I am reposting this because my original idea was merged with one relating to homepage customisation. Spotify claimed that this was to help me get my idea past the finish line. Well, that idea is marked as 'not right now' and I believe that mental health deserves a higher priority. I started my original idea after my account was hacked several months ago. I am still unable to get rid of the content the hackers placed in my shortcuts. Having your online data compromised is stressful and I do not need to be reminded of it every time I use Spotify. However, some users have much more urgent reasons for needing to gain control over the content they see. On each thread users have been reporting content that is inappropriate, such as horror podcasts. Other have reported seeing upsetting content related to their personal circumstances. A lot of the podcast content that is currently being pushed at us, has the potential to be very inappropriate. One user who is unable to have children has reported being constantly showing parenting podcasts with no way to remove them. Any content, however innocuous it may seem to others, can be triggering and affect a user's emotional wellbeing. A certain song may recall memories of a violent incident, it may induce a painful memory or might just be something that adversely affects their mood. It should be possible to remove all of these triggers, regardless of the severity. Spotify must not claim, in their corporate communications, to be at all connected or sympathetic to the mental health awareness and wellbeing movement until they start to address the shortcomings in filtering out inappropriate or unwanted content for their users. Until then, they are part of the problem. Spotify have recently linked with Calm on Mental Health Awareness week, and received a lot of media coverage for this. These media outlets may want to revise their coverage in light of the fact that Spotify are failing to address this issue.
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