Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday that the website’s owners “had an entire day” to prove they weren’t violating the company’s policies, “which did not happen.” ... “The moment we realized this was not actually a real commerce practice, they weren’t actually engaging in authentic commerce, we pulled it down,” Finkelstein said.
Not "engaging in authentic commerce" sounds like it wasn't taken down because of the swastikas, but because the shirts weren't actually for sale?
How would Shopify determine a store isn’t “engaging in authentic commerce” if the products aren’t set to ship for 6-8 weeks? That’s standard for Yeezy drops, and past releases have been delivered. Why is this suddenly an issue now? Seems more like a convenient excuse than the real reason for shutting it down.
"I would never sell a swastika tee because people could be physically harmed wearing it ... I love my fans and supporters," Kanye wrote on X before his account was disabled.
Shopify took down Yeezy, because it was listing a product he indicated he wasn’t actually going to ship.
B2B services companies generally won’t police content, because content moderation is highly subjective and companies care about the perceived reliability of vendors, especially business critical ones. While this particular instance might be obvious, the slippery slope does exist so companies will tend to avoid vendors who are anywhere near that slope.
> Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday that the website’s owners “had an entire day” to prove they weren’t violating the company’s policies, “which did not happen.”
I understand that they were given a day to prove they weren’t violating policies, but my point is that it seems pretty obvious Shopify is selectively enforcing its policies to shut down the store because they don’t like the shirt being sold. The policy is just a cover for the real reason.
Yeah. SHOP just doesn't wanna be pegged as being "too woke" under the current administration. All of tech is apparently scared of Trump, Musk, and their allies in SV and WS.
Shopify has never been a woke company - Shopify and their leaders have a history of defending hosting hateful content under the guise of freedom of speech.
Slightly off topic but this comment really underscores the complete loss of meaning of the word "woke" for me.
I'm not trying to say that was intentional/hostile or not, just that it just sticks out really significantly from the earlier days where it was more in line with "willing to see the reality of the country and not just a smoothed over view" (which is a sentiment shared across most polarization I can think of) and now is more about a label/badge about certain values.
That's true. "Woke" has become a catch-all for logical, moral reasoning and behavior that in any way contradicts pure profit motive. I misused the term. And SHOP definitely was never a haven of actual woke corporate policy. But even slightly leaning towards woke = big trouble in the current political environment, even if it means condoning sale of hate speech or related goods.
I truly didn't mean to imply you were misusing it - I think it is super broad now and your usage, as you described, was relatively new for me (re: unbridled greed vs oppression).
I agree. That has always been a matter of corporate principal for SHOP. Now, they are leaning even more into their "free speech" farse, allowing almost anyone and anything that may generate sales. Partly because they know that political and public opinion recently leans towards less oversight, less moral scrutiny, and less enforcement.
Are you surprised? Shopify and Tobi Lütke have strongly defended "freedom of speech" to continue platforming hate groups in the past. They are happy to platform truly awful people as long as they get their cut.
Agree to disagree; first, I am not American, and don't buy into the notion of Freedom of Speech - I am Canadian, and we have Freedom of Expression, which includes the notion that while people should have freedom of expression, there are certain elements of expression that infringe on the safety of others, and it is reasonable to restrict them. I know the US has had similar constraints in the past (fire in a theatre, etc), but the US is also currently speed-running trying to throw it's history of oppression into the memory hole.
It's not enough to just depend on educating people - we can see that education hasn't been very effective, and education has been subverted in several countries, including the United States and Canada.
You say that as if there is some conscious decision to explicitly allow each and every instance of questionable speech like it's their job to police it.
Do you consider Cloudflare agreeing with the speech on 4chan by allowing them to use their services?
I take comfort in knowing that (many) companies understand they should not be the judge of what speech should be allowed, I see them merely as a conduit and not an arbiter. This is exactly why Section 230 exists in the US, it shields providers from what other people say or do when using their networks. And if we didn't have that, I think the Internet as it stands would be completely different.
Not sure what good you thought it was going to do to come into a thread about a US company, say they are defending free speech and then turn around and go "yea I don't believe in free speech".
I would die for their right to free speech even if I don't agree with what they say. Are you prepared to do the same for your beliefs?
> Do you consider Cloudflare agreeing with the speech on 4chan by allowing them to use their services?
Yes I do; it is a choice to profit by delivering services to different communities. Over and above being a good company and having lots of interesting technical challenges, one of the reasons I stayed at Fastly for nearly 5 years was because of the good neighbours practice, and the fact that the leaders at Fastly chose not to do business with companies that platform hate.
