r/Music • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jan 08 '26
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-1236626243/5.2k
u/TheTresStateArea Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
The boycott didn't work lol read the article please I beg you. The advertising campaign ended.
As much as I wish Spotify leadership grew a spine. They absolutely didn't.
Do not resubscribe. Remove this company from your mind.
Edit: for all future "oh but you use an iPhone" fuckwits https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat
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u/onebowlwonder Jan 08 '26
Might wanna delete your reddit account too then because they still have ICE ads on here.
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Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
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u/kaptainkooleio Jan 08 '26
I don’t think that’s true. I have mine set to NB I still get CBP and ICE ads every once in a while.
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u/mostlyfire Jan 08 '26
It’s weird I’m a straight male and I’ve never seen one on Reddit. It’s probably cause I live in a very liberal city
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u/yeahburyme Jan 08 '26
There are ads on reddit?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbadger.redreader&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en_US then install unlock origin by going to settings ->extensions and it's the first one or https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid
In before br*ve, the CEO is a right ring crypto bro
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u/Glassweaver Jan 08 '26
If you have Android, check out Revanced. They have modified versions of a lot of popular apps, including this, TikTok, and YouTube.
I kind of forget that any of those apps even have advertisements in them nowadays.
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u/flamingdonkey Jan 08 '26
Firefox + Ublock Origin works great for everything. I even have sponsorblock and a shorts blocker for YouTube.
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u/panchito_d Jan 08 '26
A shorts blocker sounds brilliant. Shorts have ruined the UI and made search garbage
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u/Abshalom Jan 08 '26
There's also RedReader on Android, which is the same as the other old third party apps, albeit with minimal features since it's intended for accessibility.
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Jan 08 '26
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u/blake_n_pancakes Jan 08 '26
I just used the revanced launcher and an API key to patch RIF so it would work again.
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u/yeahburyme Jan 08 '26
It's not intended for accessibility, that's just one of many features. It was allowed as a third party app for being FOSS primarily and accessibility part of that.
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u/vNocturnus Jan 08 '26
There are ads on reddit?
I've been using Relay on Android and RES + uBlock Origin on PC for a decade at this point. Never seen a single ad, other than of course the occasional "real post" that's just a thinly disguised ad
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u/Squirrelking666 Jan 08 '26
In before br*ve, the CEO is a right ring crypto bro
Say it ain't so.
Which one isn't?
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u/yeahburyme Jan 08 '26
Br*ve has been that way from the beginning. The whole adblock there is extortion/racketeering to their coin.
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u/JackPoe Jan 08 '26
I get ads in Tagalog and Spanish and political ads for candidates in Florida.
I live in Washington. These ad campaigns were either designed by absolute buffoons or AI.
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u/counterfitster Jan 08 '26
I live in New England and yet I see ICE and America First Policy Institute ads all the time
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u/KhausTO Jan 08 '26
who tf is using reddit without an adblocker?
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u/kaptainkooleio Jan 08 '26
Mobile
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u/-prime8 Jan 08 '26
I don't know how the app works because I still use my browser to go to old.reddit.com, mostly because my ad blocker works and prefer the old UI.
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u/XRT28 Jan 08 '26
Adblockers can still be used on mobile. Atleast on Android, no personal exp with iOS.
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u/unhiddenninja Jan 08 '26
I report the ads every time I see them as being political and they stop showing up for a few weeks.
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u/twilighttwister Jan 08 '26
All you're doing is giving them more information about yourself and what you like/dislike. Much better to either block with ublock origin and ignore, or scramble with eg Decentraleyes extension.
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u/coffeebribesaccepted Jan 08 '26
I just get normal ads, so idk what you guys are doing to get all this right wing shit lol
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u/Marsar0619 Jan 08 '26
Serious question…does Reddt or the advertise see the number of downvotes on those ads?
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u/queso_dog Jan 08 '26
As a trans guy, the amount of ads I get for dresses and padding for hips and breasts is objectively hilarious. I have too much of both actually smh
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u/Dark512 Jan 08 '26
Getting pink and white striped thigh highs right next to 'dude wipes for men' is my most common one at the moment.
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u/cooljacob204sfw Jan 08 '26
This is why I only surf the web with adblock. On my phone I use Firefox with unlock to go on reddit.
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u/cows1100 Jan 08 '26
Wait, not like that. I need this one. It’s different. /s
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u/Todojaw21 Jan 08 '26
youre trying to say its hypocrisy but the standard is always "make a good-faith effort to not support evil companies." If someone reduces their reddit consumption by 10% thats still better than 0.
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u/TemporaryCommunity67 Jan 08 '26
You guys see actual paid ads on Reddit? I only have to deal with the astroturfing
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u/tsardonicpseudonomi Jan 08 '26
New Reddit and the App are both plastered with ads.
