Advertising for illegal opioid sales: Spotify removes hundreds of podcasts

They often only lasted a few seconds and advertised supposed online pharmacies: Using Spotify podcasts, criminals have apparently tried to promote illegal online sales of prescription drugs. These included highly addictive opioids and other medication. Spotify is now taking action against the "podcasts", which are more reminiscent of commercials.

According to the Business Insider portal, the "podcasts" apparently don't say much more than the products on offer and the name of the ominous sales websites. This seems rather strange for a podcast, if only because of its short length, and it also violates Spotify's guidelines for podcasts: These prohibit advertising the sale of regulated or illegal drugs. Nevertheless, the scam apparently worked well for some time and, above all, went undetected.

Podcasts apparently more permeable than commercials

Spotify podcasts as an advertising channel were presumably cheaper for the criminals and probably more permeable than regular Spotify audio commercials. If you want to use them, you have to work directly with Spotify via the Spotify Ad Manager or go through an external advertising agency – In both cases, the scam of the black marketeers would probably have been quickly exposed.

The situation is apparently different for podcasts: once a podcast has been set up and activated by Spotify, further podcast episodes can usually be uploaded without further content checks, or at least no such step is indicated on the corresponding support pages. Although Spotify states that it reserves the right to check all content on the platform before publication, this does not appear to have been done, or not very carefully, at least in the case of the dubious "podcasts".

Some of these podcasts are said not even to have contained sound. Instead, they only served as a hook to run the podcast description and a cover as an advertising medium between other podcasts, reports Business Insider.

Spotify CEO confronted at X

And so the drug "podcasts" must have made some listeners suspicious for quite a while – how long is unclear – until someone finally drew the attention of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to the situation in an X post, including a screenshot that is said to contain the "podcasts" of the black marketeers. It is important to note, however, that in addition to obviously promotional content for illegal drug dealers, the screenshot also contains some real podcasts about trauma recovery and the drug Tramadol. Daniel Ek did not respond to mail.

According to Business Insider, it reported around 200 of the "podcasts" to the platform. Spotify informed the news portal that the company is constantly working to remove illegal content from its platform.

However, it is unclear whether orders placed on websites advertised in the "podcasts" always resulted in delivery of the illegally sold drugs. According to some negative customer reviews of the websites, this was probably not always the case, writes Business Insider.

(nen)