That is true. There are no ICE ads currently running on Spotify. But that does not mean Spotify has changed its position.
In the above statement, the “U.S. government recruitment campaign” in question is spoken of in the past tense, and that is very much purposeful: after all, that specific campaign has been concluded by the government. That is the sole reason, it seems, that calls for listeners to join the ranks of ICE are no longer appearing on Spotify. ICE has stopped paying the streaming service to continue hosting ads—for now, at least.
Representatives from Spotify have hammered home the fact that ads have stopped showing up (as of a mere eight days ago), but when Paste pressed on the status of the relationship between the company and ICE, they repeatedly declined to answer.
When asked to confirm or deny a split from the government agency that shot Nicole Renee Good in Minneapolis just yesterday, one representative replied, frustrated, “All I can tell you is that the campaign on Spotify ended at the end of last year.” (The language is worth noting: the campaign passively ended; it was not actively terminated.)
They also elaborated slightly, telling Paste: “I can’t speculate on hypothetical future campaigns but, as is the case with all major platforms, any future ads need to adhere to the company’s policies.” Considering Spotify declared that “the content [of the ICE campaign] does not violate our advertising policies” back in October, the representative’s comments heavily imply that the streaming service would have no qualms whatsoever about hosting another identical campaign in the future.
In other words, Spotify’s stance has not meaningfully shifted in the slightest. The ads are gone only because the money is, and the company remains careful not to say what it will not do. By declining to rule out future ICE campaigns—by insisting, even now, on the sufficiency of a policy it has already used to justify months of recruitment ads for an agency that killed a U.S. citizen 24 hours ago—Spotify is making clear that this is not a reckoning but a pause. The door is being purposefully left open for the same arrangement to resume the moment it once again proves profitable.
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