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Comment by undefined1 | Hacker News Reader

it's like if Spotify suddenly started recommending Christian Rock.

Spotify is doing stuff like that. I kept getting a bunch of podcast recommendations for things like "stop asian hate" and "navigating the workplace as a person of color". Over the summer I was getting recommendations for albums and songs called "Black Lives Matter" by no name artists. I ended up cancelling my subscription and switching to amazon music because the amount of space used to push woke political podcasts and music meant that new releases from artists I follow wasn't showing up.

Is it that, or are people suddenly becoming aware of these specific podcasts/groups due to current events? Which is more likely: spotify pushing specific agendas, or spotify employing a recommendation engine that recommends things that see a surge in listening activity?

Regarding your example of "stop asian hate"- the asian instagram community has been talking about it a lot in wake of current events. It is entirely unsurprising that people would be checking it out after being previously unaware.

It is spotify pushing an agenda. These aren't algorithmic pseudo randomness, because they're clearly labeled in manually described groups. Much of the black content was for black history month, and labeled as such, which isn't too different from google putting up a black history search page, imo. I would rate it as mildly annoying. I'm 100% for black lives matter, but I don't have much of an interest in mainstream black music channels that they were trying to promote.

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