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Playlists Being Falsely Reported!!!

Playlists Being Falsely Reported!!!

I've been put into an extremely frustrating situation that some of you may have also had problems with. Someone is falsely reporting my playlists, and there's nothing I can do about it. When someone reports your playlist, Spotify will automatically remove the playlist title, playlist bio, and playlist avatar, even if there is nothing that is breaking the rules of the user agreement policy. 

 

I run a rather large Indie/Alternative music blog, and my most recent Spotify playlist quickly gained traction and was starting to build a pretty decent sized following. However, I woke up two days after creating it to find that playlist title was blank and there was no bio. Thinking this was an error or glitch in the system, I changed it back. Not more than 30 minutes later, everything went blank again. After 5 more times of this happening, I contacted Spotify about this issue. They let me know that someone has been reporting my playlist for copyright. Well, I had no playlist picture, I was using the standard Spotify playlist art, the title was "Positive Energy Indie/Alternative Tunes" and there was absolutely nothing that would suggest a copyright issue. To fix this issue and get my playlist back, I had to file a counter-claim, and the user who flagged my playlist will have 10 days to respond. However, even if my playlist gets republished, that same user can report it again and I will be in this same issue all over again. Spotify also told me that it would be extremely hard to pinpoint the user that is falsely reporting my playlist, so there's pretty much nothing I can do about it.

 

As someone that depends on Spotify for my music blog and social media channels, I can not afford to have someone reporting my playlists just for the fun of it, whether that be for better SEO rankings or just because they don't like my channel. I do not wish this problem on anyone, and I think it is an absolutely terribly flawed system that can be abused way too often. There has to be a better reporting system on Spotify's end, or at least some greater protection for users that value Spotify's service and depend on it for their business. 

 

 

 

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Top Answer
Elena
Moderator

Hey there folks!

 

Thanks for reporting this to us and we're sorry to hear that this has been happening to you.

 

We have a live idea about this here and we suggest leaving a +Vote to support the idea.

 

If you're interested in how ideas work and how your feedback reaches the right teams here, check this page out.
 
Let us know if there's anything else we can do for you. We'd be happy to help.

131 Replies

I completely agree. I have a playlist that's been reported more than 20 times in the past hour. Redoing the details each time is a hassle and the service team isn't helping much either. I've replied to each email, but have gotten no replies yet. Best of luck to you as well!

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hi this also keeps happening to me T_T my email is being flooded w these false reports cuz it gets reported literally within 5 minutes of me changing it every time. it’s super frustrating idk what do do anymore, i tried changing the name and using my own art as the cover incase it was copyright but nope, it keeps happening T^T i contacted sus port many times but they pretty much said “uh just reply to the email or deal with it yourself” which i have been doing. can someone pls help me? 

I have the same! Extremely annoying. I cannot understand that Spotify doesn't evaluate the reported items to check if they are really offensive or inappropriate. I get no anwser either from Spotify support if I answer their email to object.

It's been almost a year since the "idea" for fixing the issue was submitted and apparently was voted to be implemented, how long will we have to wait? this issue is extremely annoying, sounds like moving to a different platform is the only option

I am also having this problem and am quite surprised Spotify will so easily allow any random user to sabotage a playlist this way. I have worked hard for months and finally organically built up a playlist that is growing +200 per day and is currently around 13,000. I have purposely not changed the title or description so that the search rankings will remain strong. However I just got an email from Spotify that the image had been flagged as inappropriate (I took the image myself, of my friends face singing), and thus my description, playlist title, and cover photo were removed. I then noticed that someone had made a similar playlist with the same title and I suspect it was them (but I don’t know). I just now added a title/image/description back in (12hrs after it was taken down) and who knows what this will do to my search ranking. It is so frustrating that Spotify doesn’t even check the claim, and instead lets someone sabotage my hard work. I am afraid the same person will just falsely report it again, and I fear the damage is already done. Some people make playlists only to sell placements (I do not) and thus have an incentive to sabotage other leading playlist. I hope Spotify can figure out how to handle this and protect users like myself. 

