Spotify to suspend political ads in 2020
Music streaming service Spotify has said it will pause selling political advertising in early 2020.
The world’s most popular music subscription service, which according to latest figures has 141m users listen to its ad-supported platform, said the pause would include its original and exclusive podcasts.
It comes as campaigns for the presidential election set for November 2020 heat up.
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Platforms such as Facebook and Google have come under increasing pressure to police the spread of misinformation on platforms and stop accepting political ads with misleading claims.
Twitter made the move to ban political ads in October, while last month Google said it would stop allowing advertisers to target election ads by using data such as public voter records and general election affiliations.
“At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content,” a Spotify spokeswoman said.
“We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.”
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Spotify only accepted political advertising in the United States but declined to disclose how much money it made from those ads.
The new policy will cover political groups including candidates for office, elected officials, political parties, political action committees and content that advocates for or against those entities.
The move does not apply to advertisements in third-party content.