[Playlists] Solution to false/abusive reporting

[CloudlightRec]

Whenever someone reports a playlist - the title and cover art are removed immediately. This is often abused to hurt record labels and playlist curators. After contacting support - the account of someone who abused this system gets taken down. This person then creates another email and free Spotify account and repeats the process. 

There is a simple solution to the problem - enable reporting feature only after 10 hours of music/podcasts were streamed using the account. It won't change the experience for a normal user but makes copyright abuse impractical. It's cheap and easy to implement and would stop 95% of false claims.

Thank you for your consideration. 

[PLAYTIFY]

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[Marlon1996]

They don‘t want to get more work - the actual way to handle reports is the easiest for them. I don’t think that they really look after those false reports. I reported one of my playlists several times with a fake Email. Nothing happened.

[Top50Clean]

Just upvoted. I got hit by this malicious reporting today. All of my top playlists were reported, and once I restored the metadata, they reported them again.

[Top50Clean]

Another afternoon of malicious reporting! Whomever this is, they must be really mad about my playlists. I've received 33 reports and counting over the last 1.5 hours. Every time I reset my playlist metadata and reply to the Spotify email saying this is an obvious attempt at removing my playlists from search results. They have even reported the same playlists multiple times.

I really hope this can be addressed before we have to reach 500 votes. This is impacting my enjoyment of the platform. I put a lot of work into my playlists, and someone shouldn't be able to harass like this. 

[_Descartes_]

Yes, many people have unfortunately had similar experiences to you, Top50Clean. In my experience, manually disputing and reinstating the playlists doesn't solve the problem in the long run and the result is simply that you waste a lot of time. Even after setting up an auto-reply system (explained in my last post), the reports continued every 10-15 minutes throughout the day several days.

The good news is that after I implemented the automatic system, the bots/people have stopped their abuse almost completely on my playlists. Nowadays, I might receive one report here and there but when they see that the playlist is reinstated directly afterwards, they stop after 1 report. This suggests that it might be actual people sending the reports manually, not bots, but it could be both.

The bad news is that the post I made trying to help others in the right direction with some simple code, seems to have been deleted by moderators in the forum. I'm not sure why Spotify continues to ignore this problem and deletes solutions from people trying to help.

Needless to say, I have lost a lot of respect for Spotify with regards to how they have been handling this situation. If they are not planning to fix this, I would appreciate an honest reply from their customer service team stating that this isn't a problem they're prioritizing at the moment. Instead they've been telling me in emails for over a year that their best tech folks are working on a fix. Does it really take 1 year to tweak the way their report system works to combat this abuse? It should not.

[PLAYTIFY]

The system like this is easier and cheaper for them. No copyright claims for spotify and they just have to send a auto reply to the victicms (us) some times.

[Marlon1996]

I lost over 300 Followers by now.....

[Top50Clean]

Thanks for the reply, _Descartes_. I got responses from Spotify last night, stating that they apologize for the issues and that they're working on a resolution. This sounds similar to the replies you were getting. I hope the fix is close to being implemented.

I'm not going to go the automation route, yet. I have a way to immediately restore my metadata with one tap. For now I can manage this manually. Whomever is upset about my playlists gaining traction will soon realize they won't win.

[Top50Clean]

I’m still seeing false reports, but to the tune of one or two per day. I always reset my metadata within a few minutes of the report, so maybe that discourages them.

One thing I’ve done is to set up a filter in my email provider to forward the Spotify report emails to my cell phone’s SMS email. This way I get a text message and can act quickly. This is about as close to an automated solution as I’ll get.

I see this idea has gotten a few more votes. Let’s keep it going!

[STP444]

I've had this issue on and off for about a year now. Seems to go through phases for me. I've had a blank playlist being reported every 15 mins for about two weeks before. At the moment a bot is reporting my playlists within a few minutes of updating them. I just updated them with a few full-stops in the title and description with no cover art and they still get reported... so definitely bots. It's very disheartening and frustrating that there is no solution to this. It seems to be an easy fix with the captcha system...