Spotify has started removing content that falls under their “hateful conduct” policy

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Streaming services are continuing to reevaluate the content that they allow on their platforms. Following recent YouTube updates, Spotify is the latest service that is starting to remove content due to ethical reasons.

This new policy basically gives the company the right to remove not only “hate” content, but “hateful” conduct, as well. This all gets a bit blurry, but we’ll try to explain it.

Hate content is content that is actively promoting something we generally understand as bad – racism, bigotry, violence against a certain group, etc. Hateful conduct, on the other hand, refers to something “an artist or creator does that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence).”

So, how is the company going to manage this? Straight from the company,

It is impossible for us to manually review all of the content on Spotify, and we expect our partners to ensure that the content they deliver to us is lawful and in keeping with our policies, so we employ a system of three overlapping “nets” to catch potentially hateful content and evaluate it:

-Content monitoring: We are continuing to develop and implement content monitoring technology which identifies content on our service that has been flagged as hate content on specific international registers.

-Expert partners: We regularly consult with rights advocacy groups to review their most recent analyses of hateful content.

-Your Help: If you feel any content violates our hate content policy, complete the form here and we will carefully review it against our policy.

Billboard has noted that the streaming service has already removed music from R. Kelly from their algorithmic and editorial playlists. You can still find the music on Spotify, but the company will not promote it in any way.

Personally, I think this is a good thing, but it will surely cause issues, as people will try to define what “hateful conduct” means to them. Will Chris Brown and John Lennon still have music served to users?

What do you think? Is this a good move by Spotify or should they figure out a more concrete way of defining “hateful conduct?” Let us know below!

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.