Music streaming giant Spotify announced that it will stop airing political ads in the run-up to the 2020 election.
A spokesman for the company, which has more than 100 million subscribers, told CNN Business that the decision came because Spotify does not have the ability to “responsibly validate” the advertisements, although he didn’t rule out changes to that policy in the future.
“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. We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities,” the spokesman said.
The new policy is expected to go into effect early next year and will only affect customers in the United States, as it is the only market that sells political ads. Political ads that have been run on the platform in the past include ones from the Republican National Committee and from Bernie Sanders.
The policy change is one of many among major tech companies recently. In October, Twitter announced that it was banning political ads, and TikTok also said it does not allow political advertising on its app. Other companies such as Snapchat and Facebook still permit such ads.
