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Washington Post: Amazon, Others ‘Inadvertently Fund Hate Groups’

The Washington Post today published a major story documenting hate groups’ pervasive use of three leading Internet companies to drum up money — an apparently flagrant violation of those companies’ own stated policies on acceptable content. The article was largely based on a series of earlier investigative reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

As the article by Caitlin Dewey notes, the SPLC over the last year has repeatedly contacted PayPal, Amazon, Spotify, among others, about these potential violations without result. While companies like Facebook have been proactive in enforcing their own policies against hate speech, others have remained obstinate. As of January 2015, PayPal alone was servicing over 60 known hate groups – effectively acting as the banking system of the hate movement.


Counter-Currents Publishing, a white nationalist book-selling site, accepts donations through PayPal.

The Post details a number of the ways that hate groups are able to earn money in tandem with the Internet firms. The bottom line:

PayPal — the “banking system of the hate movement,” Beirich says — collects a 2.9 percent fee on payments sent. Translation: During Counter Currents’ last summer fundraiser, during which the group earned $40,372, PayPal stood to make more than $1,000. As of last spring, at least 69 SPLC-designated “hate groups” used PayPal, according to that organization. …

Spotify, per its own figures, collects 30 percent of the total revenue from songs streamed on its service — including albums with names like “White Pride White Passion.” (In a statement to The Post, Spotify said it “takes these issues very seriously,” and that it “proactively” removes songs and artists across its sites when they are flagged by a German review board.)

And Amazon, through the affiliate program, distributes between 7 and 10 percent of referred sales to its “partners;” Nazi flags, Swastika pins and other “white pride” memorabilia also sell in Amazon’s “Marketplace,” where Amazon collects fees of 8 to 45 percent. To become a member of the affiliates program, Amazon requires applicants to confirm that their sites do not “promote discrimination, or employ discriminatory practices, based on race, sex, religion,” or a number of other categories.

As the story notes, Facebook has largely ejected haters from its pages, while Apple’s iTunes has stopped selling at least some white power music. Now, with the attention paid to the issue by The Washington Post, perhaps some of the other firms that profit from the selling of hate may soon do so as well.

Let’s hope so.

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