there? ♪ >> this is al jazeera, these are your top stories. u.s. president joe biden says washington is ready to respond to russian aggression in ukraine a matter what. members of the security council that on monday for the first time to discuss the troop tilled up on ukraine's border. >> russian military and intelligence services are spreading this information to a state owned media and proxy sites. and they are attempting, without any factual basis, to paint

ukraine and western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack. >> i would like to put a question to our u.s. colleagues. where did you get that figure of 100,000 troops on the russia/ukrainian border? that is not the case. we have never cited that figure or confirmed that figure. it's difficult to explain why our colleagues in the u.s. and a number of other colleagues are pumping ukraine with you -- with ammunition and talk about this with great pride. >> the u.s. has written a response from russia on its security demands about ukraine. the state department is not releasing the message, saying public negotiation would be unproductive. a media worker has been murdered in mexico after three journalists were killed in less than a month. robert was shot dead by three gunmen in the city. he worked for an online news outlet, which had been reporting on government corruption.

the u.s. has designated qatar as a major non-nato ally and follows a meeting between president joe biden and qatar's chic in washington, d.c. the military says it will restore parts of the constitution. . those are your headlines, news continues hereafter inside story. ♪ >> facing the music, spotify act on covid-19 misinformation. artists have been pulling their songs from the streaming service curious at its leading podcast host and his news on the

coronavirus. how do companies tread the line between harmful wise and healthy debates? this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program. boycotted by musicians and feeling anger from listeners and doctors, spotify has announced a new policy on covid-19 misinformation. the streaming giant said it will put content advisories before any of its context that discusses the pandemic. but it won't remove the episodes at the center of the story. they were hosted by joe rogan, who has also advocated the potentially dangerous use of the medication to treat the virus. joe: a lot of things that spotify wants to do that i agree with is that at the beginning of

these controversial podcasts, like specifically ones about covid, is to put a disclaimer and say that you should speak with your physician, and that these people and the opinions they express our contrary to the opinions of the consensus of experts, which i think it's very important. sure, have the on there, i'm very happy with that. also, i think that if there's anything that i've done that i could do better is have more experts with differing opinions right after i have the controversial ones. i would most certainly be open to doing that. >> he may be happy, but spotify's decision falls short of what rogan's detractors wanted. 270 scientists and medical professionals wrote to the company demanding that it stopped the podcaster from spreading what they described his covid-19 falsehoods. while singer songwriters near up -- neil young and joni mitchell pulled their music from the platform, gaining support from

entertainers in the world health organization. in a blog, spotify's chief executive said it's important to me that we don't take on the position of being content censored, while also making sure there are rules in place on consequences for those who violate them. >> here our guests to discuss all of this. joining us from washington, d.c. 's courtney, a journalist and fellow. in barcelona, jeffrey lazarus is the head of the research group at barcelona institute for global health. in the associate professor of law and technology. welcome to the program, thank you for your time with us. jeffrey, over to you first. i know that you said we need to focus on providing explanation and guidance to combat false information. spotify has since said it's working to add warnings to any

podcast that discusses covid-19. for you, is that a satisfactory response by spotify? >> i think it's a start to provide verify information, evidence-based information. but i think we need to distinguish between what spotify calls as controversial compares to what is simply wrong and false. there are different kinds of information, there's misinformation and disinformation, and when spotify allows information that is directly dangerous, like arguing that vaccines for covid-19 are not safe, or to take unproven treatments, then i think that that passes a certain line. >> courtney, spotify has said that in the past that it has removed more than 20,000 podcast episodes that covered -- cover covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, but it didn't with rogan, the most popular podcast host, and they are also paying

him $100 million. why are they not touching joe rogan? is he too powerful to touch? >> he has 10 million viewers per episode. joe rogan had problematic guests on, but what's shocking is that spotify did not have a content moderation policy publicized on its website, that it did not have a mr. disinformation policy two years into a pandemic, for years after we had seen the cambridge analytic a scandal. all platforms that host user generated content, in which host their own content that they are paying hosts to provide, should have content moderation policies that should be laid out and be proactive for how they deal with these issues before they become major pr disasters.

