Podcasting is still a relatively open format, which makes it particularly difficult for censorship-lovers
2022 Prediction: Podcasting Is Likely The Next Censorship Target
Didi Rankovic with Reclaim The Net reports:
Legacy mainstream media has been sporadically bringing up the topic of podcasts for a while now, in search of ways to enforce censorship in this media format as well; and the New York Times has now done it again:
“The lack of moderation on podcast apps is particularly complicated for Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. The video streaming site cracked down on videos about election fraud, the conspiracy theory QAnon, and vaccine misinformation, prompting some podcast episodes hosted there to be removed. But the same episodes remained accessible on Google’s Podcasts app. Mr. Bannon’s show was removed from YouTube shortly after Jan. 6, for instance, but the podcast remains available on Google’s Podcasts app.
“Google has argued that its Podcasts app more closely resembles a search engine than a publishing service because no audio is hosted by the company.” A Google spokesman, Farshad Shadloo, said the app simply “crawls and indexes audio content” hosted elsewhere and that they have “policies against recommending podcasts that contain harmful misinformation, including misinformation about the 2020 U.S. elections.”
