Collaborative playlists abused by (supposedly) bot accounts

[Bengiamin]

Plan Premium

Country Switzerland, US, ... playlist is shared.

Device All

My Question or Issue

Some friends and I have a collaborative playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6XwnRIsAo2Z0Gw3egYlJti?si=6a8c9cdb6c104920). It seems to have been invaded by two users that we don't know. (Emma and Diamond: https://open.spotify.com/user/31tnbnmz4hycseycehaoulq54x7i?si=e1a736148cdd4b76 and https://open.spotify.com/user/31vo672bdshmagz5jzqwnbblsmx4?si=4b8b61a9848244b4 which look like fake accounts by their name and picture) and these users added a bunch of songs almost exclusively from these two artists: https://open.spotify.com/artist/68mk8GNhUjTLMw72RCBIvV?si=TZilvyOYSwm3CfyY-zhxqg and https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Vy5af5sYjq3b0IbAAUdiT?si=SrNaNJJKQBqoo_aqmB9Pug

 

It looks like someone is using bots accounts and abusing a public playlist to make people listen to their music more. Anyone else had the same experience? What would be the course of action?

I guess we can make playlists private but it makes it hard to share with friends. Aren't the collaborative playlists only accessible by those who had access to the link for collaboration access? For the owner to be able to control who edits collaborative playlists should be implemented. See issue: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Playlists-Limit-Editing-Access-in-Collaborative-Playlist...

Thank you for your help!

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Bengiamin,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and for the detailed post.

We're sorry to hear that you're experiencing this.

At the moment it's not possible to pick who'd you like to share the Collaborative playlist with. However, there's an idea - [Playlists] Only selected Playlist Authors for Collaborative Playlist. We suggest that you head over to the idea and leave a +VOTE and Subscribe to the idea for any updates regarding this.

Note: A Not Right Now status comes after the idea has reached the correct teams and for transparency we've put that status. It's not impossible to get it in the future, but we cannot make any promises.

We hope that the information above was helpful.

Let us know if we can help you with anything else.

Take care!

[niklas_hiddenge]

I've just noticed the same thing with one of my playlists. Upon further investigation, I've seen another collaborative playlist where this is the case. 'Pesukone' also appears as artist multiple times.

[Jeremy]

Hey @niklas_hiddenge,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

In this case we suggest that you follow the steps regarding the idea that's been provided in this thread.

If you have any further questions the Community is always one reply away 🙂

Cheers!

[Bengiamin]

Hey @Jeremy, 

Thank you for your response. I've seen both ideas co-authoring (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Playlists-Only-selected-Playlist-Authors-for-Collaborati...) and limiting access to collaborative playlist (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Playlists-Limit-Editing-Access-in-Collaborative-Playlist...) I believe the second one is very important, especially to prevent abuse and give a better control to users over their own playlists. As part of the Spotify product team, I would be worried that certain functionalities would be abused and I hope that this idea will be considered.

I believe it might be good to keep this thread open and receive other testimony? Especially if there are again abuse including songs from the same artists.

[lokonji]

I have the exact same issue, which I've described also in this similar thread:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Spamming-Collaborative-Playlists/m-p/5341266/high...

I'm completely fed up of having to remove the songs, which come every week or so, and it's also kindof alarming to know that anyone could find this playlist, which is supposedly unlisted, and if they wanted to they could remove songs instead

[RandysCookbook]

I have dealt with this issue a few times over the last couple of weeks as well. Very annoying

[KS46]

Hi - I also had to delete 30 tracks added to a collaborative playlist by a user named "Molly" (I reported them using the Report tool so your support staff can figure out their User ID from my report). "Pseukone" was one of the bands that appeared many times. It's obvious that those bands are paying for shill accounts to add their songs to playlists to drive up their own revenue. This is unacceptable, you need to fix this Spotify! May I suggest one of these solutions: (a) limiting which users can add to a playlist, (b) requiring approval from the playlist owner to accept songs from anyone, or (c) having a PIN code on playlists or some other code to prevent randos from abusing collaborative lists.