The latest internet villain just reared its head and it isn't a corporate mega-billionaire, wayward politician, or Twitter troll, but rather an unassuming Spotify bot named Ashley.
Multiple users have complained that their public, collaborative playlists — designed to allow Spotify users and their friends to curate songs in real time together — have been commandeered by bots masquerading as normal users, primarily one account simply named "Ashley."
The invasive habits, and general vibe sabotaging, of Ashley and other bots like have turned users into bonafide detectives, including TikTokker and musician @jw__francis. Francis first pointed out the bot in a video about funny playlists that feature his own music, including one touched by the infamous Ashley.
The relatable responses to that TikTok inspired him to dig further, posting a video highlighting the many victims of Ashley and other similarly-disguised bots, including an "Emma" and an "Elsie." It seems the users hope to ward off the advances of the bots by adding messages in the titles of their playlists, like one titled "STOP FUCKING ADDING SONGS ASHLEY LITERALLY WHO TF ARE U LEAVE."
The comments on the latest video appear to be filled with Ashley's victims, as well. "Ashley is a literal virus I got her from a work playlist that got her from a coworker and so on, it's wild," replied user @hey_bro_wheres_my_sheep.
"this happened to my group playlist & we kept removing the songs & THEY DELETED EVERY SONG OUT OF OUR 19+ hour playlist i felt so violated," commented user @bbnaluu.
"Another reason to drop Spotify, this is such an invasion of privacy," wrote @acidrefluxburps.
In the TikTok, Francis theorizes that these bots are promotional accounts created to boost the listening stats of a single artist's music by adding them to as many public playlists as possible — it's a strategy that's been used by streaming artists and fandoms before. Francis discovered that the Ashley bot was exclusively engaging with and adding the music of one Spotify account called Pesukone. According to Pesukone's Instagram, the account is a Finnish collective devoted to highlighting unknown musicians (including bots, too, I guess?).
Some of the TikTok's commenters noticed other bots promoting single artists, like user @middleghostie. "An anni did this to me!! The artist isn't that bad tho tbh," they wrote. Other commenters dropped names include a Jeni, an Olivia, Claudia, Julia, and Lily — at least a dozen ghost accounts ruining the playlist vibes with the music of outside artists. At the end of the TikTok, Francis asked a pressing question: Why are all these bots women? There are no answers.
Over on Reddit, users have been theorizing about the Ashley's of Spotify, while pointing out less subtle and non-gendered bots that have been ruining the vibes on playlists near and far, like "SongSuggestor(beta)" and "Picked Tracks."
They've also asked for assistance to stop the intrusions, some turning to the Spotify Community for help. Unfortunately the summary of responses seems to be a simple, "We can't help you with that right now." In reply to a June 2021 request to limit bots adding songs, a Spotify Community moderator responded that the issue couldn't be resolved with current settings — you can't block a single user from editing a playlist, and collaborative playlists don't have an "invite only" setting. Instead they suggested bot victims support a suggested change in future Spotify updates that would allow playlist makers to change the editing permissions on collaborative playlists.
Currently, the only solution to the Ashley problem is to manually remove each song that's added, block the bot (do this by going to their profile, clicking on the three dots at the top of the page, and selecting "block"), or removing the public settings on your playlists. And pray that Ashley won't find you again.
As we batten down the hatches on our public playlists, or resign ourselves to the song choices of random bots, what hero will rise to vanquish Ashley? Will our playlists always be vulnerable to such intrusive vibe checks? Will Spotify make time to save us, as it deals with its own streaming controversies? Only time will tell.
Mashable has reached out to Spotify for comment and will update this article if there is a response.
Topics Music
