Pharmaceutical Sites Steal Spotify Search Through Fake Podcasts

The past year, Spotify he has been quietly cleaning tens of thousands podcasts who advertises illegal online sales. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, a member of the Joint Economic Committee, faulting the company for taking action after the newspapers revealed what happened and her office spent nearly a year seeking answers.

Nothing removed was sent to law enforcement, the report said.

Spotify says it has removed more than 57,000 podcasts and 3,000 shows, and taken action against 3,500 accounts, all of which were pushing links to buy opioids, benzodiazepines, and sales incentives without registration. However, the report characterizes the cleanup as a potential failure.

The report leans on one estimate in particular: Spotify acted against more than 3,500 drug-related accounts in 2025 but less than 100 the year before. The committee presents the jump as evidence that the company moved after the review. Spotify gave a different explanation: that its previous figures are not enough because, as it says in the report, it changed the way it tracks deletions last year.

Several disappointing podcasts have found listeners. Of the five who filmed more than 100 shows, the two together drew 13,000 streams and walked the audience buying modafinil, a wake-up drug, by shipping. bitcoin. Another, with 125 games, is linked to what appears to be markets for cancer drugs and HIV drugs. This was different, but they pointed out the payment and ordering process.

The numbers are alarming, and the stakes are real, Hassan says: Fake pills bought online are often laced with fentanyl, and teenagers are among the most exposed.

“In the age of AI, all online platforms must do their best to identify and remove illegal content,” Hassan tells WIRED. “Failure to quickly identify and remove dangerous substances and report them to law enforcement can lead to serious problems—whether it’s a young person who buys drugs on the Internet with potentially lethal fentanyl or an elderly person who falls victim to a fraud that costs them their life savings.”

When asked about their AI-powered podcasts, Spotify spokeswoman Laura Batey said the company “has a long history of working with law enforcement when it violates the law.” He didn’t say whether or not Spotify makes a referral 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 policy is to alert authorities only when it detects a serious threat: an imminent threat to a person’s life or safety. The podcasts, which they pitched as a way to get optimization rather than evidence of actual product sales, never met the bar, the company said.

Although Spotify has not said whether it is reporting drugs to the DEA, the report says that its competitors have answered the question directly: Picture they send people to the organization quickly, and Trim It is said that it cooperates with the law enforcement authorities in order to combat drug trafficking. Spotify’s role, according to the report, is that, as a license-content gathering service, its role differs from social networks.

At least one of the podcasts that was deleted pointed somewhere that law enforcement was already looking. The show that the committee identified in July 2025-listed under the list of useless people and called announcing “licensed online seller”-linked to a website called Opioidstores.com. The area was later seized by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, working with the DEA, FDA, and other agencies. Spotify removed the podcast but, with its account, did not say anything.