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Why is Apple Music supporting a controversial advocacy organization?

Why is Apple Music supporting a controversial advocacy organization?
3 min read

Yesterday Apple Music tweeted its support for the Southern Poverty Law Center. This comes in the aftermath of the "Unite The Right" Charlottesville rally in which one person was killed and more than thirty were wounded when James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his Dodge through a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and wounding 19 other people.

Apple, Spotify and many other tech companies have denounced Neo Nazi's and the KKK and have vowed to take steps to remedy the situation. According to The Guardian, "Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged $1m donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League and sent a strongly worded memo to staff, quoting Martin Luther King, about the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday.
This might sound cynical but Apple most likely made a lot more than a million dollars by selling hate music from such groups, as it only started removing them from iTunes three years ago.
While it's never too late to do the right thing, Apple's support of the SPLC ieft some people quite upset. And these weren't people who support white supremacy either. They are people who read the news. The non-profit organization has in recent years come under scrutiny for their erroneous labeling of certain groups and individuals as extremists and is increasingly seen as hate mongering to raise money. In 2015 for instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center's greatest expenses, ten million, were spent on fundraising, outspending legal expenses.
And while their Hate Map is a useful tool for keeping tabs on real extremists, it is also ironically being used to incite violence. The 2012 shooting of a security guard at a prominent conservative organization,The Family research Council was politically motivated, allegedly as a result of what some consider the SPLC's agitprop in branding the organization as a hate group. And by "some," I don't just mean right wing media. The Washington Post had this to say about the SPLC's actions.

"Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia."


Again it is admirable that Apple is putting its money where its mouth is (something that never would have happened while Steve Jobs was alive) and is taking a stand against hate. But aligning with a group many people see as being a hate group that can defame people at will, might not have been the best place for the money, at least judging by the strong reactions to its post.






Beats 1 posted the same tweet and got the same reaction.



Categories: Country: US
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