Drug Sites Hijacked Spotify’s Search Ranking Through Fake Podcasts
For the past year, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of thousands of podcasts that illegal online pharmacies. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie
For the past year, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of thousands of podcasts that illegal online pharmacies. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, faults the company for acting only after news outlets exposed the content and her office spent nearly a year pressing for answers. None of what it removed was sent to law enforcement, the report says. Spotify reportedly removed more than 57,000 podcast episodes and 3,000 shows, and took enforcement action against 3,500 accounts, all pushing links to illegal online pharmacies opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants for sale without a prescription. Nevertheless, the report frames the cleanup as a moderation failure. The report leans on one comparison in particular: Spotify acted against more than 3,500 accounts for drug content in 2025 but fewer than 100 the year before. The committee presents the jump as evidence the company moved only after it came under scrutiny.
Spotify offered a different explanation: that its older counts are incomplete because, as it says in the report, it changed the way it tracks removals last year. A handful of the offending podcasts did find an audience. Of the five that drew more than 100 plays, two together pulled around 13,000 streams and walked listeners through buying modafinil, a wakefulness drug, by sending bitcoin. Another, with 125 plays, linked to sites posing as pharmacy marketplaces for cancer and HIV medications. Those were the exceptions, but they pointed to working ways to pay and order. The numbers are alarming, and the stakes are real, Hassan says: Counterfeit pills bought online are frequently cut with fentanyl, and teenagers are among the most exposed. “In the age of AI, all online platforms need to deploy sophisticated efforts to continually identify and take down illegal content,” Hassan tells WIRED. “Failure to swiftly detect and remove dangerous content and also report it to law enforcement can lead to harrowing consequences—whether that’s a teenager who buys drugs online that could be laced with deadly fentanyl or a senior who falls for a scam that wipes out their retirement savings.” Asked about its approach to AI podcasts, Spotify spokesperson Laura Batey says the company “has a long history of working with law enforcement when content violates the law.” She did not say whether Spotify makes proactive referrals to the Drug Enforcement Agency, or how often.
Batey said Spotify is still looking into WIRED’s question about whether it tracks clicks on those links. Spotify told the committee that its practice is to alert authorities only when it identifies a credible threat of serious harm: an imminent risk to someone's life or safety. The podcasts, which it had classified as a search-optimization scheme rather than evidence of actual drug sales, never met that bar, the company said. While Spotify did not say whether it reports illegal drug activity to the DEA, the report says the company's competitors answer that question directly: Snap regularly makes proactive referrals to the agency, and Meta says it cooperates with law enforcement to combat drug sales. Spotify's position, according to the report, is that, as a licensed-content streaming service, its obligations differ from those of a social network. At least one of the removed podcasts pointed somewhere law enforcement was already looking.
The BriefWire