Based on stories from CNN and other news sources, Senator Maggie Hassan wants to know how Spotify handles fake shows that promote online shops that might be breaking the law.
Hassan has told Spotify they have to answer by June 12.
CNN found dozens of podcasts that openly pushed online shops that claimed to sell drugs like Adderall and Oxycontin, sometimes without a prescription.
Last week, Spotify said it had taken down those podcasts.
Business Insider also said that it had reported 200 shows that Spotify later took down.
The fake shows, which came up as one of the top results when people searched for drug names, broke Spotify’s rules and warned users that they would take them to annoying and possibly illegal websites.
It is against the law in the US to buy banned drugs online without a license.
Parents, experts, and lawmakers have asked tech companies to do more to stop the sale of fake or illegal drugs to teens through their platforms.
This comes after several teens died of overdoses after buying pills online.
Now, Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire and the leading member of the Joint Economic Committee, wants to know how these fake shows got so popular on Spotify and what the company is doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
In a letter sent Thursday, Hassan asked Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, to “take action to stop fake podcasts that further the illegal sale of drugs.”
“Far too many parents have been through the unbearable pain of losing their child to an accidental overdose,” Hassan told CNN in a statement before the letter came out.
According to the report, Spotify needs to do a lot more to stop crooks from using the service to sell dangerous drugs to anyone, especially kids.
The letter asks Spotify to describe the content it has deleted, how many people listened to the drug sales podcasts before they were taken down, whether the company made any money from the podcasts, and whether it works with law enforcement when it finds illegal content.
It also asks what tools and methods the company uses for filtering to find drug-related content and if it will be making any changes because of the recent stories.
Last week, a Spotify representative told CNN, “We are always working to find and remove content that isn’t legal across our service.”
In reaction to Hassan’s letter, the company said the same thing again.
The spokesman also said that the same kind of material is available on other platforms and that the fake shows haven’t made the company any money.