Spotify wants to corner the market on popular podcasts. Of it’s very nature — anyone with anything or nothing to say can start one - podcasting might be the best modern example of free speech, and I believe podcasters know this. If they see Spotify as an entity that will require editorial modification or will refuse to post “certain episodes” then podcasters won’t make deals with them. This isn’t a political point, it’s a business point. If Spotify can’t achieve their goal of being THE SOURCE for the best podcasts which are exclusive to their platform then their shareholders will demand changes.
Basically what I'm saying is that cornering podcasting isn't going to work. But inverting the market to be cornered to the syndication/creation side and not the distribution/consumption side there might be a more effective way. I'd suspect that eschewing both publicity and censorship would be critical to cornering that market. After all, Disney+* and Pornhub have content made with the same tools and sometimes the same people, while both retain their image.
+ if you want to see what I mean, turn on your adblocker and go to open.spotify.com and start browsing podcasts from ESPN, APM, and others and open the developer console. There are a number of interesting failures when ads are resolved, and a lot of little companies you've never heard of writing some cool networking infrastructure to distribute podcasts.
\* well maybe not Disney+. They might have a policy for this exact situation.
It's ironic to see the same people turn around and say that the internet is a public utility and service providers shouldn't throttle content or filter content.
> people have come to actually TRUST big corps to be more morally responsive
That is a pretty outlandish statement to make without something to back it up. I'd love to see an actual poll if people trust Google and Facebook to police what is moral. Last time I checked there was a poll that said people are more afraid than ever to say what they feel in public. https://www.cato.org/publications/survey-reports/poll-62-ame...
> would you like to see what concept of digital town square the UK or the US government would produce
This is a straw man. US Government struggles to build a basic website - they aren't going to build a "digital town square". On the other hand, I don't think it's unreasonable for the government to have clear policies on a person's legal rights to use large platforms to discuss what they want without fear of being de-platformed.
On the matter of free speech, Spotify isn't a public square. Facebook isn't a public square. A masonic fraternity isn't a public square. One of the key things about public squares is that it's funded by public money and administered by public officials.
How are people so keen on asking private companies to behave like public institutions... without asking for the other critically healthy pillars of public funding and public administration? It's sad, but I think it's because in some ways, people have come to actually TRUST big corps to be more morally responsive and deliberative than their own government. As in, would you rather Facebook own your messages, or would you like to see what concept of digital town square the UK or the US government would produce?