So just as a suggestion, keep restoring your content: I kept the playlist page open for days and I would keep title and description ready in "notepad", and just copy/paste it into my playlist as soon as I saw it changing (you'll see the content disappear in realtime if you keep it open). After three days the troll eventually stopped. I've had to put my content back as often as once every three minutes. Btw, I'm about to release an open source script just to do this (automatically updating a playlist, replacing title description and image) so that if you are affected you just run it once every minute (you can schedule it and keep it running for a few days), because I see it's a very common issue and spotify doesn't care about it. 

There is already a script for this: search spotiminder 

Fantastic! thanks

Hi all,

I have enough of this sh..

It's in a way comical. I have now 3 playlists targeted. Each time I write something, 5 mins or less, a report.

It's beyond madness. Of course Spotify doesn't care because they have more than 100 millions users.

I don't know what to do more. Erase the playlists? Only put a space in the name until Spotify works for a real fix, not a palliative one.

I have just recently experienced this. My favorite playlist hit 20k and BOOM, the false reports poured in. I'm talking a dozen times per day, FOR WEEKS.  I've replied to every Spotify removal notice email, but no one has ever responded over these months to look into this case. It took me months to realize this is some sort of purposeful attack to gain advantage over search results. I'm working with Spotify now to make a case, but I REALLY hope this loophole is addressed soon.

Update: I had my playlist falsely flagged last month once it reached around 10k followers. I replied to the Spotify notice email with a detailed rebuttal proving that I own the image copyright and the description is not offensive. After a day or two I decided to re-upload the image/description and then everything was back to normal. 
Today it got flagged again (approaching 20k follows now) and so I replied to the email notice with the same detailed rebuttal but this time quickly re-uploaded the exact same  image/description that I’ve always had, since it is just another false report.

I dearly wish that Spotify would either require review to take down a playlist description, or require that a paid account be used to flag a playlist so that they can permanently ban the person doing it via their name/payment info, or at least “whitelist” the image and description where if they’ve manually reviewed it after someone falsely flagged it so that as long as it doesn’t change it can’t be flagged again. I spend so much time maintaining the list and it’s sad that a bad actor can so easily disrupt what is otherwise an awesome and creative community. 

PS: Now it has happened twice in the same day. I hope it doesn't become more frequent. The only reason I can think of for someone reporting it is that they're one of the similar-genre playlists that is lower than mine in search rankings. I have now replied to three takedown emails from Spotify (first was a month ago) and not one has received a reply from them. I wonder if they have the ability to stop the person abusing the system.

Update: I’ve been having my playlist falsely reported maybe 1-2 times per day for the last  five days. Each time it’s reported, it’s taken offline, since during that time the title/description/photo are blank and listeners thus cannot find it. I respond to each takedown email with a detailed response (which I now basically copy and paste), but even though this happened a month ago for the first time, I have yet to receive any response from Spotify. It’s just silly that there’s not a way to prevent this. Spotify could, at a minimum, prevent an account from flagging the same playlist more than once, or better yet, require a review rather than just automatically taking down the playlist no matter how large.

I would guess the false reports are by someone who made a playlist by the same name as mine, who I presume would boost their search results temporarily during each time my list is offline. 

Hello there,

Here we go again with bots in 2 playlists.

It ended a few days back for my top playlist but after 3/4 days they are back.

This report system is full of flaws

Answering to all the reports consumes time and my nerves.

I can't believe there are so mean people who bothers us for playlists with 1 or 2k of followers in an universe of hundred of millions of subscribers.

A billions dollars company which doesn't solve this issue is what is unbelievable. 

Hello,

it is happening to me, too. And it is extremly frustrating.

I own a playlist with a few thousand followers with carefully-own-hand choosen songs for this vibe/feeling of the playlists name


Then yesterday I've got a report- everything is removed- excepted the songs. Name, description, Picture- everything is removed! Someone (maybe a bot) copied my playlist 1:1.

I believe, this are bots, music labels or artists, that try to push their similar-vibe/playlist-name playlists and try to get you out of the way with this crazy methods. But my playlist also got cloned- all the hard work of creating a well-choosen playlist.

I've never expected to reach that many people, but I see that people like well-choosen playlist content, so I'll try to keep it alive as long as possible!