> Not sure what good you thought it was going to do to come into a thread about a US company, say they are defending free speech and then turn around and go "yea I don't believe in free speech".
Well, Shopify is a Canadian company, and I am Canadian, so I thought it might be useful to share a Canadian perspective.
> I would die for their right to free speech even if I don't agree with what they say. Are you prepared to do the same for your beliefs?
Yes. I enlisted in my countries military, and indicated my preference to join a peace keeping regiment because I believe that as someone who has the ability to stand up for and defend others, I should. I believe very strongly in Freedom of Expression, but when that expression turns to hate and advocating eugenics, genocide or any number of things that my country and my grand-parents fought against, well.. sometimes you have to punch Nazis... (or Hutu war criminals, or Bosnian war criminals, etc).
> The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945),[1] where he argued that a truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance. Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.
in "absolutes"/extremes pretty much anything is highly bad
freedom of speech has many good and important aspects which must be protected
but there really is no reason to extend it to every kind of hate speech and implicit promoting white supremacy and genocide
not only is there no reason to tolerate it there are a lot of reasons to not tolerate it
I mean there are quit many examples from small scale to international scale showing how letting hate speech go unchecked leads to endless pain and suffering of innocent.
Defending spreading hate speech without any limit in a time where all this history is available just a few clicks away is either highly ignorant, or outright with evil intent.
And yes there is a gray area between speech which really should be protected and hate speech only doing harm. Seeking swastika T-shirt very clearly isn't in that area.
Lastly nothing prevents you to keep hate speech in check and also educate people better. Most (all?) EU member states do take educating people better at least slightly serious. But history has clearly shown that keeping hate speech in check is fundamental needed, too.
Shopify is absolutely fine with selling hate products as long as you give them their cut. If you're using them for free web hosting they draw the line. They probably also didn't splash out for the premium plan where you get a dedicated concierge.
Hindu symbols are mirrored and in generally visually in a different context. Through there are some funny extra bad coincidence like the symbol Japan used in street maps for hospitals(?) until somewhat recently before the Olympics.
But in general IRL people tend to not humor someone trying to bypass rules by definition nitpicking if their intend is very clear. I mean there is a reason law tends to focus on outcome, over intend, over exact details of your actions. Through naturally if they need an excuse for their (in-) action then humoring definition nitpicking sometimes does the job.
That’s not something people would wear on a shirt; I think? It’s a symbol you’d see drawn onto things as a sort of blessing with red tika or a decoration on a temple. (Source: former partner was Hindu)
The Hindu swastika is generally red in colour, has serif like font and tilted by 45° (compared to the generally accepted Nazi swastika). I'm sure someone can use it maliciously but as someone who grew up looking at Hindu swastika pretty much everywhere, and much later in my life saw the Nazi swastika, at first glance, I didn't really think they were identical.
> A California summer camp tucked away in a woodsy pocket of the Silicon Valley abruptly canceled all summer sessions after several staff members quit over a controversy around a swastika symbol on one of the buildings.
> The camp administration explained in its letter that the house had three tiles, each about 12-by-12 inches, with Buddhist swastikas and a lotus embedded in them. When the home was constructed, the symbol would have been considered good luck.
I'm sure some can't. I didn't mean to say that, I was just telling how I perceived it. In fact, I warn my Hindu friends against using the Hindu swastika on their cars or on their houses here in the West, just so that they don't confuse people here.
1. It's an old symbol. Buddhists had it first, and I don't blame them for wanting to hang onto it.
2. Regardless of context, I don't want a picture of me on the Internet playing and having fun in front of a swastika. By the time you get to the part of the explanation that would show you're not actually a neo-Nazi, people will have stopped listening (if they ever did in the first place).
I don't think there are any unreasonable people in that story. It's just an awful situation.
Back when I was in the reserves I was hanging out with my Navajo buddy in a bar, both of us in uniform, when these two swastika wearing idiots walked in. Pretty amazed there wasn't a bar fight by the amount of shit I was talking. I just thought they wanted attention so was happy to oblige.
Thing is, I will die for their right to free speech but I don't have to like what they say nor quench my right to free speech. Plus, when you're walking around with an 82nd Airborne combat patch and a Combat Infantry Badge you get to talk a lot of shit.
Not "engaging in authentic commerce" sounds like it wasn't taken down because of the swastikas, but because the shirts weren't actually for sale?