.
Re:And then who gets to decide what is harmful? (Score:4)
There are many things more harmful than punching someone in the face, that doesn't mean it's not a problem or that it should be ignored.
I'm trying my best to approach your post neutrally, but you jumped from "this degree of corporate censorship doesn't matter" straight into "this kind of corporate censorship matters a lot, it's good and you should support it." The best possible reading of this is that you haven't fully considered what your position on this actually is and are just throwing out whatever sounds good, and that's still not a particularly good position to argue from.
Speaking to this point in particular, the original poster's issue was "who determines what should be censored," which is a completely valid question to ask when we're talking about censorship (or whatever you prefer to call silencing speech if you don't like that word for whatever reason). Nobody in this reply chain has said "everyone should be able to say anything whenever they like, wherever they like," so your point about bullying is irrelevant at this point. The problem being discussed is "who watches the watchers," not "why all speech should be permitted in any context." There are already laws that pertain to that matter.
And who determines what is harmful, and why are they an authority on such things? That's the problem being discussed. We're talking about shutting down speech, so it's very relevant to ask "how is harmful being defined and by whom, and why are they an authority on defining this?" Because we increasingly live in a world where people are defining speech that makes them uncomfortable as "harmful" or even "violent," and I think it is unethical to silence speech for the sole reason that it makes you uncomfortable.
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You appear to be saying two incompatible things here, it seems just to try and win an argument.
>There are already laws that pertain to that matter.
>And who determines what is harmful, and why are they an authority on such things?
So which is it? Are you saying that there are laws that pertain to that matter and already determine what is harmful and this can implement those laws, or are there no laws that pertain to the matter and so we something like this?
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That's always been the reason used to censor. Every. Fucking. Time.
This isn't new; it's the same old bullshit.
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I'm trying my best to approach your post neutrally, but you jumped from "this degree of corporate censorship doesn't matter" straight into "this kind of corporate censorship matters a lot, it's good and you should support it."
If that's what you read then you completely misunderstood my post. But since you brought up two things I didn't say let me address them anyway:
"this degree of corporate censorship doesn't matter" - indeed it doesn't, for the #muhfreedumb free speech crowd. No one owes you a platform.
"this kind of corporate censorship matters a lot" - indeed it does, for the people harmed by it, especially for the people on a platform who expect content to be free from harm.
This isn't inconsistent. You are just approaching t
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This will only lead to censoring, which is the only thing that is truly harmful.
Horseshit. There are many things more harmful than some dweeb's podcast being limited. I just hope for your sake that you don't have to deal with the consequences of such actions (such as suicides due to online bullying), or are you suggesting something that lead directly to someone's death is not truly "harmful"?
The internet is very full of harmful content. The in the know would say "well it is obvious to me that was harmful so the person should have known..." to which one obviously needs to state, if it was known then someone wouldn't look up said thing on the internet in the first place.
If someone can be bullied, online, into suicide, I'd say that's a damning statement about their upbringing and their parents ineptitude. Before you flip out and kill yourself over that statement, I believe that bullying someone to the point of their suicide also leaves me with the same opinion about their upbringing and parents ineptitude.
My solution would be to kill both sets of parents and all siblings of both families. We might consider a cut-off age of 21 so that parents would be a might more consci
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And what will be labeled as harmful?
Anyone with sufficient power to see their definitions forced on others. While this particular chapter of content gate keeping is new, the playbook it is in, titled "Might Makes Right", is rather old.
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It's entirely subjective. The system only recognizes what it's told to recognize. It's merely a fancy labeling machine. What should concern everyone is the notion that some concept (or speech) is considered universally "harmful" or "hate speech". No such thing exists.
Our entire civilization does (Score:1)
So easy (Score:1)
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Awesome, I can't wait for AI to decide for me what information I need access to. Researching topics myself is just too hard... So glad that someone else will filter out that nasty misinformation for me!
I'm glad I detected your palpable sarcasm. Otherwise I would have considered you a menace to society.
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I'm so happy (Score:5, Insightful)
I eagerly await hearing how our government, partnered with our healthcare industry, through hard work and consistent policies, and the providing of clear information, protected us from the COVID pandemic, resulting in the world's lowest death rates, and almost no societal disruption, or economic costs.
