As of Monday, 11/29/21: Spotify suddenly changed everyone’s Friend Activity settings to “off,” meaning that all listening activity of those you follow has now been quietly disabled in the Friend Activity section- unless each of your friends reads their Spotify emails and explicitly switches it back to “on.” Most users will not be aware that their activity is now off, profoundly damaging Spotify’s most important social feature, as well as the most reliable, accurate, around-the-clock means of finding new music. We are told to let our friends know of this change in order to turn it back on, however I have no way of contacting some of my Spotify friends because we are not friends in real life. This decision is both saddening and highly arbitrary as the “Private Session” feature can be utilized to keep listening activity private when necessary. Users rely heavily on this feature to get through the workday as well as the pandemic in general. Please consider that this entirely changes the listening experience and purpose of Spotify for many. Spotify is no more competitive than Apple Music unless this update is reversed. From Spotify Moderator on 12/01/21: “ Hey everyone, Thanks for reaching out on the Community! We've moved your posts to a relevant Help Board where they fit better. We can confirm that due to privacy reasons, the default setting for sharing your listening activity with friends was changed to off with recent releases. This means that those who had it on before without explicitly setting it on, now have it switched off. This would explain why they aren't in your feed any more. You can let your friends know of this change and ask them to turn it on in their settings if they want to share their listening activity.” Thank you.
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