For the previous 12 months, 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 corporate for appearing solely after information retailers uncovered the content material and her workplace spent practically a 12 months urgent for solutions.
None of what it eliminated was despatched to legislation enforcement, the report says.
Spotify reportedly eliminated greater than 57,000 podcast episodes and three,000 reveals, and took enforcement motion towards 3,500 accounts, all pushing hyperlinks to unlawful on-line pharmacies promoting opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants on the market and not using a prescription. Nonetheless, the report frames the cleanup as a moderation failure.
The report leans on one comparability specifically: Spotify acted towards greater than 3,500 accounts for drug content material in 2025 however fewer than 100 the 12 months earlier than. The committee presents the bounce as proof the corporate moved solely after it got here beneath scrutiny. Spotify provided a special clarification: that its older counts are incomplete as a result of, because it says within the report, it modified the best way it tracks removals final 12 months.
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 via 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 incessantly lower with fentanyl, and youngsters are among the many most uncovered.
“Within the age of AI, all on-line platforms have to deploy subtle efforts to repeatedly determine and take down unlawful content material,” Hassan tells WIRED. “Failure to swiftly detect and take away harmful content material and likewise report it to legislation enforcement can result in harrowing penalties—whether or not that’s a youngster who buys medicine on-line that might be laced with lethal fentanyl or a senior who falls for a rip-off that wipes out their retirement financial savings.”
Requested about its method to AI podcasts, Spotify spokesperson Laura Batey says the corporate “has a protracted historical past of working with legislation enforcement when content material violates the legislation.” She didn’t say whether or not Spotify makes proactive referrals to the Drug Enforcement Company, or how typically. Batey mentioned Spotify remains to be trying into WIRED’s query about whether or not it tracks clicks on these hyperlinks.
Spotify instructed the committee that its observe is to alert authorities solely when it identifies a reputable risk of great hurt: an imminent danger to somebody’s life or security. The podcasts, which it had categorized as a search-optimization scheme moderately than proof of precise drug gross sales, by no means met that bar, the corporate mentioned.
Whereas Spotify didn’t say whether or not it stories unlawful drug exercise to the DEA, the report says the corporate’s opponents reply that query immediately: Snap usually makes proactive referrals to the company, and Meta says it cooperates with legislation enforcement to fight drug gross sales. Spotify’s place, based on the report, is that, as a licensed-content streaming service, its obligations differ from these of a social community.
At the very least one of many eliminated podcasts pointed someplace legislation enforcement was already trying. A present the committee flagged in July 2025—listed beneath 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.
