It’s no longer fashionable to be considered a drug dealer — now they are podcasters. However, this is against Spotify’s rules and the law.
Last week, Spotify hastily removed hundreds of podcasts with advertising of prescription drugs. Business Insider reports that Spotify has removed about 200 podcasts that could be used to find opioids and other drugs, but this is not the end of the scandal. The next day, CNN said she easily found dozens more fake podcasts selling drugs.
Some of the latter are worrying after a first glance at their names: «My Adderall Store», «Xtrapharma.com», and episodes with titles «Order codeine online at a safe pharmacy in Louisiana» or «Order xanax 2mg online in a good deal for Christmas». But for some reason, Spotify’s automatic detection didn’t find them. According to CNN, some similar podcasts remained available for months.
Many podcast episodes are recorded with a computer voice and last less than a minute, up to 10 seconds. Some of them contained no audio at all. CNN suggests that sometimes Spotify’s content moderators discover drug-related put downs, but the company does not appear to be conducting a targeted search for them. Most platforms are not responsible for user-generated content. Even if Spotify’s policy were large-scale events, moderation of voice content is very difficult, unlike images or text.
CNN cannot estimate how many Spotify users have interacted with drug podcasts, but the search results are very popular. A Spotify spokesperson said то Ars Technica, all the fake podcasts named by both publications had been removed.
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