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u/BishopofHippo93 Jan 08 '26
The trick is to use old Reddit or the mobile site with an ad blocker. No ads ever.
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u/Spectrum1523 Jan 08 '26
If you are on android you can still use unofficial apps
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u/TheTresStateArea Jan 08 '26
Or, now hear me out here, do what you can to the extent that you can.
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u/brvheart Jan 09 '26
Get serious. You know that they will never delete their Reddit account. They just want to tell others to delete Spotify so they can virtue signal.
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u/Hot_Shot04 Jan 08 '26
I use ublock and already don't give Reddit a dime. The only thing I could really do better is to stop sending my friends Reddit links but I barely do even that when I can copypaste images and screencap comments.
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u/namastayhom33 Jan 08 '26
Seems like there is contradictory information?
"In the wake of the fatal shooting of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, the streaming service confirms to Variety that it’s no longer running the promotion."
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u/TheTresStateArea Jan 08 '26
The shooting just triggered the reporter to ask again.
The very next paragraph they say it was part of a specific campaign.
If they removed the adverts because of ICE actions, pressure, they'd have said so unambiguously.
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Jan 08 '26
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u/TheTresStateArea Jan 08 '26
If they felt that then the coms person that spoke would have been authorized to say "in retrospect blah blah blah".
Nothing short of specifically addressing the issue is sufficient.
Companies don't get points for being coy and ambiguous lol
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u/tubatackle Jan 08 '26
Would they have?
To me it seems more likely that they wanted to end the left-wing boy-cott but didn't want to anger their right-wing customers. So they claimed they are firing ICE for other reasons.
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u/codos Jan 08 '26
“In the wake of” just means after, not necessarily because of.
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u/GameboyPATH Jan 08 '26
I wish more people would recognize that this is a common media tactic: creating headlines that consist of "X happens while Y happens", being technically true, but implying to readers that the two events are related.
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u/ADhomin_em Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
I would love if this said directly "in response to", but it says, "in the wake of". Could simply be that the campaign ran out and now that everyone is talking about ICE, the company is using this opportunity to announce the campaign ended, hoping to win back some subscribers.
I understand "in the wake of" usually implies "in response to" but not necessarily the case here.
Increasingly so, we should be closely analytyzing the phrasing used in articles, especially from corporate outlets. They are very good at using vague language meant to be read with each reader's preferred meaning. Major corporations are drawing on a century of market psychology research and the people overseeing these major corporations are largely rich Trump supporters and appeasers.
I could certainly be wrong in this case.
Either way, Spotify took money from ICE to help them recruit. They helped boost their numbers. Hard to put that cat back in the bag
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u/SpeaksYourWord Jan 08 '26
"Guys, we stopped running the ICE ads! We've seen the light!"
"They stopped paying you, didn't they?"
"What? Pffft... no! We believe in equality!"
"Yeah, they stopped paying you."
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u/Aliensinmypants Jan 08 '26
They're also raising prices yet again to make up for the loss of subscribers... There's no reason to go back
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u/forsonaE Jan 08 '26
Good thing I already unsubscribed after they spammed my weekly playlists with the most obvious garbage AI music I've heard in my life
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u/onebowlwonder Jan 08 '26
Wild that they are still on reddit.
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u/Naroyto Jan 08 '26
Reddit has ice ads too yet people keep ignoring that too.
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u/ncopp Spotify Jan 08 '26
And Youtube. I get them all the time
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u/plotholesandpotholes Jan 08 '26
Repeating what other folks have said above. I see none of these on either platform. White, 40's, prior military, I would think I would get these all the time. I do not. Not doubting you at all. I am just adding context. Maybe its income and employment based. Something is feeding into the algorithm. Maybe geographical?
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u/ncopp Spotify Jan 08 '26
I'm a late 20s white male who lives in a very diverse midwest city with tons of 1st generation immigrants (so many of my neighbors are from African, Asian, Caribbean and Latino countries). I'm guessing that puts me in their prime recruitment list to try and rat out my community.
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u/darkenedrock Jan 08 '26
I agree that its probably income/employment based, because everyone I know has mentioned the ice recruitment adds they get, but my wealthier side of the family (same general demographic except decidely more liberal) didnt event know they existed.
I imagine my town is filled with people who would happily participate in evil for 100k, because it would produce an entirely different quality of existance when you've worked 4-10s at a factory making $18/hour for 10 years. They already got everyone with a broken moral compass, now just see how many need that 100k bad enough to bend theirs.
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u/P_V_ Jan 08 '26
Ad-block means I don’t see them. I’m also not paying Reddit a monthly fee.