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Ironically for your comment if actual harmful content was able to be censored your country may have faired much better, oh and the world wouldn't have had to put up with Trump's insanity dominating the news cycle.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to drink my daily dose of bleach to prevent catching just a flu as advised by someone in America who didn't listen to a single one of the experts he employed.
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Its clear we can't 100% trust the president or the CDC, so we need access to multiple sources. I wish we did have a trusted source, but I have no idea how to get there from here.
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Agreed. That's why I listen to what my co-worker's sister's brother-in-law's cousin who has never driven more than 25 miles form where they live and gets all their news from Facebook has to say on various subjects.
I wish we did have a trusted source, but I have no idea how to get there from here.
There are plenty of trusted sources out there such as the CDC. You simply choose to ignore them because
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CDC still doe
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which outlines symptoms of long covid. There is no way, as of now, to determine who will have more serious effects of long covid and what those symptoms may be. Thus, the page outlines all possible symptoms. [cdc.gov]
Their goal was to control COVID, but they lied to achieve that goal.
Quite obvio
If you don't like it go somewhere else (Score:2)
this was the sole domain of nation state actors (Score:2)
If it can listen to a podcast, it can listen to ANY recording.
This is VERY bad.
It makes Chinese surveillance we know about look like childs play... And I bet they have it too
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Not the first tech aimed at that. Remember IBM Watson? The primary application of that thing is email and chat surveillance. It has basically failed at anything else they tried in order to make it look beneficial.
So, yes, this is obviously funded from the TLAs that cannot stand anybody communicating in non-monitored spaces. The current "podcast" application is just a stepping stone to make it better at listening to all kinds of conversations. Ever wondered whether Alexa/Siri/SomeOtherCunt is really not list
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No argument.
Audio scanning is a whole level above text scanning.
And text scanning was going on LONG before Watson.
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And text scanning was going on LONG before Watson.
Sure. But Watson took it way beyond keywords and predefined phrases.
yeah right, "AI" (Score:2)
Voice recognition still doesn't work reliably on any accent that isn't whitebread mid-atlantic. Voice-operated phone menues are still awful, and those have a much more limited vocabulary than a podcast.
I have no doubt that the demonstrations of the technology were convincing, and I'm sure the founders of the company that Spotify bought are laughing all the way to the bank. But that doesn't mean that Spotify will be able to turn this technology loose on any old audio stream and expect it to come up with a se
I can't find what was attributed to Joe Rogan (Score:2)
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The article criticizes Rogan for advising healthy young people to not get vaccinated. It's turning out that in some groups (healthy young people), getting the vaccine is more risky than Covid to themselves.
And, then this: "Most important, Rogan demonstrates that he lacks a simple, fundamental understanding about how infectious diseases — including Covid-19 — spread. They spread among those susceptible (i.e., not vaccinated)."
This is simply untrue.
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>It's turning out that in some groups (healthy young people), getting the vaccine is more risky than Covid to themselves.
I'd like some cites for this. When I google it, there is no indication in the top results besides Joe Rogan which is not a credible source. Even as recently as August the recommendation was for younger people to get the vaccine.
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https://content.govdelivery.co... [govdelivery.com]
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He said that covid wasn't very harmful for young people, and that they should focus on exercise, losing weight, and geting good nutrition.
The sane world recognizes this as entirely correct, and early. Spotify, brought to you by Pfizer, disagrees.
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What is the definition of harmful content? (Score:3)
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Simple: Anything bad for their bottom-line. Ever wondered why Hollywood is basically done for and most stuff they push out is crap? They went for "save" and "enjoyable" too, completely forgetting that good entertainment is not pleasant music you play in the background. Same has happened with some companies in gaming.
I do agree that there is a general "crybabyfication" going on. Life needs some controversy, some uncomfortable moments, some excitement, some situations that require effort and learning to overc
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Simple: Anything bad for their bottom-line. Ever wondered why Hollywood is basically done for and most stuff they push out is crap? They went for "save" and "enjoyable" too, completely forgetting that good entertainment is not pleasant music you play in the background. Same has happened with some companies in gaming.
