Spotify began allowing listeners to comment on podcast episodes in the app last July, and now the company is rolling out a new set of controls to help podcasters manage and moderate comments.
When comments first launched, podcasters had to first review and post comments. The platform now adds a configurable auto-moderation tool that lets you filter out sensitive or inappropriate comments for moderation and publish the rest.
When set to the “Standard” level, Spotify’s new tool will stop posting comments it detects as potentially sensitive or inappropriate and instead redirect them to the podcaster for review. If set to “High”, the tool will hold all comments until approved, while if set to “Low” it will automatically publish all comments except those that violate Spotify rules.
Spotify noted that even if a creator posts sensitive comments or sets the automatic moderation level to ‘low’, sensitive comments will still be hidden and users will have to tap ‘Show all comments’ to see them.
Creators can also add words, phrases, or emojis to their blocklist to automatically move comments containing them to the moderation queue.
Creators can also turn off comments on episodes as they see fit.
The company said it plans to add additional language support for this feature.
“For now, all non-English comments must continue to be reviewed and approved by Spotify for Podcasters as we continue to test and develop our auto-detection system to support more languages, but we plan to expand to more languages soon. “, the company said in a blog post.
Spotify said that since launching its comments feature in July, users have posted 2.5 million comments across 650,000 episodes, with about 44% of the comments posted receiving a like or response from the show’s creator.
Spotify has been working to make podcasts more engaging for some time, adding support for Q&A, polls, and video podcasts. Earlier this year, the company revealed that people who use these features to engage with podcasts are four times more likely to listen to the show again within 30 days.
