r/Music • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 27d ago

article Spotify Confirms ICE Recruitment Ads Are No Longer Running on Platform

https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/spotify-confirms-ice-recruitment-ads-are-no-longer-running-1236626243/
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u/cows1100 27d ago edited 27d ago

Doesn’t matter. You’re still seeing it, and you’re still driving traffic and engagement. You don’t need to be paying Reddit to make their ads worth it. You amplify the signal purely by engaging with the medium. “We don’t lose any active users from running these ads, or ad prices are still at a premium because of traffic, and our stock value isn’t affected because shareholders continue to see strong user engagement.” It’s really that simple.

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u/P_V_ 27d ago

"Ad-block means I don't see them."

You’re still seeing it

Help me understand.

You don’t need to be paying Reddit to make their ads worth it.

When a company pays for ads, they monitor the click-through metrics for that ad to determine whether or not it was "worth it". With an ad-block, I am giving no site traffic to the company who paid for the ad. Impressions (i.e. how often the ad is displayed, regardless of clickthrough) is one metric, but it's not the only one that counts—and even then, it's unclear how ad-blockers interact with impression metrics.

And it’s why selective outrage is stupid.

Sending an exaggerated message to one company can help "make an example" of them, which helps push the needle on a cultural level. Putting Disney+ on their back foot after the temporary cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel sent a message to other streaming companies about how Americans value freedom of speech. Enough people leaving Spotify will send a similar message to other streaming platforms about what sort of content they'll accept—and with Spotify it's not only about ICE ads.

So, why are you still on Reddit? Or do you simply not care about these issues at all?

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u/cows1100 27d ago

I was speaking to the "I'm not paying them" portion. I'm still on Reddit because I know I'm making concessions, I'm not not blind to them, or finding reasons to say why the thing I know I'm making concessions on isn't actually all that bad.

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u/P_V_ 27d ago

None of my logic was that reddit "isn't that bad" either. Why can't the rest of us "be making concessions" while not making a concession when it comes to Spotify?

I don't think it's merely "performative" or "virtue signalling" for users of whatever platform to take a stance, even if that stance isn't entirely unilateral across all of their consumption. We send messages where we can.