Years ago, a Windows virus slipped on to three family machines I'm the go-to-guy for, due to Spotify using IE to display ads, and not vetting its ads properly.
My answer was two-fold - never use Spotify, and always use an ad-blocker.
Ad blockers are mandatory on my parents computers. They can’t distinguish between what is or isn’t an ad (not speaking specifically of Spotify display ads.)
I feel like I hold an opinion no one else reading hacker news has, I believe website owners should be able to deliver ads and website visitors should be able to block them.
I'm with you. Spotify can serve ads if they want. Users can block the ads if they want. Spotify can block any users (unless they are paying, then it becomes another issue) if they want.
That being said I also think Spotify (and other sites) should be held liable if they serve malware through their ads.
I feel like websites should be able to run clearly labeled ads that are not trying to pretend to be anything but an ad.
I also feel like paid for articles should be clearly labeled as such and not hoping people will not notice the review/write up isn't just an ad in sheep's clothing.
I get it. A website needs to make money in order to stay in business delivering "free" content. Why does it have to be a game? Commercials/ads on television are not hidden. We accept that in order to bring broadcast television without a BBC style licensing fee, the broadcasters make money selling air time to advertisers. Sure, some product placement occurs in some of the programming, but that's up to the producers and not the broadcasters.
Thing is, I had that all set up! I'd deleted all the IE icons! Spotify did an end-run around all my precautions, because there was basically no way to remove IE from the OS, and any app that wanted to use it could.
I've pretty much always paid for Spotify, and from what I can remember when they first started all of their ads were "radio" ads. How were they using IE to display their ads? Did they introduce pop-ups?
My answer was two-fold - never use Spotify, and always use an ad-blocker.