Spotify is rolling out a new feature that will make it much easier to block people that you don’t want following your activity on the service. Until now, subscribers have had no control over who could actually see their listening activity and public playlists. Although you could make a request to Spotify’s customer support team to ask them to block a specific person for you, this required more effort, and many folks didn’t even know it existed. Your other option was to disable the social media part of the service entirely, but that’s not an ideal solution for when you do want to share with friends.
With the new changes, you’ll be able to block someone simply by visiting their user profile and looking for the Block User option in the Three Dots menu at the top. Once you do this, that person won’t be able to access any of your listening activity or even see your profile page.
It’s a feature that’s been long-awaited by Spotify users, some of whom have been requesting it since as far back as 2013. However, despite 121 pages of comments over the past several years, Spotify only acknowledged that it was under consideration in June of this year.
For many people who use Spotify, this isn’t a minor problem. Comments in the Spotify community forums reveal that some folks have dealt with mental health issues resulting from harassment and even threats of domestic violence on the platform. While such situations should be serious enough to warrant a message to Spotify’s customer support, this hasn’t always been an option.
In 2018, Buzzfeed News did an in-depth report on Spotify abuse, revealing users who were stalked and harassed through their listening activity. At the time, Spotify updated the longstanding block feature request to a “good idea” but said that it had no immediate plans to add it to the service. Even after a Change.org petition garnered nearly 20,000 signatures, it still took the streaming provider nearly three more years to act on the longstanding request.
Fortunately, it’s here now, better late than never. Spotify says the change should start showing up for all users this week.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.