He certainly has a right to do that. No doubt

I wonder if Mr. Young will apply the same moral stringency to the rest of his distributors. I also wonder if his fans are aware of his own unscientific misinformation campaigns in regards to GMO foods.

I think most wonder - where does it end? What heterodox positions are tolerated and which ones aren’t? Especially in the context of something like a broad based music distributor.

Neil Young has, as far as I’m aware, made a point of arguing against GMO policy, not science. He’s anti-corporate, greed and an environmentalist, and Monsanto and glysophate are credible threats to farmers and the environment, respectively.

I know less about the plight of farmers being forced to use GM seed, but I am intimately familiar with the decimation of insect life in the last decade.

Isn’t this just life/humanity? No one is ever gonna have a 100% scientific correct moral applied equally to all of their life. He is gonna protest some stuff and not other stuff. I’m not really afraid of a slippery slope here. I think the bigger problem is people not taking a real stand in what they believe.

For me there is a cultural question of - what kind of heterodox should be considered normal as part of a broad based distribution service.

For example, there are a number of artists who seem to glorify killing police. Should we consider it normal that big time artist XYZ would feel the need to remove their music from the service? Yes, it would be their right (I don't think anyone disputes that)... but... is that a good cultural trend?

To my eyes, this looks more like tribalistic posturing than some sort of principled stand for something.

It's hard to call it a cultural trend when it's a couple famous people removing their library of music from one music service. I don't think it's unethical for a musician to stop working with a distributor if the terms of that stop being acceptable, that's wholly reasonable.

But to try and answer your question; no, I think it's kind of silly. Someone like Neil Young can only do this sort of thing once and trying to use it to deplatform another entertainer doesn't seem to be the most useful (removing Joe Rogan's podcast or whatever won't make a dent in the cause he supposedly is fighting for) and also not particularly effective unless there is a cataclysm of high profile musicians removing their music from Spotify.