For the previous yr, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of hundreds of podcasts that marketed unlawful on-line pharmacies. A report launched Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, rating member of the Joint Financial Committee, faults the firm for performing solely after information retailers uncovered the content material and her workplace spent practically a yr urgent for solutions.
None of what it eliminated was despatched to regulation enforcement, the report says.
Spotify reportedly eliminated greater than 57,000 podcast episodes and three,000 reveals, and took enforcement motion in opposition to 3,500 accounts, all pushing hyperlinks to unlawful on-line pharmacies promoting opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants on the market with out a prescription. However, the report frames the cleanup as a moderation failure.
The report leans on one comparability specifically: Spotify acted in opposition to greater than 3,500 accounts for drug content material in 2025 however fewer than 100 the yr before. The committee presents the soar as proof the firm moved solely after it got here below scrutiny. Spotify supplied a unique clarification: that its older counts are incomplete as a result of, because it says in the report, it modified the method it tracks removals final yr.
A handful of the offending podcasts did discover an viewers. Of the 5 that drew greater than 100 performs, two collectively pulled round 13,000 streams and walked listeners by way of shopping for modafinil, a wakefulness drug, by sending bitcoin. One other, with 125 performs, linked to websites posing as pharmacy marketplaces for most cancers and HIV drugs. These have been the exceptions, however they pointed to working methods to pay and order.
The numbers are alarming, and the stakes are actual, Hassan says: Counterfeit tablets purchased on-line are regularly lower with fentanyl, and youngsters are amongst the most uncovered.
“In the age of AI, all on-line platforms want to deploy refined efforts to frequently establish and take down unlawful content material,” Hassan tells WIRED. “Failure to swiftly detect and take away harmful content material and likewise report it to regulation enforcement can lead to harrowing penalties—whether or not that’s an adolescent who buys medication on-line that could possibly be laced with lethal fentanyl or a senior who falls for a rip-off that wipes out their retirement financial savings.”
Requested about its strategy to AI podcasts, Spotify spokesperson Laura Batey says the firm “has a protracted historical past of working with regulation enforcement when content material violates the regulation.” She did not say whether or not Spotify makes proactive referrals to the Drug Enforcement Company, or how usually. Batey stated Spotify is nonetheless trying into WIRED’s query about whether or not it tracks clicks on these hyperlinks.
Spotify informed the committee that its apply is to alert authorities solely when it identifies a reputable menace of great hurt: an imminent danger to somebody’s life or security. The podcasts, which it had categorised as a search-optimization scheme reasonably than proof of precise drug gross sales, by no means met that bar, the firm stated.
Whereas Spotify did not say whether or not it experiences unlawful drug exercise to the DEA, the report says the firm’s rivals reply that query immediately: Snap frequently makes proactive referrals to the company, and Meta says it cooperates with regulation enforcement to fight drug gross sales. Spotify’s place, in accordance to the report, is that, as a licensed-content streaming service, its obligations differ from these of a social community.
At the very least one in all the eliminated podcasts pointed someplace regulation enforcement was already trying. A present the committee flagged in July 2025—listed below a string of nonsense characters and titled to promote a “licensed on-line vendor”—linked to a web site known as Opioidstores.com. That area was later seized by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, working with the DEA, the FDA, and different businesses. Spotify eliminated the podcast however, by its personal account, reported nothing.
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