Shopify takes down Ye website selling swastika shirts after Super Bowl ad
48 comments
·February 11, 2025tene80i
takoid
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.
maccard
FTA:
> 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.”
takoid
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.
wyattshacker
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.
ygjb
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.
ygjb
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.
jeswin
Why should "freedom of speech" not be defended?
The way to combat hate is by educating people better, instead of banning swastikas or whatever.
ygjb
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.
Larrikin
Which is why the Nazis were defeated the first time by harsh OP eds in local newspapers.
Tolerance paradox, etc
throw0101d
> Why should "freedom of speech" not be defended?
One argument:
> 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.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> The way to combat hate is by educating people better, instead of banning swastikas or whatever.
This can lead to a human 'DoS' attack:
> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.[1][2]
drivingmenuts
Freedom of Speech is a core principle of our Constitution and it should be definded (or changed, if it becomes a problem).
But I will make an exception for any extremist will ill-intent. If that somehow makes me seem inconsistent, I'm OK with that.
Stopping racists is a public service. I'm OK with shutting them down hard.
dathinab
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.
inetknght
> They are happy to platform truly awful people as long as they get their cut.
You make it sound like that's a bad thing.
But it's not.
beepbopboopp
Using a company run by a Finkelstein to sell Swastika shirts is always a risky strategy Ye.
bdndndndbve
He's totally fine with Nazis, although he will use his identity to deflect criticism.
bdndndndbve
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.
muglug
Much easier to get them on a standard technicality than to do anything to arouse the attention of the far-right.
wyattshacker
Exactly.
ranger_danger
I thought it was impossible to prove a negative. What exactly would they have even accepted as this "proof" ?
grouchomarx
“The moment we realized this was not actually a real commerce practice, they weren’t actually engaging in authentic commerce, we pulled it down,”
Incredible quote
pelagicAustral
I cant be the only one that reads this and thinks it's peak satire... I understand it's not, I'm just struggling with the cognitive dissonance
FirmwareBurner
Can someone maliciously work around this by saying they're selling merch with Hindu symbolisms?
davidcbc
You can work around this by just actually selling swastika shirts instead of pretending to
FirmwareBurner
Major e-commerce platforms clearly won't allow that.
ZeWaka
That's a different symbol, however.
nemomarx
if you're using the Hindu one, sure? there's different traditional designs for it.
kylehotchkiss
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)
null
willio58
I doubt it considering the flurry of pro-Hitler tweets Kanye put out over the past few days (before getting banned from Twitter)
nelblu
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.
darth_avocado
Hindu swastika isn’t tilted 45 degrees. You probably proved that even someone who has seen them and understands differences, can still get it wrong.
ipsum2
Some people can't tell the difference:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-summer-camp-...
> 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.
nelblu
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.
kstrauser
I'm very sympathetic to both groups 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.
mvdtnz
The site was removed because it wasn't engaging in authentic commerce.
bananapub
this whole arc is really is the dumbest way for the cozy-for-some post-cold-war world to turn into full blown fascism and kleptocracy, jfc.
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?