MUSIC Islands in the stream - Spotify, YouTube making political bans

I've read lots of right-on, celebratory articles about the announcements of YouTube and Spotify especially this week - both banning a number of far right accounts, channels, artists/tracks.

As with many acts of censorship, it seems hard to forge an argue against this diminution of hateful rhetoric and ideology - but the quartz article outlines the same concern that struck me: this means entrusting these private firms to define political extremism. Not that state definitions are any safer - the public sector BBC takes a very partial stance on Palestinian-linked lyrics, silenced the Pistols' 1977 classic, and refused to reflect the public mood in also banning Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

Media regulation, including censorship, can often appear incontestably as a good thing - but there's always a counter argument. There's an irony in this case too, the fiercely neoliberal, anti-regulation, laissez-faire free marketeers of the social media giants queuing up to proslytize over President Trump's seeming support for neo-Nazi, quite the U-turn from their customary extreme free speech positions.

https://qz.com/1056140/spotify-by-banning-white-power-bands-is-now-deciding-what-music-is-acceptable/?utm_source=qzfb