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 the podcasts were a “spam attack” designed to boost the visibility of online pharmacies in search engines.

Investigation Findings

The investigation found that Spotify had removed 3,500 podcast accounts and 57,000 individual episodes between May and November of last year. However, the company did not alert law enforcement to the content, which raised questions about Spotify’s ability to proactively detect and remove potentially harmful content.

Senator Hassan stated that all online platforms need to step up and protect their users by enforcing comprehensive strategies to remove illegal content. The investigation also found a small number of similar phony podcasts on other streaming platforms, including iHeart and Amazon Music.

Spotify 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. The company has previously said that the phony podcasts were largely spam or scam attempts.

Original reporting: El Paso News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.