This weekend, Spotify blanketed its app in Drake. The streaming giant “recommended” his new album, Scorpion, to each one of us, regardless of our usual taste in streaming music, by putting his face on the cover of every playlist—even those not featuring his songs. Perhaps this decision was driven by profit, or they just thought it was funny, seeing Drake gamely play the poster child for “Ambient Chill.” Or maybe they realized that they could, so they did.

The gesture reminded me of nothing so much as when Apple, in September 2014, deposited a free download of U2’s then-new album, Songs of Innocence, in everyone’s iTunes folder, whether we wanted it there or not. “This is incredible for us, and incredible for all of our customers—I can’t think of anyone they would like to have music from more,” enthused Apple’s Tim Cook at the launch. Of course that wasn’t true. Eventually, both Apple and U2 ended up apologizing in the face of substantial pushback; Apple even launched a site to help users remove Songs of Innocence from their libraries.

But the problem with both of these gestures isn’t really the music, per se. Drake and U2 are the type of bland that is not only hugely popular but largely inoffensive; in 2014, Tim Cook’s statement about his customers and U2 was probably more accurate if you recast it as, “I can’t think of anyone they would object to having music from less.” It’s easy to imagine Spotify figuring that they are on similarly safe ground today with Drake, someone so concerned with being everything to everyone, his new album is comprised of two different LPs (a jaded rap record and a collection of vulnerable R&B-pop).

This is not Photoshop, this was the state of Spotify’s playlists on Friday.

Rather, the problem lies in what these gestures reveal about the corporation’s relationship to its customers. In Apple’s case, the shock expressed by many was that they had no say over what landed in their iTunes folder—Apple could just reach in and put something there. To those who saw their networked devices and hard drives as private, this came as an unpleasant surprise. Even to many who fully understood the terms and conditions that tied their computers and devices to Apple, it seemed like a breach of an unspoken agreement: We accept that Apple has an uncomfortable amount of access to our files, and Apple agrees not to rub our faces in it. Finding a U2 album inside your personal iTunes folder was like finding a note from your landlord inside the refrigerator.

For Spotify, the reveal is that what their playlists and recommendations are really about is not, lo and behold, you. It’s about them, and the power they gain from our data and wield through their algorithms. (It’s not even really about Drake, who—despite breaking single-day streaming records with the strategy—could be swapped with any number of palatable superstars.) Again, even for those who may already feel aware of the streaming service’s primary interests, putting Drake everywhere seems like a violation of a tacit agreement. We allow Spotify to mine our personal data, so long as Spotify pretends to care about our individual taste.