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IPFS News Link • Censorship

Cancel culture pressure ramps up on tech platforms Spotify, Airbnb, and GoFundMe

• BY NIHAL KRISHAN

Spotify recently came under fire for secretly removing over 100 episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast, while Airbnb last week banned conservative author and activist Michelle Malkin for speaking at a white nationalist conference. GoFundMe is currently facing backlash over its decision to block contributions to the Freedom Convoy — Canadian truckers who are protesting the country's coronavirus restrictions.

The companies, long viewed as neutral platforms and marketplaces for their respective products and services, are increasingly behaving as left-wing activist organizations due to public criticism made against them by certain social media users and influencers, conservatives say.

"Basically, they don't want to be canceled themselves. Airbnb and GoFundMe are middlemen, marketplaces that depend on user popularity," said Sam Abrams, a scholar on cancel culture at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

"So they're really petrified of revenue loss that could come from users being upset at them, which has pushed them to become political and no longer remain neutral," said Abrams, who is also a political science professor at Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts university.

Abrams said "almost nobody" reads the terms of service that the companies cite in their bans on users and that the average customer does not expect their political leanings to affect their ability to use the platform.

Nevertheless, banning users due to their political preferences and opinions is expected to occur more frequently on major tech platforms that are under pressure to respond to liberal cancel culture warriors, Abrams said.


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