The real reason Shopify refuses to adopt a hate speech policy

Shopify is coming under increasing pressure to stop doing business with Breitbart, the white nationalist website of Steve Bannon and the alt-right. After thousands of brands, including most major corporations, have cut ties with Breitbart and ad networks have dropped them because of hate speech violations, Shopify is now Breitbart’s single largest source of income and is an essential part of Breitbart’s 2017 European expansion strategy.

Shopify is becoming known as one of the only remaining companies that continues to do business with the site, and employees are getting frustrated. Buzzfeed reported last week that Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke was “dismissive” of his employees’ efforts to adopt a hate speech policy. Meanwhile, the hashtag #DeleteShopify has started trending on Twitter.

An anti-immigrant beer holder in the Shopify Breitbart store

Shopify’s only response has been to claim they are a “common carrier” like a internet provider or a water company. A Shopify spokesperson told MetroNews, “Shopify is a common carrier, which means that if a merchant’s business and the products it sells are legal in the jurisdiction where it is operating, the merchant is permitted on Shopify.”

This is an easily disproven argument that’s simply designed to obscure Shopify’s refusal to adopt a hate speech policy, as most companies already have. Here’s why:

1. Shopify already has terms of service that make it clear that they are not a common carrier and do not follow the policy claimed above. In VICE’s recent coverage of #DeleteShopify, they report that the Shopify TOS gives Shopify the right to stop doing business with any company that they deem “offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.”
2. Shopify earning money from Breitbart by providing a webstore service has nothing to do with free speech. Ending their business relationship would not prevent Breitbart from publishing their hate speech and it wouldn’t prevent Breitbart from selling products on their website. No one would be silenced.
3. Nearly every major company that provides services online in exchange for money has a hate speech policy, and increasingly they also have fake new policies. This includes ad networks, publishing platforms, social media, email services, and more — companies that, unlike Shopify, actually provide communication-related (and that means speech-related) services. Giving someone access to publish content on Facebook is much more closely tied to free speech and freedom of expression than a web store, and even Facebook has hate speech policies in place.

If Shopify wants to ignore their existing TOS covering objectionable content and if Shopify wants to avoid adopting a hate speech policy, they should be honest and say why they disagree with the hundreds of major online service providers that have adopted hate speech protections for their services.

Which brings us to their real reason, and it’s quite simple: Shopify doesn’t want to lose revenue by dropping Breitbart as a customer and upsetting the alt-right. Shopify also runs the web store for the Donald Trump campaign and they are worried that once they take responsibility for hate speech, they might have to do it again.