A petition demanding that Spotify remove courses published on its platform by controversial creator Andrew Tate has passed 25,000 signatures.
Campaigners identified three editions of a podcast fronted by Tate which “actively teach men how to manipulate, control and profit from the exploitation of women”. Two editions have already been removed but a third – called ‘Andrew Tate PHD (Pimping Hoes Degree)’ – is still available.
Launching her petition at the end of last month, campaigner Renee Chopping wrote, “Spotify is cashing in on the exploitation of women and girls” by “hosting courses by misogynist influencer and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate”.
Referencing just some of the controversies surrounding Tate, she added, “Despite multiple allegations of rape, sex trafficking and abuse – including trafficking of minors – Spotify continues to give Tate a megaphone”.
His courses “show men how to recruit and exploit women for pornography, under the guise of ‘business advice’”. And with Tate using Spotify’s podcaster tools to sell subscriptions, “Spotify directly profits from these lessons in predation”.
The ‘Pimping Hoes Degree’ content includes Tate expounding his views on women, promoting psychological manipulation and emotional control, advocating for power imbalances in relationships and using deception to achieve sexual goals, and generally describes a model that champions coercive control and the exploitation of women.
Tate says that “women like to be led, they don’t like to be asked”, and tells listeners, “if you don’t have a webcam company you need to look into it, because as soon as you have a couple of girls in love with you, it’s the fucking easiest money in the world”.
He also describes how he pressured one woman to move to the UK to be with him, and another British woman to then join them, so that they could work for his webcam business, adding “I was making loads of money”.
Chopping’s campaign seems to have had some positive impact. In an update earlier today, she urged signatories to her petition to also contact Spotify directly, stating, “Spotify has already removed two of Andrew Tate’s courses that teach men how to exploit women. Now, just one course remains. Spotify has already proven they’ll respond to pressure – let’s make sure they take this last step”.
Although Spotify now offers formal educational courses within its app in some markets, Tate’s instructional content was published as a podcast, but with the somewhat confusing name of ‘Andrew Tate Courses’.
The ‘Pimping Hoes Degree’ content was actually published in October 2023. It has possibly come to wider attention now because Tate himself has been back in the news of late, after he and his brother were able to leave Romania, where they were charged with rape and human trafficking in 2023.
The Financial Times has reported that the Donald Trump administration asked the Romanian government to return the brothers’ passports, with Trump’s envoy, Richard Grennell, telling the FT, “I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets”.
The fact Spotify has been pushing its educational credentials also possibly gives content like this more credibility, even though in this particular example it is third party content available in a different section of the Spotify app.
Spotify giving any legitimacy to Tate’s content, even inadvertently, is not a good look and will concern many in the music community. The streaming service was also recently in the news for hosting a brunch attended by rightwing podcasters as part of celebrations around Trump’s inauguration in Washington DC, having already donated $150,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Podcast content has caused controversy for Spotify before, of course, in particular racist language and the promotion of COVID conspiracy theories on the Joe Rogan Experience, which led to some artists pulling their music off the platform in protest in 2022, most notably Neil Young.
Rogan’s podcast was a Spotify exclusive at the time, which meant the platform was more closely connected to the offending content than when it is simply distributing third party podcasts, as with Tate’s output.
Nevertheless, in the wake of the Rogan controversy, Spotify launched a Safety Advisory Council to advise on how it deals with harmful content pushed onto its platform. That Council, it said at the time, would help Spotify “evolve its policies and products in a safe way while making sure we respect creator expression”.
Spotify also acquired ‘platform safety’ tool Kinzen in 2022, saying that the acquisition brought “machine learning and human expertise… to analyse potential harmful content and hate speech in multiple languages and countries”. Spotify’s Global Head Of Public Affairs, Dustee Jenkins, added that the deal would expand Spotify’s “approach to platform safety, and underscores how seriously we take our commitment to creating a safe and enjoyable experience for creators and users”.
The fact Tate’s three courses slipped through the net suggests the streaming service still has work to do to properly tackle harmful content on its platform, even if some social media companies are in the process of cutting back their harmful content filtering in a bid to win favour with Trump and his administration.
As Chopping’s petition has gained momentum, some music fans have discussed online whether they should cancel their Spotify subscriptions in protest. That said, if people switch to any alternative music service that also distributes podcasts, it too is likely carrying programmes from Tate, even if it has dealt with and removed particularly harmful content like that identified in the petition.
Following the Rogan controversy in 2022, there was speculation that there might be a flood of subscriber cancellations at Spotify, but in the end it had a nominal impact on subscriber numbers. Given the size of Spotify today, even if a million people did cancel their subscriptions in protest, that would be a small percentage of its total subscriber base.
That’s one of the reasons why, in Europe, there has been support for laws that force large digital platforms to deal with harmful content. Though in the US there have also been calls for laws to restrict platforms from implementing voluntary measures to combat such content on free speech grounds, and that view is likely to be more prevalent while Trump is in the White House.
Chopping’s petition explained in more detail the damage done by the likes of Tate and the courses she identified. “As a trauma counsellor supporting survivors of sex trafficking and working closely with young people in Australian schools, I’ve seen firsthand how content like this fuels global harm”, she wrote.
“In classrooms, I’ve sat with young boys who admire influencers like Andrew Tate, believing that dominance, aggression and entitlement define success and masculinity”, she went on.
“I’ve also listened to young girls express the daily impact of these toxic ideals – how they feel pressured to meet unrealistic beauty standards, tolerate degradation and rape threats, and navigate a world where they are seen as objects rather than equals”.
“Tate recruits women under the pretence of a romantic relationship”, she also explained, “manipulating victims into trusting him, only to later force or coerce them into sexual exploitation under the guise of love and care”.
“I’ve counselled survivors – some trafficked as young as nine – who have endured repeated abuse at the hands of men who used the same tactics Tate brags about”, she said. “It takes years, if not a lifetime, of rehabilitative care to undo the damage, yet Tate boasts about profiting from their pain. And Spotify is helping him cash in”.