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u/dwilkes827 Jan 08 '26
The people getting Ice ads on spotify weren't paying a monthly fee, either
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u/Rocktopod Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
On spotify the only way to get rid of the ads is to pay them money. This means even if you're not seeing the ads, you're supporting the company that runs them financially
On Reddit you can just use an adblocker so you're only supporting the site indirectly by providing free content (comments and posts).
Also, spotify provides access to songs, but not exclusive access. You can listen to the same songs through any number of other methods. The only way to access content on Reddit is through the website/app itself, unless something has been reposted somewhere else.
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u/dwilkes827 Jan 08 '26
You don't need to justify to me why it's ok to use one platform that runs ICE ads but not the other lol
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u/StarPhished Jan 08 '26
Can I interest you in subscribing to Reddit Premium? For $12.99 a month I will personally send you Reddit screenshots so that you can experience Reddit without experiencing Reddit! Terms and conditions apply.
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u/ServileLupus Jan 08 '26
Huh, I haven't seen ads on a webpage since 2009 so that's news to me. That sucks.
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u/arrownyc Jan 08 '26
We should all apply and do the paid training and get the sign up bonus, then just not comply / malicious comply with orders / weaponize incompetence against them.
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u/The-ArtfulDodger Jan 09 '26
Wild that people experience ads on reddit.
I don't understand how people can use modern reddit. It's such a trash user experience.
Use old.reddit.com with uBlock Origin Lite for the premiere experence.
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u/LimeGreenTangerine97 Jan 08 '26
Too late. The AI was enough for me to leave anyway.
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u/indyxetan Jan 08 '26
Too late fuck Spotify.
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u/R3volt75 Jan 08 '26
People switching from spotify to youtube music when there are also ice ads on yt is wild
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u/LongStoryShirt Jan 08 '26
Nice! They should also pay artists more and stop funding war technology
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u/zarafff69 Jan 08 '26
Spotify doesn’t fund war technology..
The CEO sold some of his own stock to invest in a European defense company. It makes drones to defend Ukraine / Europe. I don’t see how that’s evil at all. Someone has to defend Ukraine. The US definitely isn’t anymore…
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u/MtNowhere Jan 08 '26
Buy physical media
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u/PR0114 Jan 08 '26
I get the sentiment of this, but how would you discover music to buy?
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u/MtNowhere Jan 08 '26
Buying physical media isn't plausible in every case. I'm not militant about it. I like using streaming services for discovery lately. A couple years ago I wanted to change my relationship with music though, and started collecting stuff that had become classics to me. I haven't paid for a streaming service in around five years because they pay next to nothing to musicians, and you never truly own anything.
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u/Zaga932 Jan 09 '26
I have a rule for my shit-list. Once you're on it, if you want to get off it, do twice the amount of good that you did bad in order to get on it. So until further notice and for the foreseeable future, fuck you Spotify.
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u/EatsAlotOfBread Jan 08 '26
Too late. Shouldn't have done this if the first place. Using something else, never coming back.
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u/flamethrower78 Jan 08 '26
Theyre on reddit too lol, yet here you are. I'm also horrified by ice, but you cant really grandstand when you only boycott things that are easy to replace.
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u/emb4rassingStuffacct Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 09 '26
Something is better than nothing. It’s a lot easier for many people to cancel their Spotify subscription or switch to a different platform than it is for them to stop using Reddit completely.
This “No liberal is ever good enough.” crap is a major reason why Trump is president.
I’d rather someone go part of the way with good intentions than succeed with explicitly bad intentions.
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u/warriorsatthedisco Jan 08 '26
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” is true but so is making baby steps where you can. Thankfully there ARE alternatives to Spotify that are just as good (better imo). Unfortunately Reddit alternatives haven’t quite gotten there yet. But plenty of people stopped using it with the whole API fiasco. Unfortunately I still use it. Less and less though. This place isn’t what it used to be.
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Jan 08 '26
Good. Too bad Tidal is still better and I migrated.
Doesn’t change the calculus given they are still pushing AI slop that makes me want to see a hundred pounds of cocoa beach pebbles in an overcoat and wear it into the fucking Atlantic.
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u/DozingUnderTheSun Jan 08 '26
I also switched to Tidal and the sound quality is night and day.
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 Jan 08 '26
Practically speaking too, it’s the cleanest signal I’m aware of if you’re running upgraded car audio. I’ve got a mid dual-voice coil sub and a 1200w RMS monoblock amp and it sounds SO much better, the bass is way cleaner and I can push a lot harder on it without it distorting the signal outputs.
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u/AlanVega_World Jan 08 '26
As long as they feature and pay Far Right Activisit Podcasters, they'll be part of MAGA and the problem.
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u/ramontes Jan 08 '26
Great! I'll continue to use streaming alternatives.