Spotify is Protecting Creators (Good). It Ought to Protect Users, Too.
Let’s start with the good stuff.
On May 19, Spotify announced that it would begin adding a light green “verified” badge to podcasts, to identify the “official presence[s] of a creator, publisher, or brand.” The media giant has also committed to removing podcasts that do unauthorized AI voice cloning or otherwise impersonate creators without permission.
These changes, an extension of a similar badge Spotify already launched for musicians, are welcome news for podcasters. Podcasting is harder to moderate than music, but Spotify can and should do more.
The New Rules
According to the May 19 blog post, here’s what will qualify a show as verified in Spotify’s ecosystem:
- "Sustained listener activity, with consistent audience engagement over time
- Good standing with Spotify’s platform policies, ensuring content complies with our rules
- (and) Verified audience authenticity, including safeguards against fraudulent or bot-driven listenership"
This is a good start, but it left me with a few concerns.
First, we’ve seen verified badges get corrupted before. And second, these rules don’t give users (that is, podcast listeners and viewers) nearly enough information.
Twitter’s Cautionary Tale
On Twitter, a blue Verified badge used to mean that an account was “authentic, notable, and active.” In addition to helping your tweets stand out in the timeline, a badge carried social status; in theory, at least, you were important enough that someone might want to rip you off.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 (later renaming it X), the badge became a paid product. Users could pay $8 a month or $84 a year for a Twitter Blue subscription to get a blue checkmark. And starting in April 2023, only paying users could keep their badges — no authenticity required.
Almost immediately after the policy change, we saw why this was a terrible idea. Trolls and pranksters took advantage of what longtime users “knew” the blue check meant and used that credibility to spread false information.
A 2023 analysis by the rating system NewsGuard identified 25 “superspreaders” of misinformation, who had both 50,000+ followers and a blue check. These accounts’ tweets received 27 million views in just one week.
How Spotify Can Be Better
Spotify can learn from Twitter’s mistakes and future-proof itself against corruption.
For their part, creators on Spotify should extract a public commitment from Spotify that the verified badge will never be a paid product.
Their audiences need to be protected, too, against harms that are unique to podcasting.
For example, what happens when a show spreads a type of false information that is not forbidden by Spotify’s platform rules? What if a show gets verified and then starts inciting violence or harassment? Who intervenes, and when?
The presence of a “verified” badge may lend legitimacy to bad actors. But the solution doesn’t have to be “no badges” — instead, these “verified” badges can be a first step toward a healthier media ecosystem.
A Few Ideas for Spotify
Building on the idea of a “verified” badge, what else could Spotify do for its users? Here are a few ideas:
- Partner with nonpartisan media watchdogs to label shows that are known spreaders of misinformation
- Identify whether and how shows use AI, even for things like show art or ad reads
- Clearly indicate the length of time a show has been active & verified, to discourage bad actors from capitalizing on news events
- Flag individual episodes where claims have been contested by a credible third party
- Encourage podcasts to cite their sources in the description/show notes by labeling the ones that do
- Tell users when a show is independently produced, from a major media organization, or affiliated with a corporation/government
Could all of these fit neatly into a little green checkmark? Probably not.
But if Spotify is really committed to “a more trusted podcast experience” for everyone, it should think about the power of a “verified” tag and what that word really means.
Personally, I would love to be able to search Spotify for podcasts and filter the results by all these variables: For example, show me independent history podcasts that have been active for at least three months and cite their sources; or, Show me politics podcasts from media organizations that are not known spreaders of misinformation.
“The concept of authenticity in podcasting is complex and quickly evolving, and we’ll continue to develop our approach over time,” the May 19 blog post reads.
Let’s trust, but verify, that Spotify honors that goal.
