Sophie McDowall - Are music apps hosting terrorist propaganda?

Streaming platforms used by millions for music and podcasts are facing new scrutiny over extremist content tied to terrorist organizations. Are tech companies doing enough to stop radical propaganda from spreading through audio platforms?

Sophie McDowall is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation. She joins the show to discuss findings involving extremist content on major streaming services, how users bypass moderation systems, and whether platforms like Spotify and SoundCloud should face greater accountability for hosting terrorist propaganda.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back to the Lars Larson show. It's a pleasure to be with you. You know that Hamas propaganda, Hamas, a terrorist organization, the uh effectively the government of the Gaza Strip, with millions of listeners, is just hiding in plain sight in places like Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. Are the apps on your phone becoming tools for radicalization? I thought we'd talk about that with Sophie McDowell, who's a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Sophie, welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Thanks, Les, for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

How is Hamas using these tools to get right inside American homes?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

So in our investigation, we looked at audio content on music streaming site SoundCloud, which is a popular site used to share new music. It's often used to promote up-and-coming artists. And we found more than 500 songs, including content produced by groups that were supporting Hamas's messaging, promoting Hamas's terrorist actions, and honoring Hamas' leaders.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

In fact, I'll have to tell you that until about two and a half, maybe three years ago, we used SoundCloud, but we used it just to be able to put an audio version of segments of the show up and then make them available on our website. We don't use them anymore. We discontinued using them rather than them discontinuing us because we found them to be unreliable. But are are the folks at SoundCloud and Spotify and Apple Music, are they aware that this stuff is on their platform? Because I would imagine publicly they say, oh, we don't allow, you know, hate uh hate speech and things like that. Uh I don't tend to believe in the idea of hate speech because speech is just speech. Um but to the extent that these platforms are willing to say to the public, we don't let that stuff get on our site, are they aware of it?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

So the platforms are definitely aware of it. And there's been multiple studies into different types of extremist content on these platforms, and they have instituted more and more efforts to try to address it. The problem is, and the reason why there's still content on the sites is that the people that are producing the content are adapting. So part of our report, we investigated the different evasion tactics that are used by those creating this terrorist content. For example, using code words for words that might be flagged. And the platforms that are banning content, they have pretty specific guidelines about what is not allowed on platforms. So if something's glorifying or promoting terrorist activity or terrorist leaders that have been designated by the United States or other countries as terrorist organizations, that content is not allowed because of the risk it can pose. But at the same time, as um as the producers of the content evolve to whatever the uh platforms are doing, it can be harder and harder for them to catch and remove proactively.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, in fact, one of the things your report mentions is that they will put in, instead of putting in Hamas, H A M A S, they put a seven in instead of the H. So it becomes seven A M A S. But the people who consume this stuff understand how to find it through the keywords. You would think the platforms would know how to get how to work around that as well, wouldn't they?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Exactly. So that's what we would hope. And a lot of these platforms uh work with third-party groups and experts, and it can be challenging when there's a different language if it's not the primary language of a platform. So a lot of the songs that we found had Arabic language content or um tactics like that, replacing the seven, replacing the H with a seven in Hamas. And so this is one of the things that we recommend in our report is that these platforms need to do more to be interfacing with experts who know the types of tactics and the types of code words that these groups might be using to spread their content to listeners.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Okay, I'm talking to Sophie McDowell from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And yet, do the platforms have an incentive to allow this kind of crazy content to continue to be presented? Uh I would imagine a financial incentive, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

That's a great question. I think depending on the platform, not all.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I mean, because Sophie, I would think most businesses that are trying to make money uh do not want to offend their main users because they they might gain a couple of percent over in one area and then lose 20% somewhere else when their their legitimate customers say, I don't like that stuff, and if I hear it on your platform, I'll stop using your platform. So you'd think they'd have a financial incentive to clean up their act, wouldn't they?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

That's a great point. So it's true that organizations like SoundCloud, Spotify obviously want to have as many listeners as possible. At the same time, SoundCloud is actually based in Germany. And for platforms that are based in the EU, there's also legal restrictions and legal trouble that they could get into if they aren't um removing this type of content. So they have to put out transparency reports, and this is based on regulations in the EU, so that there could be potential repercussions if they aren't abiding by those legal restrictions that allow them to operate and provide this platform for listening.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I guess, Sophie, I I was even taken aback by the content of your report because you said that there is a sizable streaming ecosystem praising and promoting the terrorist activity of Hamas. So it's not just Hamas the group, but it's tracks with phrases like death to Israel, death to America, and that they have literally millions of listeners, and that that that whoever's putting it up is sending out a message and the platforms are letting it get through. I I mean, because when I see the thing like substituting the seven for the H in Hamas, I mean, if I mistype Hamas into a a search on on most of the conventional search engines, it'll say, Did you mean X? And I would imagine that and I'm using some f fairly pedestrian tools, you know, things like Brave or DuckDuckGo, or at worst, uh having to use uh Google. Uh but all of these all of these platforms have much more sophisticated ways of spotting stuff that's being posted on their site, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

They do. And we've actually seen that since we started this investigation a few months ago, they've been able to take some of the stuff down. But I'm glad you brought up the ecosystem because that's one of the things that stand out the most. The threat that we're looking at here with this type of content, um, and we connect it in our report to radicalization and how radicalization can happen without being in the same room as someone, you can be oceans away in this age of social media. And so a lot of what we observed was not just the songs themselves that were specifically honoring, glorifying Hamas leaders and terrorist activity, but also there's full conversations that are happening. Like it's an ecosystem that listeners are actively participating in, not just listening to the songs again and again, but also participating in conversation in the comment section. So some of the songs had hundreds of comments from multiple different countries. We can see the users where they are based or where their account was created. And so we can see that there's a bigger conversation, and that's what poses such a threat.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, and I would think that those kind of patterns would immediately become apparent. If if you're at SoundCloud, for example, or you're at Spotify, you say, wow, how is it that a couple of songs that we have posted here are getting so much of a draw from this particular part of the world? I mean, even as I said, the pedestrian tools I've got, I can look and see on Instagram where people watching, I kind of get a kick out of it because they'll say, hey, there's somebody watching an Instagram I posted, except they're watching it in Kiev, or they're watching it in Beijing, or they're watching it in Taipei. And, you know, it's more of a curiosity for me how somebody there is watching something from an American talk show host. And yet, if I saw a pattern and all of a sudden I saw that there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of people all watching from a particular region, I think I'd want to say, what was it I was talking about that caused people to do that? Sophie, thank you very much. That is Sophie McDowell. She's a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Coming up in a moment, a$17 billion data center is headed for one Georgia County. And some of the people there say, you didn't warn us this was going to happen, and it has a real effect on our lives. Well, I'm going to talk about that next.