In its stance against hate speech, Apple has disabled Apple Pay support on three websites selling sweaters with Nazi symbols, “White Pride” paraphernalia, and other offensive items.
While Apple hasn’t issued an official statement, it has highlighted guidelines for Apple Pay, forbidding its use on sites which promote hate, intolerance, and violence.
We’ve seen the terror of white supremacy & racist violence before. It's a moral issue – an affront to America. We must all stand against it
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 14, 2017
Tim Cook also sent an email to Apple employees Wednesday night, saying that Apple would be making $1 million donations to both the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, and stating that he disagreed with President Trump’s decision to draw moral equivalence between white nationalists and Nazis, and the people who go up against them.
“Tim Cook has been the leader in the fight against hate on tech platforms,” said Heidi Beirich, leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “It would be a much better country if people had followed his lead on this front.”
This isn’t the first time Apple has struck back against hate speech. In 2014, it removed songs from iTunes the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to as, “hate music.”
Apple’s move isn’t done in isolation. A number of other tech companies have also been striking back against hate speech — with GoDaddy, Google, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, MailChimp, WordPress, and Airbnb all taking different levels of action to stop white supremacists using their platform.
Source: BuzzFeed