It is not the end of the world, but ... it ... makes me extremly angry, if I see that someone is copying exactly my playlist and is not getting reportet for exactly the same content- description, title and songs!

(double post, excuse)

"There is already a script for this: search spotiminder "

 

@SjorsWeijermar1 do I need to have spotify installed on the machine? If not, I could run the script on a cheap virtual server- or does it need a local running installation of spotify to work? That would be interesting to know, I couldn't find any information to this question in the script README file

Hello everyone!

I have 7 playlists actually victims of bots and sometimes a 8th playlist is reported. It is crazy!

I do not know what to do. I already answer with some mean words to Spotify because it is an endless problem.

Their system is broken and they do not give a **bleep**. about us.

These f. people are the real winner. They copy a bot from a place, I do not understand nothing about it, they use it and nothing happens for them. WE HAVE TO ANSWER, TO REPLACE DATA to have our playlists working fine for our followers. 

It is outrageous to continue like this.

I lost tens of hours, answering notice of reports and completing my reported playlists.

It is so frustrating! 😔

Ok. I can't see this sht anymore.

 

This is getting more and more crazy.
We just want to create playlists and give other people the possibility to follow the playlists.

 

Today I was thinking:
"Ok. Spotify is literally giving a fck about their customers. That is (sadly) kinda normal with huge companies. But there MUST BE a way, how we can protect this random/targeted reporting?!"

 

And I remembered- yes, there is a possible solution: Private playlists.
This playlists will not appear in the search results of spotify- so all this crawler/bot/fame-companies won't reach my/our playlists, if we turn them private! Maybe they won't be also possible to report them!

 

But guess what? No. Holy ****!
I've just read this spotify post: "[...] Abuse even when Playlist Secret"
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/False-Reporting-Abuse-even-when-Playlist-Secret/td-p/50996...

 

WHAT in the f-ing **bleep** is this?!!!! EVEN OUR PRIVATE PLAYLISTS can and will be reported?!!!
(*Meditation mode turned on* "OK, boy, just .. come down ... chill ...")

 

I just lost my f-ing mind. SPOTIFY. Some of us have more than 200 playlists.
For some people this is hundret hours of work! And we can NOT protect them agains funny lol abuse because you are too [insert your word of choice here] to protect this abuse method?!
Guys, remember: If your playlist gets reported, you lose INSTANTLY (!!!) the name, description and the artwork/cover of your playlist. So, if some reta... some not nice person/bot will just4fun report many of your playlists: Good luck and have fun with restoring all your playlist.

 

WHAT. THE. ****

 

The ONLY way now (until now, we don't know which funny ideas spotify will get in the future, wth...) is to copy your playlists and make/create them instant private, so bots won't find them in public searches or on your profile and won't be able to report them. What the f...

 

Big, big massive shame on you spotify.

 

Because, the most insane thing is: People got banned because their playlists had been reported so often. WHAAAT.
Invalid reporting and the users get deleted?!! Are you f-ing serious spotify?!!!!

 

Proof: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/False-Reporting-Abuse-even-when-Playlist-Secret/m-p/516400...

2021-09-26_22-43.png

I feel mentally so crazy and restless now, because- theoretically someone could report all of my playlists.

I've never been that much disappointed of a company like you.

 

So. For all the rest of you guys here are my tips what we can do to avoid reporting and chaos with our playlists:

  • Go to settings in your spotify application and configure, that new playlists won't be automatically public
    • (For me it is more important, to keep all my playlists, than to lose all their title, descriptions and covers)
  • Take screenshots of your most important playlists to remember them if they will get reported
  • Turn all playlists into private playlists
    • Or if you want to be on the safe side, create copies of playlists and turn/create them instantly private

That is so disgusting, that spotify is ignoring this problem for 2 years now. And guess what? Spotify ignores btw. also more bigger problems- yes, lol, really funny 😄 check this out: Spotify still allows stalking of your profiles 😄 hehe, that's really funny, isn't it spotify? 🙂 We are still not able to remove or block followers- wow. Nice.

 

For more information, here is the big big post about it: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Social-Block-Followers/idc-p/5126727#M211648

Did you get your playlist back?

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