Tech Companies Ban White Supremacists: Spotify Removes 'Hate Bands'

Spotify removed a number of bands labeled as “hate bands” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Wednesday, according to a report from Billboard.

Spotify’s action against the hate bands came one day after a list of 37 known white supremacist musicians available on the streaming platform was published by Digital Music News. Several of those artists have since been removed and others are being reviewed.

“Spotify takes immediate action to remove any such material as soon as it has been brought to our attention,” a spokesperson for Spotify said in a statement to Billboard. “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.”

The streaming music platform is also considering making tweaks to its suggestion algorithm to prevent other such bands from being surfaced to listeners. Currently, if a user finds and listens to a white supremacist artist or band, Spotify will suggest more artist similar to that one, providing more potential for discovery of other hate bands.

The hate bands identified by the SPLC come from a 2014 report on hate groups and digital music published by the organization called “Music, Money and Hate.” The report accused a number of tech companies of profiting off of hate groups.

The report identified at least 54 white supremacist bands who made music available on iTunes and found streaming platforms were also hosting a number of those groups. Apple responded to the report by removing the bands. Spotify and Amazon were slow to respond when the report was published and allowed some of the groups to remain.

Spotify’s decision to remove and review a number of hate groups hosted on its platform comes just days after web host GoDaddy and Google decided to ban white supremacist group Daily Stormer from using its services.

Daily Stormer was sent packing by GoDaddy after the site posted a controversial and incendiary article about the victim of a vehicular attack carried out by a white supremacist during protests that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The article used a number of derogatory and demeaning terms to describe Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old who was killed by a white supremacist while protesting against hate groups. The article also praised the neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of protesters, injuring dozens and killing Heyer, calling him a “straight player.”

Google joined GoDaddy in removing the the white supremacist site from its service after the owners of Daily Stormer attempted to move the domain to Google Domains. The search giant said white supremacist group violated the company’s terms of service and rejected its request to host its domain.

As Daily Stormer attempted to find a new host for its domain, eventually settling on a Russian domain name, the group also had its subscription to content delivery network Cloudflare canceled, leaving it vulnerable to denial of service attacks.

Video game-center communications platform Discord also took action to remove be white supremacist users and servers from its platform, including a server used by AltRight.com, a white nationalist news site.