[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. 

[WilliamLiu]

@dravode, I saw your response that you are trying make.com as a temporary solution and have just signed up for it and set up the workflow. What is the limitation (in your opinion) for using make.com to update the playlist name? Would be great to get your input.

[Dravode]

In my opinion, the only limit is that is you wanted to update several playlists at a super regular pace, you would need a lot of ops. For 3 playlists updated every 3 minutes, that makes 43,800 ops a month

[WilliamLiu]

Thanks! That makes sense. I think make.com has a maximum of 1,000 operations a month for free, so I have to set it to update the playlist at longer intervals and also roughly around when the takedown notifications happen (they normally happen within a 3 - 4 hour window). But you are right, its a band aid compared to a permanent solution that Spotify does not want to resolve.

[RobNO97]

I get about 100 fake reporting per day. Contacting Spotify last year was no help at all. This need to be patched now.

[LoftMusic]

@DoomNation, how did you manage to get them to revert their decision? I had more than 100 attempts with customer service but they do not make anything to help.

[yaktam]

Good luck with this one folks. 

Spotify has decided to go the "woke" route. If you don't like someone's playlist, you can report to have it TAKEN DOWN. Try it yourself. 

Lol. What a bunch of idiots. Those that abuse this feature. And the ones that allowed it to happen in the first place.

Anyways, with another user's help and that of ChatGPT, I created a script that taps into Spotify's developer API and automatically renames and updates the description of a playlist of mine that was being targetted by some bozo, who didn't like it. And was reporting it. Daily. 

To get your playlist active again, as you might already know, simply login to Spotify using a browser. Then sort your playlists by alphabetical order. Your un-named (TAKEN DOWN) playlists should be at the top. Simply rename them and your back in business.

Problem was, I was having to do this manually at least once or twice a day.

Forget that. I automated a script to do that for me. It ran for about a month. Must have been SO demoralizing to the stupid moron who was reporting my playlist at random times every day, to see it come back up within an hour of his having the playlist being taken down (the script runs on the hour, every hour).

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Playlist-Takedown-Notification/m-p/5798414#M45099

Now if Spotify took that category out, 99% of us having this problem, would NOT have a problem.

So how about it Spotify? How about you "wake" up? And fix an abusive and useless category?

[SoulTreasure]

We are a record label and we have a section dedicated to curating our playlists to, consequently, promote our productions.
Very often (once every two months) Spotify removes our playlist without giving any explanation.
The message/email we receive is the following:
"By creating and using your Spotify account, you have entered into a binding contract with Spotify and you have indicated that you have read and understood Spotify's terms and conditions of use (the "Terms") and that you are bound to comply with them.

Spotify has become aware of unauthorized use of your account in violation of the Terms. Spotify has therefore removed the possibility of one or more of your playlists being publicly available.

Spotify reserves all rights under the Terms, the Agreements and applicable law.

Best regards,

Spotify"

We can't figure out what rule we're violating! And it's frustrating to spend so many hours a day curating playlists and so much money to advertise them, only to have them deleted without an understandable explanation!

Anyone have the same problem? Do you have any suggestions on what the cause might be?

[WilliamLiu]

Agreed. At least previously when a false report is made, you can raise a
diapute so that Spotify will investigate the claim and block the account
making the fraudulent takedown notification.

Now everything is automated, you can dispute the report, Spotify does not
investigate the false claim, and does not deactivate/block the account
making the claims. It only emboldens people to make these false takedowns!!

[drewsta_j]

This is still happening in 2024.

Come on Spotify, sort this issue out.  

My playlist has its name removed multiple times a day.  What’s so offensive about the name ‘Electro Funk & Nu Disco?

[PeraMia]

This is so annoying, I hope they fix this soon. I've had to put the name of my playlist back on 5 times in the last 2 days because someone is going through and reporting every playlist with the word "vigilante" in it. I'm guessing it's so their Taylor Swift playlist (Only a handful of Taylor Swift playlists have remained untouched the entire time) gets more exposure by eliminating search result competition. It's ridiculous that they can abuse the report feature and it just deletes our playlist names immediately.