Music streaming platform Spotify also presses pause button on political ads after Twitter.

Spotify Technology SA follows suit after Twitter & Google in pausing political ads on its streaming platform. They announced it last year in December that they will be stopping political ads on their music streaming platform keeping in mind the 2020 presidential elections in the US. The report was reported by Ad Age & will be applied to Spotify's ad-supported service & its original & exclusive podcasts.

This change has been announced only for the US as Spotify has never sold political ads in any other countries.

For any tech company it becomes hard to handle political campaigns when the presidential elections come near & hence Twitter last year in November banned political ads & the tech giant’s CEO Jack Dorsey stated that they would be halting political advertising all over the globe. At the same time they also said that they will allow few “caused-based” ads for some economic, environmental or social issues.

Google soon came behind Twitter for the prohibition of certain types of targeted campaign ads, they also restricted advertisers to target people based on general categories like age, gender & postal code.

Facebook decided to continue running political ads. Some activists & Democratic presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders & Senators Elizabeth Warren condemned Facebook for making the ads run without fact-checking them.

Spotify also clarified that they are halting the ads only for a temporary period & will resume them soon on their platform. They also admitted that they are halting the ads on their platform because the ads are not sufficiently validated & fact-checked.

Speaking on the same the company said, “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,” & also added, “We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.”