The past a year, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of thousands of podcasts promoting illegal online pharmacies. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, a member of the Joint Economic Committee, faulted the company for acting only after news outlets disclosed the content and her office spent nearly a year pressing for answers.
None of the removals were sent to law enforcement, the report said.
Spotify reportedly removed more than 57,000 podcast episodes and 3,000 shows, and took enforcement action against 3,500 accounts, all of which linked to illegal online pharmacies that marketed opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants over the counter. However, the report frames the cleanup as a failure of measurement.
The report relies on one comparison in particular: Spotify acts against more than 3,500 accounts of drug content in 2025 but less than 100 last year. The committee presents this jump as evidence that the company only moved after it was scrutinized. Spotify offered a different explanation: that its old statistics are incomplete because, as it says in the report, it changed the way it tracks downloads last year.
A number of offensive podcasts have found an audience. Of the five who drew more than 100 performances, the two together drew 13,000 streams and took listeners by buying modafinil, a wake-up drug, by sending bitcoin. Another, with 125 games, linked to sites that market pharmaceuticals for cancer and HIV drugs. It was out of the question, but they pointed out the working methods of payment and ordering.
The numbers are scary, and the stakes are real, Hassan says: Counterfeit pills bought online are often laced with fentanyl, and teenagers are among those most exposed.
“In the age of AI, all online platforms need to implement sophisticated efforts to constantly identify and take down illegal content,” Hassan tells WIRED. “Failure to quickly detect and remove harmful content and report it to law enforcement can lead to dire consequences—whether it’s a teenager buying drugs online that could be laced with deadly fentanyl or an elderly person falling for a scam that wipes out their retirement savings.”
Asked about how it deals with AI podcasts, Spotify spokeswoman Laura Batey says the company “has a long history of working with law enforcement when content violates the law.” He did not say whether Spotify makes 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 their practice is to alert authorities only when they identify a credible threat of serious harm: an imminent risk to a person’s life or safety. The podcasts, which it had classified as a search engine optimization program rather than evidence of drug sales, never met that bar, the company said.
While Spotify hasn’t said whether it reports illegal drug use to the DEA, the report says the company’s competitors are answering that question directly: Snap often makes referrals to the agency, and Meta says it cooperates with law enforcement to combat drug trafficking. Spotify’s position, according to the report, is that, as a licensed content streaming service, its obligations are different from those of a social network.
At least one of the deleted podcasts pointed to somewhere law enforcement was already looking. The show is a committee flagged in July 2025—filed under a string of nonsense letters and headlined advertising “licensed online retailer”—linked to a site called Opioidstores.com. That site was later seized by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, working with the DEA, FDA, and other agencies. Spotify removed the podcast but, for its own account, did not report anything.
