Spotify asked me to partner with them for the 2025 Wrapped. Here’s why I won’t be participating.

No art for genocide and ICE recruitment.

Today, my publisher passed along a request from Spotify asking me to produce a short vertical video as part of their 2025 Wrapped, which beginning this year will be including audiobooks and content from authors:

The audiobook version of Unmasking Autism has done really well, and I suppose Spotify wanted to create a bit of a value add to its paying subscribers by delivering additional content from some of the regular audiobook streamers’ favorite authors. In most other circumstances, I’d be thrilled by this — I’m proud of the book that I wrote and the care I put into narrating it, and I’m thrilled that so many people have connected with a version of Unmasking Autism in which I give voice to my own story & the stories of so many of my neurodivergent kin.

But I will not be producing a slick, heartfelt vertical video for my Spotify listeners. I have several reasons:

First, the CEO of Spotify Daniel Ek recently invested $700 million in AI-powered drone weapons technology company Helsing, which Ek also serves as the chairman of. I do not wish to see streams of my books fund technologies that are increasingly used to surveil and massacre…