These Nazis are gonna learn that they’re being shut off from decent society, and they will have a very hard time finding people who support their dumb rhetoric online. They also won’t be able to fund their harmful causes or listen to their shitty music.
Apple, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter and more are all joining a growing list of technology companies that are cutting off white supremacists wherever possible, taking a stance against the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Va.
According to the Guardian, Apple CEO Tim Cook has pledged $1 million in donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, and also sent out a memo to staff, making his own stance on the matter crystal clear.
“We must not witness or permit such hate and bigotry in our country, and we must be unequivocal about it,” Cook wrote. “This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality.
“I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans,” he added, referencing y’all’s president’s blunder of a statement when Donald Trump attempted to paint white supremacists and counterdemonstrations with the same brush.
Apple is also pledging to match two-for-one employee donations to human rights groups until the end of September, adding that it would roll out donations systems for the SPLC through iTunes.
Other companies are also banning white supremacists or the things that would appeal to them outright.
LinkedIn suspended the page of Nazi site the Daily Stormer as well as the page belonging to Andrew Auernheimer, who is associated with the site, although the business-connection site declined to comment on the suspensions.
Facebook has banned prominent neo-Nazis from its site, including several white supremacist pages. Christopher Cantwell, the crybaby who was seen sobbing on camera after finding out there was a warrant for his arrest, has been removed from both Facebook and Instagram.
YouTube is starting to remove accounts linked to white supremacists, also, including that of Cantwell.
And Twitter has removed accounts affiliated with the Daily Stormer, which lost its domain registration this week after GoDaddy booted it for a disgusting post that was made about Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer.
The site moved its registration to Google, but that, too, was quickly shut down with swiftness “for violating ... terms of service.”
PayPal followed next, making it harder for white supremacists to fund their favorite hateful causes.
And now the racists can’t even listen to their racist music after music-streaming service Spotify announced that it would remove “hate music” by white supremacists from its extensive library, USA Today reports.
Spotify decided to go ahead and nix a bunch of music after Digital Music News published a story earlier this week identifying 37 white supremacist bands that could still be found on the streaming service.
Spotify quickly released a statement saying that it removes music “that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality” as soon as it is brought to its attention.
The music-streaming service said that it has already removed several of the identified bands, while others are still under review. As USA Today notes, many artists still appear to have artist pages on the platform, although no songs are available.
Those that have been removed or are under review include the Blood Red Eagle, Freikorps, Skinfull and Skull Head.
Looks like the white supremacists are going to have to go back to burning CDs, and for some reason, this causes me extreme delight. I mean, if you’re going to act like you’re in the 1900s ...
One can only wonder which company will be next to join the fold of cutting these racists off from technology and, by extension, decent society. Because as was said before, who wants to be known as the company that hosts Nazis?