Spotify has removed tens of thousands of phony podcasts promoting illegal online pharmacies, a new investigation has found. The investigation, led by Senator Maggie Hassan, discovered that Spotify had removed 3,500 podcast accounts and 57,000 individual episodes between May and November of last year.

Background

Last May, Spotify said it had removed dozens of podcasts identified by CNN that blatantly promoted online pharmacies purportedly selling drugs such as Adderall and Oxycontin, in some cases without a prescription. Senator Hassan launched an investigation into the fake podcasts, which violated Spotify’s rules and threatened to direct users to spammy and potentially illegal sites.

Parents, experts, and lawmakers have urged tech giants to do more to prevent the sale of counterfeit or illicit drugs to young people through their platforms after multiple teens have died of overdoses from pills bought online.

Spotify’s Response

Spotify told CNN the phony podcasts were a “spam attack” designed to boost the purported online pharmacies’ visibility in search engines and told investigators they were not targeted at selling drugs to Spotify users. The company said it has a process to refer content to law enforcement but did not do so for any of the drug-related podcasts it removed last year.

Spotify reiterated that it believes the podcast linking to “opioidstores.com” was spam. “Spotify has a long history of working with law enforcement when content violates the law,” the company told CNN.

The investigation’s findings raise questions about Spotify’s ability to proactively detect and remove potentially harmful content. Senator Hassan said the company should have acted faster and alerted law enforcement to the content.

Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.