[Desktop][Friend Feed] Move 'Share Activity' Toggle to Friend Activity

[LouisDavis]

Spotify recently decided to change the default of whether a user is sharing their activty or not. This update doesn't actually solve the issue that the activity toggle is hard to find and unknown by a large majority of users.

My suggestion is to place a toggle and indicator at the top of the 'Friend Activty' sidebar so that users can turn on and off their activty sharing with ease and be aware of their sharing status. This will not totally resolve the issue because a user will need to have the 'Friend Activity' sidebar enabled to see it to start with but it is a start to making this functionality far more accessible and obvious.

An additional change would be to place a 'Share Activty with Friends' button under the 'Private Session' button in the profile dropdown menu with a green check mark to it when enabled similar to what the 'Private Session' button does when enabled. If this is done it is important to make it clear in the settings menu and possibly through hints what the difference is between enabling a private session, and disabling sharing your activity.

[dreαmlαnd]

why don’t they just undo their stuff updates from the past few months and let’s have spotify the way it used to be and always has been. there were no issues or complaints… EVER !!!!

[Novy]

Updated on 2022-01-06

Hey everyone,

Thanks for bringing us your feedback in the Spotify Idea Exchange.

Your suggestion has gathered the votes necessary and your feedback is now reaching the internal teams at Spotify. They're aware of the vote count and popularity of this idea. We'll continue to monitor and check out the comments here, too.

As soon as we have any updates on its status, we'll let you know.

More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange can be found here.

[yandhi]

you guys should be encouraging spotify as a social music platform! Everyone i know hates this change. Friend activity is an integral part of spotify and you didn’t even tell people you turned it off!!

[Minzgruen]

I must say, I honestly hate this change. Friends Activity has never been so buggy. I told all my friends because I figured it out by myself after the update only showed about 4 live friends for me anymore. When they switched it back on, it still took a while for Spotify to actually catch onto it. Sure, I still lost a lot of activity since I couldn't tell all of my Spotify friends (most people aren't aware of this, why make this change WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE?). And now it did it AGAIN? Friends who have changed their settings to "share with my friends" AGAIN disappeared from my feed. This was the worst idea I ever came across, I'm sorry. I fully support LouisDavis' suggestion and I really do hope that that's gonna work.

[amker]

I think in general if they do make a change then they should say so in the update. 

Along with this I missed different updates as well and had to explore on my own to figure out what's new, they don't mention updates on the store page as "they are constantly updating":

 

[Bastet_]

Its really sad 😞 

I want it back again!!

[Sockenpeter]

You could implement a kind of pop-up reminder with the next update asking whether people want to share their listening activity with friends or not. Spotify is a social platform, that's how you brand it. I don't want to privately ask everyone of my 20+ friends to toggle this on again, because... that's awkward, I don't know many of them too well. I only asked my two best friends to do it.

"Social" to me means that maybe I want to share my listening activity with "friends" that I don't know well or that I haven't seen in a long time. Like sharing some content in an instagram story. I would say, most people on Spotify have listen with the thought on their mind that their friends are seeing it from time to time. I mean I totally see why you did it... consent and data privacy and stuff, but... just ask for consent, not decide for them. Thanks.

[themoonandi]

Please UX team listen to this one, there is so much connection that is lost with the changes you made to this feature

[jrham]

I agree with the importance of listening privacy and believe it should be set to private automatically. That being said, it should be much easier and more transparent to toggle your sharing activity on and off AND to find an easier way to toggle on private listening sessions.

[dreαmlαnd]

it’s so sad and heartbreaking and annoying how this is being handled and how spotify are no longer listening or engaging or being helpful