but also, let's point out, spotify and fox news have both cited with their extreme hosts. tucker carlsen is also one of the leading purveyors of disinformation and inaccurate information about covid, so this is not just about spotify, its throughout the mainstream media. >> important points you raise, but just weigh in on this for me for a moment. rogan has insisted that he was interested in telling the truth, and they have an opinion, he's referring to the guest they had on the show, they have an opinion that's different from the mainstream narrative and i wanted to hear with their opinion is. does he have a point in any way? >> what we normally look at when we see this debate is the entire narrative around freedom of expression. it is spotify a media company that claims they want to be neutral and protray opinions

that are unpopular with some crowds, such as joe rogan's and his guests, referencing alex jones, but also allowing for other types of opinions on the platform. i think this is something we need to think about. spotify has been generally perceived as this media stream serving -- service provider that has been hip and cool and everyone is using the music. but what we have seen in the past year, and even in the spring, spotify announced new forms of content monetization that's bringing more and more voices to the table and voices that are getting paid and getting paid for a new subscription model that spotify is using. so spotify is becoming a media company, and it is very important that they have rules in check, that they design rules and that they also aligned with legal rules around the world.

>> how much pressure have social media sites been under to tackle misinformation when it comes to covid vaccine throughout the pandemic? it was a sense of that. >> i think misinformation is a special category because platforms, and we see this with metta, they have been trying to develop policies, very hard policies, at least according to them, around disinformation. and here we already see there is something that i call a regulatory debt, that basically we have this very complicated tension in situations because they are between a rock and a hard place. on the one hand, we want them to create measures and create their own policies, but the idea of disinformation, what is that from one perspective? are we speaking about cyber warfare, are we speaking about the national security standards that need to be completely explained better for platforms? i think this is a very important

moment for regulators to clarify what kind of information don't we want out there, and i think this is what jeffrey mentioned, some information is wrong and some as controversial. but how do we draw the line of who should do it? >> over to you, how do you think we can balance individual liberties versus restrictions that are deemed harmful? >> again, i would go back to what is evidence based, so, what has been, for example in the peer-reviewed literature, which has undergone proper checks and controls, wet national agencies are reporting, and what is the normative guidance of leading organizations like the world health organization? so, we have in the world health organization and their experts, and we need to remember that the world health organization is governed by its member states, which is more than 190 countries

in the world. if there is normative guidance coming out of w.h.o., and it's being misconstrued or simply spoken out against by spreading false information and misinformation, there's different categories that we can discuss, and i think that's where the media companies need to step in, and the controversial information they can provide proven information and simply harmful information they need to stop it. spotify needs to have a clear policy the way some of the other companies have, and we need to have oversight through different national collaborations. >> courtney, spotify's new policy of labeling content about covid-19 and podcast that promotes dangerous falsehoods is quite similar to those that have been adopted by facebook and youtube and twitter in the past,

why is spotify catching up now? >> i think this goes to the point around regulation. i don't think that we need regulators to decide what is correct information or what is not correct information. this is called a novel coronavirus because it is new. a lot of new information is coming up. the thing about science is that you have to introduce new evidence and update your understanding as it happens, so it's not so clear. but what is clear is that regulators should should have platforms before you can be a social media platform and provided service, that you need to have certain safeguards in place. one of those is to have clear guidelines that set out what is your content moderation policy, and that that will then hold them to some level of account. similarly, we need independent oversight. we mentioned facebook, matter -- metta and twitter.

this content moderation is one of the tough things we are grappling with these days, but we can't just trust the companies that they will implement it, and we need to understand what the impact of the circulation of disinformation is, so that speaks to the need for independent access to the data that these companies have about how this information is. >> can you clarify what you mean by independent? >> we need independent researchers who have access to the content moderation data and how it is action donned by the platform. we know that facebook, now called metta squashed much of its research that it had expert researchers leave the company because they cannot publish findings. that's what was revealed in the whistleblower report. so that's the type of oversight that we need, to enable regulators to see what the impact of their content moderation policies are.

