Music streaming service Spotify has announced a partnership with several far-left groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in an attempt to police the platform and remove “hate content.”
The groups include the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Color of Change, GLAAD, Showing Up For Racial Justice, Muslim Advocates, and the International Network Against Cyber Hate.
“We love that our platform is home to so much diversity because we believe in openness, tolerance, respect, and freedom of expression, and we want to promote those values through music on our platform,” declared Spotify in a blog post. “However, we do not tolerate hate content on Spotify — content that expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability.”
“When we are alerted to content that violates our policy, we may remove it (in consultation with rights holders) or refrain from promoting or playlisting it on our service. It’s important to us that our values are reflected in all the work that we do, whether it’s distribution, promotion, or content creation,” they explained. “At the same time, however, it’s important to remember that cultural standards and sensitivities vary widely. There will always be content that is acceptable in some circumstances, but is offensive in others, and we will always look at the entire context.”
“To help us identify hate content, we have partnered with rights advocacy groups, including The Southern Poverty Law Center, The Anti-Defamation League, Color Of Change, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), GLAAD, Muslim Advocates, and the International Network Against Cyber Hate,” Spotify revealed, adding, “We also built an internal content monitoring tool, Spotify AudioWatch, which identifies content on our platform that has been flagged as hate content on specific international registers. And we listen to our users – if you think something is hate content, please let us know and we will review it carefully against our policy.”
Spotify continued to claim that this was just the “first iteration” of the new policy, concluding, “We’ll make some mistakes, we’ll learn from them, and we’ll always listen to you as we work to keep building the Spotify platform.”
The SPLC, which has been financially backed by Hollywood actor George Clooney and Apple CEO Tim Cook, has previously listed British Muslim anti-extremist Maajid Nawaz, United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson, and an entire town on its extremist database.
Despite this, several violent extremists have been inspired by the SPLC, including Scalise shooter James T. Hodgkinson, and convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who attempted a mass shooting at a conservative Christian organization after seeing it on the SPLC’s hate list.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, is a former Obama staffer, while the other Spotify-partnered organizations are also tied to left-wing politics.
“Color Of Change partners with Black Lives Matter to press for ‘racial justice’ and has spearheaded boycotts against Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Trump’s inauguration; SURJ is dedicated to fighting ‘white supremacy,’ removing Confederate statues, and supporting the anti-Trump resistance; GLAAD is an LGBT activist group that attacks the Trump administration on a daily basis (even on such unrelated issues as gun control),” reported PJ Media. “Muslim Advocates has joined with groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to attack anti-Jihadist Muslims like M. Zuhdi Jasser; and the International Network Against Cyber Hate has a broad mission but it has partnered with leftist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.
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