WATCH: Panels and Keynote from PRX’s Podcast Privacy Symposium
Podcast and tech professionals convened to discuss the future of podcasting in February 2020
More than 100 members of the podcasting community gathered in New York City at The New School last month for a one-day symposium on podcasting and privacy. Attendees — who included podcast producers and hosts; distribution app makers; scholars; data privacy, open technology, and law specialists; and representatives of hosting, analytics, and advertising network companies — spent the day talking about privacy in podcasting today and what the future holds.
We videotaped the first four sessions so that more people could hear what was discussed and participate in ongoing conversations about privacy and podcasting.
Opening Remarks
To frame the conversation, PRX’s CEO Kerri Hoffman referred back to the symposium title, Emerging Threats to Podcasting’s Open Ecosystem:
A healthy ecosystem needs many open access points and many pockets of inspiration and success, and it needs to breathe, especially in these early days.
And as the industry grows, we need a number of other things: We need inspiration, we need experiments, we actually need to fail a little bit more and not crucify those failures, but really learn from them. We also need to create standards.
And we also actually need threats because threats give us a kind of an opportunity to focus the mind on both what we appreciate but also what we worry about. [00:04:35]
Also offering words of welcome were Paloma Orozco, director of technical distribution at PRX; Doron Weber, vice president, programs, at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and Blake Eskin, assistant professor of Journalism + Design at The New School.
Keynote Interview: Manoush Zamorodi
Manoush Zamorodi, host of ZigZag podcast and incoming host of TED Radio Hour, has explored technology and its relationship to business from many angles: as a reporter, producer, host, and now co-founder of Stable Genius Productions. Zamorodi, who has explored everything from host-read ads to exclusive shows to the blockchain to fund her shows, described her ideal way of working with advertisers:
In our fantasy, it’s a ZigZag seal of approval: that we say these people have signed on to us, they abide by the values of the podcast. And when you hear those ads on there, that’s because we really think that you should know about these — because you listened to this show, you also want to live and put your money towards and work with certain sorts of companies. [00:21:42]
Watch the whole conversation Zamorodi had with Blake Eskin:
New Business Models and the Evolving Ecosystem
Stitcher’s chief revenue officer Sarah von Mosel talked about how podcasting has been much less intrusive than other forms of digital media and has the opportunity to avoid their mistakes:
We’re at a moment in time, particularly because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where steps have been taken in the rest of digital media to put the brakes on, put a red flag up, to make sure that we’re aware of what’s going on.
Podcasting, we don’t have to be pulled back from anywhere. We haven’t gone there yet, right? So if we move forward with an informed point of view … we have the opportunity to do it right.
This panel, which was moderated by Kerri Hoffman, also included Marco Arment, podcast host and maker of the Overcast app; privacy and data ethics consultant Michelle de Mooy; Richard Tee, an associate professor in the University of Surrey’s Department of Digital Economy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation; and Ariel Zirulnick, fund director of the Membership Puzzle Project.
Privacy in Podcasting
There are several layers of technology between producers and listeners: hosting companies, analytics services, ad networks, attribution companies, podcasting apps. What information is each of these players able to collect? How can that information be used, and what other data can it be cross-referenced with?
Web users don’t always understand the broad permission they have given to companies like Facebook and Google. Chris Bavitz of the Berkman Klein Center talked the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulations and the California Consumer Privacy Act:
I think inherent in those laws as well there’s a sense that individuals need to have an opportunity to understand the nature of the bargain that they’re making when they agree to consume a product for free in exchange for giving up their data.…
Podcast listeners, meanwhile, hardly ever get asked if they are willing to make an exchange. How can we start doing that?
I think a lot of it has to do with privacy practices around disclosures online, text-based disclosures, privacy policies, visual, graphical privacy policies, pre-roll information on on the actual audio product that explains the way data is going to be used and what’s being done with it, moving as much as possible toward opt-in models — which I appreciate that are really significant challenges, given the way the RSS ecosystem works — but opt-in, meaning that I affirmatively tell either the platform or the creator of the podcast that I’m OK with my data being used in a certain way. [00:34:51]
This panel also included David Adams, vice-president of product at Megaphone; Laurie Belleau, vice-president, digital innovation, and general manager of Market Enginuity; Stacey Goers, senior product manager, podcasts, at NPR; and Andrew Pellett, co-founder of Podsights. Wailin Wong, host and producer of the podcast Rework, was the moderator.
Keep the Conversation Going
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Blake Eskin is an assistant professor in Journalism + Design at the New School and a consultant helping PRX to organize the symposium on podcasting and privacy.
