The ADL Center on Extremism (COE) has identified 40 white supremacist artists with a presence on Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming platform. Music has long been an effective way to radicalize extremists, allowing artists to both entertain and indoctrinate vulnerable listeners. At a time of increasing hate-motivated extremist violence, Spotify is not only allowing the racism and incitement of white supremacist music, it is actively promoting that content on its own playlists.
In February 2022, the ADL Center on Technology and Society (CTS) published a report analyzing the Spotify platform rules. The report found these rules to be loosely defined and they did not live up to Spotify’s responsibility as a streaming platform.
Although Spotify updated their rules following the CTS report, adding a much more explicit anti-extremism policy, they do not appear to be strictly enforced. Users who want to proactively report problematic content are only able to do so on the Spotify desktop app and not on the mobile app, which constitutes a roadblock to flagging problematic content. This report seeks to show some of the white supremacist content that remained on the platform as of September 21, 2022.
