[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. 

[CloudlightRec]

Yeah, ideally it'd be great to digitally track and sue people for false reporting. But I think we're very far from creating and enforcing proper regulations on the internet. It would require the whole digital police and court system. I think that's how the future would look like tho. Everyone would hold a digital passport which is connected to their real id and will be accountable for all their actions. With so much of an economy shifting towards digital space that's something absolutely necessary. Still, the current state needs to be addressed somehow. Hope more people will express their ideas on fixing the problem with tools available now. It's always great to hear someone else's perspective. And I believe there is some solution to this even if it is not the one I suggest. 😊 

[kirkland_island]

This has been happening to me recently and there NEEDS to be a fix. My playlist, which is now just shy of 10,000 followers, has been repeatably reported. After every report, I email Spotify and change the name back to the original ("Summer Country 2020"). This usually does not last more than 15 minutes before the person reports it again. 

They reply (after many times of me changing the name back and it being reported again) and say they have suspended the account, which solves the problem for about an hour. There is nothing stopping the person from creating a new free account and continuously reporting once more. I am at the point where I am ready to just take my playlist down and move to a different platform, as I do not have the time to rename my playlist over FIFTY time in 2 days. 

Please implement a fix for this issue.

[ErikBlues]

There is absolutely no disadvantage in restricting new user's permissions for 10 playback hours as suggested. New users should also have other restrictions to avoid spam etc.

This is a very simple solution that would work for everyone. Should be implemented right away.

Check out my ideas.

[infiniteembers]

This NEEDS to be implemented. How is there not already some protection in place for us??

[DonSolare]

This is a very good idea that addresses a central problem for independent curators and artists. And indirectly, it also addresses a central principle of law: no one is found guilty (and punished) until proven guilty.

Juan María Solare

[AndySalvanos]

This practice is rife, still waiting for Spotify to react. 

[richbatsford]

Yes agreed that this is unfortunately a common practice.  Curators are having to put up with a lot of unneccessary hassle and it causes a loss in streams and therefore income for everyone represented on the playlist.  Its been going on too long already.  Whether the ten hour streaming minimum will fix it or not, I dont know, but it sounds like it would be worth a try.

[Ajacksonsounds]

The only people who should be able to make reports are paid subscribers. This should be added to the post. 

[infiniteembers]

For sure the obvious solution is for these reports to not be acted upon until an actual human from Spotify reviewed the reports, or at least set up an advanced AI.

I've been trying to get Spotify's attention and help on this matter now for over 3 weeks. I've emailed (I get one response that says to restore the original content since it was reported in error, and no responses if I reply to that), I've chatted on their website (was told the only way to contact Spotify was to reply to the emails... which is a dead end), and then I've been trying to reach them on Twitter via @SpotifyCares (after a 1-week-runaround they finally told me to reply to the emails, even though that's what I've been doing and there is no response).

I'm considering taking this as a story to Business Insider, if anyone wants to be included to share your story of frustration, please reach out. This is such a frustrating experience made WAY more frustrating by Spotify's lack of accountability or support.

[russrichards]

another victim of false reporting here, same thing i am hearing from everyone, a top tier playlist that has been replicated by others , all of a sudden gets spammed with report flags - removing the playlist name, artwork, and description.  I understand that due to the nature of content, that this a mostly self reported community, but its my belief that the vast majority of spotify vets out there are tied to their playlist, and there needs to be a checks and balance measure in place to combat nefarious users from abusing the system.  Can spotify implement a feature that once a user's playlist, artowrk, and description are set, they can be "verifed" by a spotify support person - so that a playlist cannot continue to be targeted on baseless "edited content" claims - and then if the playlist creator modifies that content at a later date, then they may need to go through that verification process again.