Spotify acquires Kinzen to detect harmful content in podcasts

Spotify, one of the leading music streaming platforms, has been trying to establish itself as a leading platform for podcasts as well, and for that, the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars so far.

In the latest development, Spotify has announced that the company is acquiring Kinzen, a Dublin-based start-up that offers content moderation service, for an undisclosed amount. The entire team of Kinzen, including its leadership, will now join Spotify.

Spotify has been working in partnership with Kinzen since 2020, and now the start-up has been acquired by the music streaming platform. The company’s unique technology is particularly suited for podcasting and audio formats. It will be used to better moderate podcasts and other audio using machine learning as well as human expertise.

Spotify will get help of experts from leading local academics and journalists to analyze potential harmful content and hate speech in multiple languages and countries.

The analysis includes a broad range of areas, like medical misinformation, antisemitism, hateful content, climate misinformation, violent extremism, and other dangerous misinformation across multiple markets and languages.

Kinzen was founded in 2017 by Áine Kerr, Mark Little, and Paul Watson with a mission to focus on protecting public conversations from dangerous misinformation and harmful content. It offers tools that help platforms plan ahead by getting early warnings about evolving narratives and trends that could become misinformation risks.

Spotify also adds that Kinzen is especially valuable because of its capability to analyze content in hundreds of languages and dialects, which will help the company detect emerging threats across markets.

It appears that the acquisition is a part of the company’s efforts to deal with harmful content on its service after it faced backlash earlier this year over “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he was accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

Read full post on Official Spotify Blog.