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Liberal Southern Poverty Law Center now policing Spotify music website for 'hateful' content
Spotify, the popular music-streaming service, has revised a recent policy after a backlash from artists and critics who called it unfair. (Lionel Bonaventure/Getty Images)

Liberal Southern Poverty Law Center now policing Spotify music website for 'hateful' content

The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center is now hunting for "hateful" content on Spotify, the music-streaming company announced this week.

The SPLC is known for slapping "hateful" labels on Christian and conservative groups, in particular.

Spotify is considered the world's largest music streaming website with about 70 million subscribers and more than 140 million total users.

What is considered hateful content?

According to Spotify, hate content expresses, 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.”

But Spotify’s rules for flagging content are likely be subjectively enforced, just as they are on Twitter and Facebook. Often, conservatives are censored on social media.

Spotify’s policy on hateful content states that, “it’s important to remember that cultural standards and sensitivities vary widely. That means 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.”

Spotify’s other content police include Color of Change, GLAAD and Showing Up for Racial Justice. Among other things, these groups have called for boycotts of conservatives.

The Daily Caller explains:

Color of Change organized boycott campaigns against Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck while they were at Fox News. The group also encouraged Democrats to boycott President Donald Trump’s inauguration. SURJ has organized protests and boycotts of businesses affiliated with Trump. On March 30, GLAAD was promoting a boycott campaign against Fox News host Laura Ingraham over a tweet.

Anything else?

Rounding out the list of Spotify’s monitors are Muslim Advocates, the Anti-Defamation League and the International Network Against Cyber Hate.

No conservative organizations are included.

Other prominent companies have also empowered the SPLC to police their platforms.

The SPLC polices Amazon’s charity program, Amazon Smile. The Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom was booted from the program after the SPLC labeled it a hate group. In contrast, anti-Semitic groups are still allowed to participate.

Additionally, the SPLC is a key player in policing YouTube for hateful content. YouTube had tried to keep their SPLC partnership hidden behind a confidentiality agreement.

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