Spotify is adding an automated review tool to help podcasters manage comments

Spotify in July started letting listeners comment on podcast episodes in the app, and the company is now rolling out a new set of controls to help podcasters manage and moderate comments.

When comments were first introduced, podcasters were initially required to review comments and publish them. Now, the platform has added a configurable automatic moderation tool that can filter out sensitive or inappropriate comments for review and publish others.

When set to the “Normal” level, Spotify’s new tool won’t publish comments it finds potentially sensitive or inappropriate, and instead redirects them to the podcaster for review. If set to “High,” the tool will hold all comments until they are approved, and at “Low,” it will automatically post all comments except those that violate Spotify’s rules.

Spotify noted that even if a creator publishes a comment marked as sensitive or automatically sets the moderation level to “Low,” sensitive comments will still be hidden, and users will have to tap “Show all comments” to view them.

Creators can also add words, phrases, or emojis to the block list to automatically move comments they enter into the review queue.

Creators can also disable comments for any episodes they see fit.

The company said it plans to add support for other languages ​​for the feature.

“For now, as we continue to test and improve our auto-detection systems to support more languages, all non-English comments will need to continue to be reviewed and approved by Spotify for Podcasters, but we plan to expand to more languages ​​soon. ,” the company said in a blog post.

Spotify said its users have posted 2.5 million comments on 650,000 episodes since launching the comments feature in July, and about 44% of comments posted received a like or response from the show’s creator.

Spotify has been trying to make podcasts more interesting for a while now by adding support for Q&As, polls, and video podcasts. Earlier this year, the company said that people who use any of these features to engage with podcasts are four times more likely to listen to the show again within 30 days.