Spotify this morning announced it's acquiring Dublin, Ireland-based content moderation tech company Kinzen, which had been working in partnership with the streamer since 2020. Deal terms were not disclosed. At Spotify, Kinzen's technology will be put to use to help the company better moderate podcasts and other audio using a combination of machine learning and human expertise -- the latter which includes analysis from local academics and journalists, the company says.

Founded in 2017 by Áine Kerr, Mark Little and Paul Watson, Kinzen's mission has focused on protecting public conversations from "dangerous misinformation and harmful content," according to its website.

This is an area Spotify has had direct experience with due to the controversy over its top podcaster, Joe Rogan, who spread Covid-19 vaccine-related misinformation on his show, leading to a public backlash and PR nightmare for the company. At one point, 270 physicians and scientists signed an open letter to Spotify demanding that it create misinformation policies to address the matter. The hashtag #deletespotify was trending, and high-profile artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from the service in protest.

Spotify later revised its policies around Covid-19 and misinformation in early 2022, though critics and experts argued the actual changes fell short of making a sizable impact. This June, Spotify took another step toward getting a better handle on the content published to its platform with the creation of a "Safety Advisory Council," whose job it is to help guide Spotify's future content moderation decisions.

Today's announcement of the acquisition of Kinzen is an indication that even that step was not enough -- Spotify needed to bring content moderation expertise in-house, it seems.

In short, Kinzen's solutions are aimed at helping platforms more quickly respond to content moderation issues in real-time by using a combination of technology and human expertise at scale.