it's not just about what information is left up or taken down, it's, how is it amplified, who gets to monetize that? that has a big impact of this disinformation and good information. how do you encourage quality information? i do think the steps they are taking to put labels on the podcasts are important and he sought joe rogan respond to the pressure saying he's going to try to have a bit more balance. but i think instead of having government, to regulate content, you want to see this marketplace of ideas where you have joni mitchell and neil young say they won't be associated because they are concerned about this other policy over here. that's a marketplace of ideas we want to be having. >> do you agree with this that courtney is saying you need independent oversight over this? >> on this point, completely. i agree with a lot of the things courtney mentioned.

independent oversight, you can look at this for coming from civil society, academic researchers, you can see that the digital services act and the european union has a category called trusted flaggers, which hopefully, in the next years will have exactly this role. at the same timeline we see there is a tendency, a trend towards digital enforcement, so how do we track -- check legal compliance on the internet? if we look at the new policies, the new content policies from spotify, they have a category of the legal content where they say illegal content may be, and they give examples of content that will be against the laws of different state. but that's a legal complexity discussion that arises. this is where what i was talking about where it can be more strategically adopted, and it can be more, not so difficult to interpret in some occasions such

as that around expressing yourself in a media outlet around a public crisis, then i think this is how regulators can help platforms and then demand compliance on the platforms. in the last point i would like to make is on the one hand, yes, this is where i diverge from britney's opinions, there are platforms that have much more rigid and much better and elaborated upon guidelines. you can john out alex jones, but how many channels are there that are monetizing the content alex jones make, and this is what they call a tiered governance model. social media companies cherry pick who they want on the platform and who they don't. >> let me put that the jeffrey, because jeffrey, catalina was mentioning youtube, and we have seen this before because youtube banned a popular video channel

of a conservative commentator, also a video content producer has been criticized by some for being one of them may platforms for what they call conspiracy communities. same attack on sub stack for refusing to ban writers on being hateful. if this be seen as, we been anyone that's going off key? >> i don't think it's a worrying trend, isaac it's a white -- the right step. we haven't had a president of the united states taken off -- we had a president taken off of twitter. we need to get a balance between government, regulation and marketplace regulation. neil young and joni mitchell and a few other successful musicians can afford to take their music off spotify and other musicians have been saying they agree with the step, they are against what joe rogan has been promoting, but they can't afford to leave.

we have to look at the balance of what can be said and not be said, and the companies, there will be an additional balance with the market regulation and who we as consumers want to be associated with, but i don't think we can leave it fully to the market, and i think there are some slander and falsifications that shouldn't be allowed to be promoted. quick stand by for a second. let's just talk about the business. spotify has more customers than any other streaming service. it says that it's music is pumped out to 380 million people in more than 380 million countries when it reported revenues of $9 billion, and it makes its money through premium subscriptions which is charged a monthly free, or you can listen with ads for nothing. at the bottom line, these companies are making money and they need to do what to protect

their profits? >> yes, but on the other hand it's shocking that a $9 billion company didn't have a published content moderation policy, that's astounding. i think this goes to the point, which is, you want a variety of platforms. it's absolutely right that if you are a smaller artist and depend on those algorithms to flag your music to those hundreds of millions of subscribers in your captive audience, the thing is, if we are not promoting alex jones and info wars, and these really pernicious purveyors of disinformation, to millions of people, there is research out of youtube that shows 75% of the population was given information that links them to extremism by looking for innocuous information. so part of this is getting greater transparency into the

decision-making, and what is the basis for how they are recommending content in creating communities. but you want a pluralistic environment where you have a lot of different choices about where to get your music, where to do your social media, and right now we have a bunch of powerful hegemonic companies and you have a limited choice. in one way regulators can deal with that is to increase data portability. let people take their data and profiles with them across platforms to make it easier to switch music providers. if i as a paying spotify customers say, i don't like their policy, i will move over to pandora or whatever, i can do that more easily and have choice. the greater choices we have means that people can create greater communities with different types of standards. so if you want to open a horrific file environment, go to that platform. but if you want a nicer environment less filled with

