Spotify caught fake podcasts that sell drugs

Spotify is suspended with violent criticism after reports that numerous fake podcasts that promote the sale of powerful and addictive prescription medication such as Xanax, Oxycodon and Tramadol were available on the platform.

According to CNN reports, Podcast titles such as “My Adderall Store” and “Xtrapharma.com” episodes showed episodes with the name “Order Codein online safe pharmacy louisiana” and “Order Xanax 2 mg online -large thing during the Christmas season”.

These episodes included links that led to listeners to external websites that sold drugs.

Despite the content moderation tools from Spotify, the platform could not recognize and remove these fake podcasts. The unrestricted availability of such content in a service used by teenagers has expressed concerns about the company's security guidelines and could possibly lead to legal complications.

Automatic detection tools do not block dangerous content

The automated SPOTIFY systems for recognizing and blocking regular content have not recorded these fake shows. Although the company claims to actively monitor harmful material, these podcasts remained accessible to users and exposed millions of illegal drug sales.

Business Insider previously reported that Spotify had reduced around 200 podcasts in connection with illegal drug encoding. However, social media users quickly pointed out that the sale of drugs through podcasts was continued even after cleaning.

Criticism on social media about the inactivity of Spotify

Tech blogger Lauren Balik highlighted the problem on the social media platform X and wrote: “It is amazing how much illegal drug distribution Spotify goes through. Opioids, benzos, amphetamines, they call it.”

She called Spotify -CEO Daniel EK directly and posted “CEO Daniel Ek @eldsjal: This is unacceptable and 100% solvable if her functions” ML “and” AI “actually exist, or do you just sleep on the bike?”

Spotify answers with promises to take measures

In response to growing setbacks, Spotify published a brief explanation in which the problem was recognized.

“We are constantly working on recognizing and removing violations of content in our service,” said a spokesman for the company.

Past allegations against Spotify's practices

This is not the first time that Spotify has criticism of questionable practices. The platform was previously accused of promoting so-called “ghost artists” creators of cheaper, generic music, allegedly not to pay license fees to real musicians.

According to reports, Spotify is carried out by a secret internal program called Perfect Fit Content (PFC). Created production teams according to this scheme. Inexpensive background music, which is placed on Spotifys curated playlists. PFC was first introduced in 2010 and became an important cost saving initiative for the company by 2017.

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