Spotify’s decision to stop promoting music from artists R. Kelly and XXXTentacion has stirred up quite a bit of discourse. After the #MuteRKelly movement gained traction and received support from prominent artists such as John Legend and Vince Staples, as well as from actors like Amy Schumer and Viola Davis, Spotify made the decision to remove R. Kelly’s content from its sponsored playlists and recommendations. While R. Kelly has never been convicted of anything, the #MuteRKelly movement exists because of his long history of allegations, including charges of child pornography, sexual relations with minors and holding women against their will in a “sex dungeon.” Spotify’s new policy also targeted XXXTentacion (who faces charges for a long list of horrific abuse allegations against pregnant woman), giving this artist the same treatment as R. Kelly.

The ever-present reactionary response to Spotify’s decision is louder than ever. Tweets claiming that "we're banning art" have popped up, such as the one below:

So now we're banning art: https://t.co/NoO9facWiz . Who is next? Michael Jackson? Led Zeppelin? Are there any artists who won't meet the criteria? In the old days, the totalitarians on the right banned music. I guess the totalitarians are still here, but they've switched sides.
— Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) May 10, 2018

This one specifically claims that not supporting male abusers is “totalitarian,” although its hard to tell who he’s targeting. Spotify? America? The Leftist Boogeyman? XXXTentacion’s spokeswoman Aishah White cleverly said, “I don’t have a comment, just a question. Will Spotify remove all the artists listed below from playlists?” She included a list of 19 artists including Gene Simmons, Michael Jackson, Ozzy Osbourne, and Dr. Dre, who have all been accused of abuse, sexual or otherwise.

There’s two fundamental things that the opposition to Spotify’s decision either don’t understand or are willfully ignoring. The first is that Spotify is not censoring artists. They are not removing anyone’s music from their service, only removing it from their own curated playlists and algorithms that determine Discover Weekly suggestions. Part of Spotify’s statement concerning their new “Hate Content and Hateful Conduct” policy is as follows:

“We’ve also thought long and hard about how to handle content that is not hate content itself, but is principally made by artists or other creators who have demonstrated hateful conduct personally. We work with and support artists in different ways - we make their music available on Spotify and help connect them to new and existing fans, we program and promote their music, and we collaborate with them to create content. While we don’t believe in censoring content because of an artist’s or creator’s behavior, we want our editorial decisions - what we choose to program - to reflect our values. So, in some circumstances, when an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.”

You can still listen to R. Kelly and XXXTentacion on Spotify. Spotify just doesn’t want to appear supportive of abusive artists, so they are excluding them from their own content, which is fully within their right.

The second thing that some are missing is that change doesn’t happen overnight. Spotify’s decision sparked a flurry of whataboutism, with critics spouting the names of other ethically questionable artists still present on Spotify-sponsored content. Would these critics rather Spotify not try at all? Do they believe that if every single abusive or hateful artist is not treated the same that wanting to cut ties with abusive artists is a flawed ideal? Spotify’s decision was likely in response to the widespread public rejection of R. Kelly and XXXTentacion, as well it should be. Spotify is a service, and, as a service, its actions and ideals should align with those of the general public. And public opinion does not change overnight, nor is public opinion uniform in regards to all artists.

A Spotify spokesperson said, “As you can imagine this is a complicated process with room for debate and disagreement, so we can’t get into an artist-by-artist discussion. In general, we work with our partners and try to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.” So yes, Spotify should continue to weed out and cease support of abusive artists, but no, we should not crucify them for taking their time to make educated decisions about specific artists who have done wrong.