One mom’s horrifying warning! Inside sick ‘porn grooming community’ lurking on Spotify
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
MANCHESTER, UK: In a shocking revelation by a mother, her 11-year-old daughter was sexually targeted on Spotify. Rachel, which is not her real name, shared that the minor was tricked into uploading her explicit photos on the music streaming platform for months before she found out. The alleged ‘secret porn community’ told the girl to share multiple pictures of herself with users before her account was deleted. This incident brings to the focus that online predators will go to any length to exploit children, using any app which has a scope.
Rachel who’s a teacher warns other parents to keep an eye on their children and all the content they can access online. The mother-of-two keeps strict control over what online platforms her daughters, aged eight and eleven, have access to. She has not allowed her kids to create Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok profiles, whereas the only app her older daughter has access to is Spotify. The reason behind allowing an adult Spotify account was so she could listen to her podcasts before bed, that too only on her Alexa, out loud.
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The mother says, “I am a teacher so I'm probably a bit stricter than other parents but I just wanted to make sure they are safe. They both have iPads but I can control their screen time and what apps they use through my phone.” She continues, “The only app my eldest daughter was able to use after 8 pm was Spotify because she's always fallen asleep to spoken word. She likes to listen to podcasts before she goes to sleep which she plays out loud on the Alexa so I can hear exactly what she's listening to.”
Spotify spokesperson addressed the ‘sickening’ development on their music platform, “Spotify takes the safety of minors on our platform extremely seriously, and we do not allow content that promotes, solicits, or facilitates child sexual abuse or exploitation. We have processes and technology in place that allow us to detect and remove any such exploitative material. In this case, we found the imagery in question, terminated the user, and removed the content.”
Rachel told, “She has access to Spotify adults because of the podcasts she listens to but I didn't think that would be an issue because it's just a streaming platform.” It was her father who first discovered what her daughter was subjected to on the platform when she got locked out of her Spotify account soon after Christmas, reports DailyMail.
Notably, the Manchester Evening News, while covering the story, found out that on searching words like nudes and porn on Spotify, various profiles and playlists with explicit pictures of female body parts showed up.