include
Answered

Why is pornographic content made available to children?

  • 2 April 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 74 views
T
Rank

Hello,

There is a serious problem with Deezer content, protecting children and the viability of the “explicit content” filters.

  1. If I apply the filter then a lot of completely harmless stuff gets blocked. My son told me yesterday how he couldn’t listen to a Bruno Mars song or one of his favourite stories (for children).
  2. The same son was browsing through comedy podcasts and was shocked to hear someone talking about certain sexual acts. Needless to say, he had lots of questions for me.
  3. I had a look myself this morning. I applied the explicit content filter to the profile and was able to find a lot of content that was not just explicit but pornographic in nature. Most of them were podcasts, and I didn’t therefore even have the “block artist” button.

 

I checked out the other providers like Spotify and Amazon and it’s the same story. I initally thought I was signing up to a music platform, and I would not have minded the occasional bit of bad language in a song, plus I can always block artists. 

Why and when did Deezer decide to allow pornographic audio on their platform? More importantly, when are you going to either remove the content (which would be preferable) or setup proper stringent filters that realise that Bruno Mars is okay whereas audio porn is not?

icon

Best answer by Leonídia.Deezer 5 April 2024, 19:00

View original

5 replies

BigFKahuna
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

My family consists of great grandparents down to grandchildren, I am one of the grand parents. I have different playlists for my listening conditions, in fact they are more heavily curated for the great grandparents than they are for the grandchildren. The playlists I choose might, and likely are, different than what you would choose in your family. But those are our choices, why would I want Deezer to start deciding what I can and cannot play, according to what set of algorithms and rules? Rather than limiting free speech, would it not make more sense to be aware of what happens in your household, and as the song goes...”Teach your Children Well”? The best way to battle disinformation is with proper information rather than the lack thereof. 

BigFKahuna
E0xc815
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +3

@TheLizard 

Perhaps it would make sense if a few examples were simply given that one would rate as explicit.

Podcasters would actually have to mark individual episodes as “not suitable for young people (explicit”) so that they can be filtered for children’s profiles. If that doesn't happen, Deezer can't actually do anything here or is dependent on information from users. I don't think anyone at Deezer listens to all the podcasts and then sets manual filters.

T
Rank

I’m afraid you are completely missing several points.

Firstly, ANBODY with a Deezer profile can use the search facility. This means they can potentially access inappropriate content, on purpose or otherwise.

Secondly, porn is not free speech.

Thirdly, my son was innocently listening to comedy podcasts for young teenagers, as he often does, when a very adult theme came through. Despite the filter. I trust my son enough to not go looking for this and I know he is moreover a little shocked to hear such content.

Fourthly, I AM AWARE of what is going on in my household. Thus my alarm, my research as to what content I could access, and then to my question on this forum!

Finally, teaching your kids (or grandkids) well is great, but naivety is not.  Too many parents take this approach and all too many end up seeking out inappropriate content because they are curious, and find it more shocking than what they had imagined. Certain people are also allegedly using “music” streaming sites to groom children. So I’ll take the route of being cautious and trying to protect my children thanks.

T
Rank

E0xc815: You are absolutely correct that there is no policing or filtering of podcasts. The example of having an adult joke in a podcast that was perhaps “forgivable’ but podcasts that are explicitly about porn (try searching with a few “adult’ keywords and you’ll find some) I find shocking.

It’s perhaps because these music streaming sites have expanded their content too much. For my children I would prefer to have quite simply a music streaming service. I’ve told my son to not listen to any podcasts without checking with me first, but even then I will have to listen to whole thing first. Not ideal.

The problem is that Deezer (and Spotify, Amazon etc.) give the possibility to filter for child friendly content but it doesn’t work. So maybe they should either not offer the filter, put warnings on it when you select it, or diasble podcasts for under 18s.

Leonídia.Deezer
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @TheLizard thanks for reaching out and big thanks for your help @TheLizard @E0xc815.

Unfortunately, Deezer doesn’t have an immediate control of all podcast that are submitted in the platform as this is a free service that we offer to the podcasters that want to have their podcasts on Deezer.

There are rules that need to be respected according our terms and conditions and we are always hearing feedbacks from our users, when something breach those conditions. 

Can be the cover art or the content of the podcast.

Podcaster have a setting in the RSS Feed to tag if the podcast is explicit or not, we can override this tag if we consider appropriate to do it.

To address this promptly, as suggested by our user @E0xc815, could you please provide some links of podcast that should be classified as Explicit?

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Reply


TERMS OF USE DEEZER COMMUNITY SITE