[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. 

[Top50Clean]

Whomever was reporting my playlists has really slowed down, but it sucks to hear that others are still having issues with this. I have my suspicions as to who is targeting me. I won't out them publicly. They try reporting my top playlists every week or so, and then give up once they notice I have something that immediately restores my metadata. I shared that utility further up in this thread, if you want to try it yourself.

For everyone getting harassed like this, here's my best advice: keep restoring your metadata and reply to each and every email notice from Spotify with something like what I've shared below. Don't take it out on the support reps. Their job is difficult enough. They have to read each reply you send. This takes valuable time away from their other support tasks. Time is money, so this puts more pressure on the dev team to finally implement a solution.

Example email reply text follows:

Hi Spotify,

This looks like the same malicious reporting issue that has been happening over the last few months. This is one of many times that this playlist has been reported, most likely by the same bad actor with a new email address. I would like to appeal this. I plan to continue to reset my playlist metadata until they stop.

Looking at the available categories on the reporting form, I can absolutely assure you that none of my playlist metadata is sexual in nature, violent, dangerous, hateful, abusive, or deceptive.

The only option left is that they “just don’t like it.” That’s unfortunate, but that isn’t a valid reason for them to be able to continuously harass me by having my content removed.

I appreciate your previous replies regarding a solution that’s in the works. I hope it will be implemented soon.

Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. 

Sincerely,

[STP444]

Such a bummer this is still happening... I've been targeted again the last week or so as well. I've created backup duplicate playlists of the ones that get reported and I've started picking up a few followers on those which helps...(just with minor song changes but using the same artwork and description which mentions that it's a backup playlist for when the main one is offline). I don't appear to be targeted personally by a specific person though as those would likely be reported too... more likely a random bot for me that targets playlists in my genre... I guess the best we can do is keep replying to the emails and commenting on this thread regularly so the popularity increases... maybe some spam accounts do get punished eventually... but not sure tho because I watched a YouTube vid that said that Spotify turns a blind eye to spam/bot farms as it boosts their sales and they take 20% profit regardless...

[kirkland_island]

My original post on this thread was May 4, 2020. It has now been over a year and there has been no change whatsoever. This is what my email inbox looks like today, very similar to what it looked like last year. What a disappointment that Spotify continues to lie about a solution being in the works. We have given plenty of good ideas, my favorite being a verified playlist title/picture that is reviewed and can't be reported unless changed. Seems like a lot of time to verify each playlist, but the service staff looking at the name and photo of my playlist once to verify it would save a ton of time vs. the current system of having to look at and deny 100+ continuous reports.

[Top50Clean]

I've seen an inbox like that before, kirkland_island. Are those all for the same playlist? Images like that are what Spotify needs to see. I keep saying the word harassment, because that's what it is, and under the current reporting system it's in no way discouraged.

[kirkland_island]

Yes Top50Clean, all for one playlist "Summer Country 2021" (with a photo I took of my dog). The reports come in spurts - during the winter I get none because that is not the time country music is listened to the most. I got around 30 total during April-June (very small amount compared to what it was last year), with a huge surge coming today (June 30). I get the report, restore the name and photo, and immediately get another report. It's an endless cycle.

[Top50Clean]

I have no idea if it’ll help, but I sent a Tweet about the issue. Feel free to like/retweet/reply:

https://twitter.com/top50clean/status/1410329164478095373?s=21 

[kirkland_island]

Officially at the point of giving up. I have 50+ reports of my playlist today alone. My playlist “Summer Country 2021” has amassed 30,000+ followers but now I can’t even keep a name on it, no matter what it is. I have tried renaming to “Playlist”, “Playlist name”, “Country”, “SC21”, and even just “…”. Each of these reported within 5 minutes. I even changed the name on my profile and they were still able to find and report my playlist. Spotify - PLEASE help us. This is obvious abuse of the reporting tool to harass your paying customers.

[richbatsford]

Thanks for tweeting Top50Clean, Ive re-tweeted. I checked the date on this thread - it was started April 2020, so its well over a year now that Spotify have been aware of this issue.

[OnesZeros]

Kirkland_island: Did Spotify customer support reply to any e-mails of yours? It's of course unthinkable how much abuse has been going on out there... They could at least introduce some temporary fix for the most OBVIOUS cases of the reporting tool abuse, such as yours. I.e. "whitelisted" playlists which would not be allowed to be taken down by the abusers.

This really DOES degrade not only playlisters' experience on the platform, but also those folks which are simple listeners. Someone from Spotify earlier wrote that they have been monitoring the thread - maybe they could help with this burning issue somehow. A temporary bandaid-solution is better than no help at all!

[NickBV]

The fact that they haven’t addressed this issue by now shows that they really don’t care. Why would they? They have millions of subscribers paying money. They say you can appeal by emailing their support email, imagine the thousands of replies they get from people. Sounds like this is all a waste of time. They haven’t got back to me, I contacted them via chat and they told me that chat was only for payment issues etc… Typical. 😂