Spotify, SoundCloud and other platforms have pulled the song, but its spread underscores the challenges tech platforms face in removing content that violate their policies.

Spotify, SoundCloud and other platforms have pulled the song, but its spread underscores the challenges tech platforms face in removing content that violate their policies.

Spotify, SoundCloud and other tech platforms have worked to remove a new song from Ye that praises Adolf Hitler, but the song and its video have continued to proliferate online including across X, where it has racked up millions of views.

On various mainstream and alternative tech platforms this week, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has been able to share his latest song, titled “Heil Hitler,” along with its companion title, “WW3,” which similarly glorifies Hitler, the architect of the Holocaust.

While some platforms have taken steps to attempt to pull down the song, others have seemingly let it spread freely.

  • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
    1·
    19 hours ago

    Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”

    That’s a whole lot of words to communicate what could be easily described by reframing the concept of tolerance as a social contract rather than a moral precept.