After a list of 37 white supremacist hate bands that were being hosted on Spotify was published earlier this week, the streaming giant has taken stand and removed some of the groups from its service.
Despite many of the groups and artists having small play and follower counts, Spotify said in a statement that any material that contained messages of racism, white supremacy, neo-Nazism and hatred would be removed immediately. “We are glad to have been alerted to this content — and have already removed many of the bands identified today, whilst urgently reviewing the remainder,” they said.
As BBC Newsbeat have reported, the removal will affect all territories, while fellow streaming site Deezer have also started to remove music by white supremacist groups. In a statement delivered to Billboard, Spotify explained their stance, noting that “illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us”.
In 2014, after the issue was raised by the Southern Poverty Law Centre — a group which monitors hate groups in the U.S. — iTunes also removed music that was said to contain white power messages.
Elsewhere, earlier this week and following the tragedy in Charlottesville, the website Reddit deleted one of their subforms, “Physical Removal”, due to its alt-right associations. The subreddit was dedicated to the notion that democrats “will have to be physically separated and removed from society”. Reddit had previously defended the forum as an “expression of the open internet”.