Pretty much this. The technology will primarily be used to hunt down anything that might be copyrighted or is critical enough to hurt the bottom line.
I do agree that there is a general "crybabyfication" going on. Life needs some controversy, some uncomfortable moments, some excitement, some situations that require effort and learning to overcome, and, yes, the occasional villain, or it becomes bland, boring and ultimately not worth living. Pack everybody in "save spaces" and you end up killing everything.
Controversy yes. Outright lies and hate, no.
Before the usual suspects come along and say "there's no such thing as hate speech" there is, right there in the dictionary, "abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group", legally speaking this is against a protected characteristic like race, religion, gender, sexua
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The issue of "crybabyifcation" is really mostly just hot air from people who want to be offensive, but will seek to silence anyone who dares to remotely criticise them. Look at Trump's abortive social networks. You can't even say anything remotely critical of him. Of course, this results in no-one using it which pisses the tangerine twat off even more. but it is the ultimate "safe space".
Thanks for the mod down proving my point.
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What is the harm, anyway -- financial? physical injury or death? It seems to me that aside from explicit child pornography and snuff films, 99.999% of content is not actually harmful.
You're right, 99.999% of content isn't harmful. The problem is the internet is full of exabytes of content and quite often the harmful stuff is algorithmically pushed to the top. That could be Instagram promoting posts which glorify self-harm (which has led to a teenager committing suicide as discussed on Slashdot recently). That could be false medical advice telling people that COVID is just a flu and that vaccines have mind control chips implanted. Sounds minor, but how many people are still dying in the
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Simply look to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for examples of what will be considered harmful.
Typically it's only stuff that encourages the user to physically harm themselves (suicide, anorexia etc.), stuff that incites hatred of a particular group (immigrants, LGBTQ+ etc.), porn, and maybe crypto scams.
We need to advance the debate a little until it is at least talking about what is already happening, if we want to have any effect at all on this.
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Those aren't harmful, either. The harm was done already. The content does not cause it, except indirectly by creating demand. By that theory, showing an appetizing pizza is harmful.
"Save" and "enjoyable" do not go together (Score:2)
Some controversy is required or things just go bland and boring. To be fair, some people enjoy bland and boring, but most do not. True, excesses need to be kept under control, but that does require real, _quality_ human judgement and that happens to be expensive so they try this automated crap that will not work.
These people live in a bubble (Score:2, Informative)
> It may be the case that Spotify sees employing Kinzen's tech as a means to help it avoid similar PR catastrophes in the future.
PR Catastrophe? Both Rogan and Spotify gained listeners [independent.co.uk] heavily from the so called "misinformation" Rogan's "GUESTS" were spreading.
It was a PR catastrophe only if you take portion of the population that like to think the government and pfizer has their best interest at heart, or took that position because people like Rogan didn't, and that portion of population do not even wa
From the Spotify boardroom (Score:4, Funny)
CEO: We just spent a lot of money on a system that can detect harm in our podcasts. Who wants to do the honours?
CIO: Oooh me me me.
CFO: This should be good.
CIO: *flick*
*Whirring sound*
*Beeping sound*
*Printing sound*
*Tearing sound*
CEO: And the results are in... "Fire the C-suits who made a partnership with Joe Rogan"
*Awkward silence*.
I'd like to know how it handles a mix of languages (Score:2)
Well then (Score:3)
One small step for Spotify, one giant leap for corporate censorship-kind!
All impactful criticism of Israel will be banned.. (Score:1)
..just like pretty much everywhere else...
If the Nazis had managed to conflate their activities with 'Being Christians' and any criticism of the Nazis as being 'Hate against Christians' and managed to ban negative media coverage of their ethnic cleansing activities they may have been as successful with their ethnic cleansing of the areas they occupied as Israel's elite has been in the ever shrinking Palestine Israel has been illegally occupying.
Then, if the Nazis had managed to portray all the non-aryan peo
Harmful (Score:2)
Harmful = I don't like it.
No set of bits is harmful unless it can control a robot arm or a vehicle, or it fries your LCD screen.
Unwanted content (Score:1)