disinformation, you will have those choices available. >> catalina, i see you nodding to what courtney was saying. >> exactly. i think the main switch here, but spotify has been -- this is my opinion, it hasn't had a content moderation policy because it has been perceived globally as this music provider, the streaming of music. but we saw last year when it started creating new policy for its content monetization of podcasts, we saw podcasts are an example of a product spotify wants to export and one stone modify and really get a lot of followers. so this is where we are speaking about news and opinions and content moderation makes so much sense because content moderation isn't just, should we allow music that has voter lyrics, but it becomes a matter that can permeate the fabric of society.

>> with the new forms, they, challenges, don't they? >> absolutely. we see this with all platforms. what i find interesting, to build on what courtney was mentioning, i agree especially because we see platforms develop similar features. so now spotify has the same type of audio social media feature that clubhouse has become known for. so i think it makes a lot of sense to go in that direction. >> just one more for you before i bring in jeffrey and courtney once again, you were talking about the -- the regulation going forward. what challenges do you see when it comes to regulation? >> this spaces normally -- if we are speaking about freedom of expression in constitutional law, we are speaking about media law. one thing we must remember is, if we look at this in a legal way, we are speaking about laws

from specific jurisdictions. they will not be the same in india, canada, singapore and mozambique. they will really reflect other legal standards. platforms have a problem with trying to align their own interest to the massive complexity of regulation that is available. so obviously they will try to do what's better for their transaction cost. the question for regulators and enforcement authorities will be, what is the future of making the invisible visible, meaning, making all of these rules not only visible for media companies like spotify, but also directly applicable on their platforms. >> i would just like to put this to you, this is something written by the royal society, which i'm sure you are where's the u.k. national -- of scientists. it says social media platforms should not rely on content removal and they go on to say their subtle evidence that calls

for -- calls for major platforms to remove the content and will commit scientific misinformation harm. people already -- some people, i should say, mistrust institutions, the media and each other. will suppressing voices just make that worse? >> i think that's absolutely right in many ways. once material and individuals are demonized and removed from a platform, they get a new platform from which to spread their information. the who published a really interesting myth busting document on truths -- myths and truths. it republished or rewrote or re-shared what was a myth and what was incorrect information and then they put what was the truth so people could read that false information. instead of removing it they brought it back out again, and they say, but actually here's

the truth. it would be nice if an organization like spotify could do that and allow for that and maybe even provide the funding for it. but we are in a pandemic and platforms like spotify need to be called out, because i providing that platform to people who are spreading misinformation, they are perpetuating the pandemic with the devastating consequences we have. health, social, political, cultural and economic. i think rather than just removing it -- once it's removed people find a way to share it anyway -- would be to show what's incorrect. >> courtney, final word for you because i see you shaking your head. go ahead. >> the studies show that deep platforming is very effective. so alex jones -- alex jones when he was deplatformed from providers, payment processing providers, it has an impact because it's not just about let

me give my opinion and it's horrible, it's also about making money to find disinformation machines. deplatforming can be effective and i think we have to be very careful. there are very good guidelines for how to report on miss or disinformation without also elevating it and bringing it into the public sphere in a way that it may not have been before that about mainstream media coverage. i think we need to be careful and this emphasizes why we need independent access to data so we can do the research to show what type of interventions are effective. >> we will leave it there. thank you so much for joining us. thank you for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting al jazeera.com. for further discussion you can go to our facebook page. you can join the conversation on twitter. for myself and the whole team here, thank you for watching and goodbye for now. ♪

man, voice-over: here at kato restaurant, we try to use a lot of ingredientshat are highly prized in chinese/taiwanese culture. we try and see if we can change what certain perception of what luxury is. when i grew up, it was simply "we're going to this place becausthey have good food that reminds me of my home, and i nt my kids to try it," but now it's like, "wow! i didn't know you grew up in san gabriel. i get it. you like this, i like this, too." it creates a conversation, and maybe one day, this food equates to fine dining elsewhere.