Streaming, digital services respond to Charlottesville clash, with bans, pro-freedom playlists, donations

Digital groups have reacted in strength against hate groups in the aftermath of the fatal clash between white supremacists and human rights advocates at a Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville.

Spotify was the first to take action, removing hate-group music from its platform after Digital Music News published a list of 37 Nazi-themed bands on it. 

They included Tattooed Mother F******, Kill Baby… Kill!, British band Skullhead, White Knuckle Driver, Baker’s Dozen which has an album titled European Invasion and Ian Stuart and The Klansmen’s call-to-lynching Fetch The Rope.

“Illegal content or material that favours hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us,” a Spotify spokesman said. 

Spotify has gone on to set up a new playlist called Patriotic Passion.

It includes the live version of Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock 1969 version of ’The Star Spangled Banner’ on which he used his guitar effects to denote falling bombs as a protest against the Vietnam War. 

Other tracks include Eminem’s ’White America’, Akon’s ’Freedom’, Smashing Pumpkins’ ’Geek USA’, Buffalo Springfield’s ’For What It’s Worth’, Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ’Buffalo Soldier’, Amp Fiddler/ Sly & Robbie’s ’Black House (Paint The White House Black)’, Funkadelic’s ’One Nation Under A Groove’, Gary Clarke Jr.’s ’The Healing’, Lady Gaga’s ’Americano’ and Khalid’s ’American Teen’.

Apple, which began dumping hate groups from iTunes, further donated $2 million to major civil rights groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

It was part of CEO Tim Cook’s pledge to help lead the fight against the hate that fuelled the Charlottesville violence.

Deezer is setting up a playlist in support of Charlottesville’s social justice activists “and will continue to remove any material that is in any way connected to any white supremacist movement or belief system.”

SoundCloud and Tidal are also abolishing such material. 

Pandora, which conducted a white supremacist music purge in 2014, confirmed it is conducting another search and burn.

Google’s YouTube and Play Music have anti-hate policies but will only remove content if a user flags it –  which got it sarcastic responses from some quarters.

Independent music distributor CD Baby is also asking users to flag offensive material.

It issued a statement, saying “We believe hate speech is particularly odious, and we try not to carry it, per our hate speech policy” but said that with carrying 8 million tracks that are self-distributed by hundreds of thousands of acts, it made it almost impossible to filter out everything.

Facebook removed groups and individuals operating under names as Vanguard America, Physical Removal and Genuine Donald Trump.

Online fundraising sites GoFundMe and Patreon banned campaigns to raise money for James Fields, the driver accused of driving his car into protesters and killing a woman.

Twitter suspended the account for neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer after it made an offensive comment about the peace activist who was fatally run over at the Charlottesville rally.

The site’s operator whinged that four other services refused it service. It reappeared briefly under a Russian domain name but was dropped after. 

Security company Cloudflare Inc has also dropped it as a customer, leaving Daily Stormer vulnerable to hackers.

Activist groups are also pressurising the likes of PayPal, American Express, Mastercard and Visa, to stop processing funds for hate groups.

Their general response have been that they will stop illegal transactions but not those expressing views that they themselves might find objectionable.