[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. 

[mojo328]

One of my playlists recently got popular and this has happened to me multiple times since. It's absurd and unbelievably irresponsible to me that Spotify automatically takes down playlists after reports without any manual review whatsoever. I put so much work into that playlist so I, as well as others, could enjoy it, and Spotify won't even lift a finger to implement even the most basic safeguards to prevent people/bots from abusing their reporting system. This is giving me genuine anxiety and is really upsetting to me as a music lover. When will something be done? Because this has been going on for years according to this thread. I've been a paying customer for 7 years and this is making me seriously consider switching to a different music streaming service. So disappointing.

[danielsimo]

##- how I said before, they don’t going to fix this. And it looks that
it’s better not to complain about it, because they will delete your
playlist definitely or disable your account just because. They disable 3 of
my accounts accusing me of selling spots in my playlist or selling
playlists. And that’s false because the only music that I promote on all my
playlist are music from my record label catalog. I don’t know what to think
about all of this, but I’m pretty sure that if everyone stand and speak out
about this issues they will work for a solutions -##

[Anton174]

Maybe there is some kind of service where we can all leave a vote, sign a petition? The arbitrariness of Spotify needs publicity, the only way they will start to stir 🤬🤬🤬

[justawriter]

This is the “solution post” everyone directs people to when they complain about this issue. It was posted in 2020.

It’s May 2023 and this is still a frustrating and ongoing problem.

My anecdote: I’ve had Spotify premium for years. The playlist in question has been up for YEARS. It has and never has had any cover art, there’s no swearing in the title or description, and there’s no weird music files uploaded into it - every song on it is added from Spotify. Yet it keeps getting reported when it isn’t breaking any policy.

The “Takedown Notification” email they send every time has no link to appeal and no information about why the playlist was reported. It basically feels like spam at this point.

If you try to talk to support about it you get stonewalled and the conversation is closed with no further discussion, so there’s not even a way for it to be manually reviewed. They have time to answer in the chat and ask for screenshots of the issue, but they don’t have time to actually look at the playlist and be like “yeah, that’s a false report”. They just tell you they take reports seriously and that they can’t give any more information, then close the ticket before you can say anything else.

I don’t get it. I’m annoyed and frustrated that there’s still no fix implemented and no way to dispute a report. There’s not even a temporary fix, like marking the playlist as unreportable for a day, or something.

It feels like Spotify doesn’t care, so I guess I’m going to have to put up with all these unhelpful “Takedown Notification” emails until either the end of time or the end of my patience.

[StillWaiting]

At least they respond when you chat. I get ‘the agent has left the conversation’ only cementing the view that they genuinely do not give a d…

[ggpofm]

Some suggestions that might work together:

1. Never listen to your playlist.
2. If you want to listen to it, create a copy of your playlist with spotify web by dragging all the songs to the new playlist and make it private and use it to listen to your songs.
3. Leave your playlist without title, description and cover art for a few weeks when it is reported. And every time it is reported, repeat this process of leaving it without this information.
4. When you put the title and description back, write again adding or removing some information, don't copy and paste.

I wish it works. It worked for me.

[Doc_Os]

Hello everyone

I think we are misunderstanding Spotify's message.

The email received says "Please see our Spotify Terms and Conditions of Use for more information."

I think the part that Spotify wants us to see is the following:

"Spotify may, but has no obligation to, monitor, review, User Content. Spotify reserves the right to remove or disable access to any User Content with or without reason. Spotify may perform this action without prior notice to you."

If I understand correctly, Spotify would not have to give us explanations if it eliminates our lists. Furthermore, you could remove them simply because they compete with your own lists and it would still be legal.

We assume that these are malicious actors manipulating Spotify's reporting system. And we ask you to fix your whistleblowing system.

But what motivation would the company have to protect successful lists of independent curators? Is spotify a neutral referee? Wouldn't it be in the interest of the company that only their own playlists prevail and not those of the independent curators?

I do not know the answers to these questions; but they make me think

[elixanova]

What blows my mind is the sheer number of posts and upvotes about this and spotify has at most put a bandaid on it and put even greater distance between support and users who need help by taking away our ability to dispute any report. What it tells me is they don't care to put the resources to a team who reviews each case, which would absolutely shed light on the injustice of false reports.

I've actually identified the user who has been doing this to me and I am dying to know WHY they do it, they have to be making money off the success, which does point to spotify enjoying that success with them, so why bother looking into it. It's all super shady and seems like part of a larger internet issue similar to YouTube algorithm drama.

If anyone is still experiencing this issue even after they reformed the reporting tool, I'm so sorry and I feel for you and think we need to keep vocalizing it, everywhere possible.

[richbatsford]

what reform have they done to the reporting tool?

[Richs88]

Hi guys,

I have been out of this problem for more than 1 year. The reports just stopped and everything was okay till today. I started to receive again the repors and its been more than 10 just today. Is there any news about Spotify supporting us? Or everything still the same just as it was? 

I hope this ends soon...