Spotify Launches New Comments Feature To Tackle Longstanding Moderation Issues

This week, Spotify has launched a new feature allowing comments on podcasts to address ongoing moderation challenges. This move comes as many online platforms have struggled with comments on their platforms becoming hubs for hate speech and polarization over time.

To combat this problem, Spotify has implemented creator-driven moderation, allowing unrestricted comment publication. Through this new feature, the platform is putting the responsibility on creators to sift through comments and choose what to post. Critics of this method argue it could stifle free speech, while others worry it will overwhelm podcasters with the task of policing offensive remarks. However, it’s still early days. Spotify sees this as an initial attempt to tackle the challenge of moderation.

Spotify’s vice president of podcast product, Maya Prohovnik, said, “For the launch experience, we over-indexed on giving creators more control.”

Self-moderation pushes a big responsibility on podcasters, who now have to manage comments directly within Spotify, eliminating the need for separate platforms like X or Facebook.

Lena Frischlich, a media psychologist at the University of Southern Denmark, is skeptical about the effectiveness of this approach. She highlights the prevalent issue of podcasters receiving significant volumes of negative correspondence, including death threats, regardless of their content stance.

She said, “Podcasts are a space where societal debates happen, [which] can attract a lot of backlash.” She added, “It can be very personal and it can be very hurtful. For the targets of these types of mass harassment, it can lead to negative emotions [and] traumatic experiences.”

The danger of unmoderated hostility is made significantly worse by the ability to remain completely anonymous. While Spotify usernames exist, they often don’t include full names or identifiable information. Kevin Wallsten, a political science professor at California State University Long Beach, believes this anonymity raises the opportunity for angry and hateful comments to be expressed.

He said, “If Spotify is having the comments be anonymous, you can anticipate that they will be of a different character than if you can trace them back to a particular person. That’s one of the major determinants of how low the quality of discourse is.”