[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. 

[_Descartes_]

The icing on the cake is of course that since the account is disabled, the API refuses your requests. Not even 20 minutes after the suspension, one of the popular playlists lost all metadata due to a false report. A few hours later, a second playlist was hit by another attack. 

[NT88]

@_Descartes_ Its such a bummer... after all this false reporting business and now accounts are being unfairly disabled... Spotify has really turned into a cold and dark place... they should be concentrating on taking down those cell phone bot farms instead... plus all they have to do is go on Facebook and they will easily find all the real fake playlists services. 

I think an algorithmic bot identifies accounts/playlists and then a person may quickly approve it... because it would take an hour or so to do a thorough manual review... and we all know they don't have the staff to do that... they can't even reply to our email appeals anymore... 

I hope you get your account back... keep on at them and lets us know you go. 

[mcallarse]

Some positive news: I received an update from the Spotify Customer Service Team today: "Upon further review, we have prevented this issue from happening to this playlist again. Please note, if you change the image or title of the provided playlist this protection may be lost." In my case, issue was happening for over a month, and there were multiple appeals over that span. In the last week, I went the chat route as suggested in this thread. Like others, chat ended abruptly with essentially, "nothing we can do," but not sure if that was a catalyst for something or appeals team is finally getting to backlog, but whatever the case may be, I'll take it.

That Spotify has allowed this issue to grow to this point is an embarrassment to the platform. Hopefully, this is indicative of a change in approach, and users start to see a change.

[NT88]

@mcallarce That's amazing news! Wow I've never heard of them doing that before... i can't believe they even replied to you let alone resolved the issue. I hope this is a turning point. 

[_Descartes_]

@mcallarse Wow, that's great news! Thanks for sharing. It seems like Spotify is finally doing something to prevent this abuse. Hopefully, more and more people will get the protection you refer to! In my case, I haven't heard back regarding any of the hundreds of appeals I have sent this year. Maybe going the live chat route is the way to go regarding appeals, as they've completely stopped replying to emails. 

[_Descartes_]

@NT88  Yes, I agree that it's a shame since Spotify is a great platform in many other ways, for example in opening up editorial playlists pitching to independent artists. Due to the time I have wasted on this issue, I have cancelled my Premium account and no longer promote Spotify as the first spot in my music links (it's actually the last one now). 

Thanks, I will let you guys know if I manage to get my account back!

[andypolack]

I too have had the same email from Spotify support (they have stopped the "issue"), I don't know if this was just from the standard appeal route as I also went through the chat route.

My playlist title and image has been reverted back to it's original form so we'll have to see how it goes. 

[richbatsford]

tried this on the chat yesterday and got nowhere except the promise of an email from the right team within an hour which hasnt arrived 😞

[_Descartes_]

@richbatsford Did you receive a reply yet?

I'm still waiting for a reply regarding my account. I have been told in the live chat that the escalations team should come back to me before the end of this week, so I'm hoping that'll be the case.

[richbatsford]

yes, just arrived - I got the protection 🙂

the email was from Escalations team - Spotify Customer Support, so if you
dont get any luck, get back on the chat and get them to send a message to
that team

good luck