Interesting editorializing of the headline on this post.
Perhaps being supportive of people who have called for the extermination of black people and other minorities?
Don't censor people and play into their victim complex. Treat them the exact same way you would anyone else and if you can't convince them through argument that they are wrong then you have nothing to stand on.
Why of course they do. A secular, open society means you can have whatever opinion you like, as long as it is peaceful, and you can participate just like anyone else. How else would you want it?
Modern activists seem quite odd to me. In the states, at least, you have the right for free and open political support to seek redress for your grievances. That is, something's not right about society or the government, so you use persuasion to argue your case to the rest of us.
But that's not what's happening. Instead it looks a lot more like economic warfare. Person A, B, and C are wrong. They must be punished. There's not the usual outreach of persuading others that we've traditionally had. It's much more about being in the right club.
A principled boycott is not censorship, it is further free expression. Shame on shopify for abandoning principles in favor of profit.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/317248-dnc-boots-candid...
I would be very careful what I wished for.
[edit: "refuses to censor" seems to be a local modification to the original headline, which is definitely supposed to be against the rules]
Is it?
"To kick off a merchant is to censor ideas and interfere with the free exchange of products at the core of commerce. When we kick off a merchant, we’re asserting our own moral code as the superior one. But who gets to define that moral code? Where would it begin and end? Who gets to decide what can be sold and what can’t? If we start blocking out voices, we would fall short of our goals as a company to make commerce better for everyone. Instead, we would have a biased and diminished platform."
Almost all public speaking these days is done on private platforms, with ever fewer companies controlling them. Without them, almost no-one will hear you. The 1st amendment is just a legal codification of the broader goal of the free exchange of ideas. This goal is harmed by private censorship as well, even if it doesn't break the 1st amendment.
Freedom of speech refer's to a government's responsibility to protect freedom of speech. Private organizations are not held to that same standard.
This is why websites can choose their advertisers and why reddit can ban a subreddit.
Shopify should censor Breitbart.
I actually agree with you that Freedom of Speech does not compel any 3rd party to provide a platform for that speech. Shopify is perfectly within it's rights to deny a platform for anyone it chooses. However, I feel that's a race to the bottom. You have to be comfortable with companies discriminating against organizations you agree with as well.
> Products are a form of speech, and free speech must be fiercely protected, even if we disagree with some of the voices.
The right to free speech that's protected in our constitution refers to speech being protected from the government. Nowhere in our constitution does it state that other individuals and businesses need to support the speech of others. It's a common misunderstanding of the first amendment. You could argue that by not censoring speech you find distasteful, you're adhering to the principles of the first amendment that people should be able to say whatever they choose without reprisal. But you could just as easily argue that in refusing to support speech you find harmful to this country, you're exercising your own constitutionally-protected right to freedom of expression. The important point is that the first amendment protects both Breitbart and anyone refusing to work with Breitbart from government punishment or silencing of that speech. And, in what might be more relevant to Shopify, the first amendment also protects anyone who wishes to advocate for a boycott of Shopify.
They would have had a stronger argument if they talked about discrimination. Their decision shares more in common with the decisions that other businesses have made to discriminate against people by not serving them. The oft-publicized example is religious bakers that won't make wedding cakes for gay couples. The difference being that what Breitbart is doing does not make them part of a protected class.
Not once does Lütke mention the First Amendment. You did that all on your own. More to the point, he isn't wrong in what he's saying. You're having a difficult time agreeing with him because your civics education prevents you from thinking beyond what was written on a nearly 300 year old document and you probably believe that Breitbart is the next Stormfront. Perhaps you should read something more modern, like Captain America #275 pg. 20.
Yes!
> or societal sanction
No! This is absolutely not the case. If you call someone the N-word, you should expect to be treated as a racist by society. Call someone a fag and expect to be treated as a homophobe. Freedom of speech does not guarantee the right to speech without any consequence. The government can imprison, tax and has many other abilities not granted to Shopify. For that reason, dissenting speech must be protected from them in a way that's fundamentally different than the way it must be protected from Shopify. But non-governmental actors absolutely do have a role in guiding speech to be more civil and create the society we want to live in. We do that through social pressure rather than with force majeur. It's that crucial difference that requires protection from the government but not from Shopify.
> Not once does Lütke mention the First Amendment
Except that he does. He quotes the ACLU talking about speech protected by the first amendment:
... Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups
if they’re going to be preserved for everyone."Instead of imposing our own morality on the platform, we defer to the law. All products must be legal in the jurisdiction of the business."
Compare that to the terms of service:
"We may, but have no obligation to, remove Store Content and Accounts containing content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Service."
If their entire policy is to defer to the law, why do they reserve the right to remove content for all these other reasons? Maybe they've changed their mind and haven't gotten around to codifying the new policy?
I took a look around their store to see if the objection was purely based on their views, or if there were offensive products. I came across a t-shirt which puts "E Pluribus Unum" inside an eagle insignia that is clearly the Nazi parteiadler minus the swastika part. I think it would be reasonable to say that this is offensive and possibly threatening, although no doubt perfectly legal in most places.
(This is not my first experience with surprise parteiadlers. I once got a free pair of sunglasses with a contact lens exam which turned out to be from BOY London, whose logo is the parteiadler minus the swastika. I exchanged them and suggested to that store that they might want to stop carrying merchandise with Nazi symbols on them. They were rather shocked to discover it. Until then, I didn't know that I had to check for Nazi symbols on stuff!)
Beyond that, I dislike this idea that picking and choosing with whom you do business is "censorship." This isn't speech, it's commerce. You're helping to fund these guys. Breitbart absolutely has the right to free speech, but they have no right to sell their wares through whatever platform they choose. If Shopify chose not to send money to these crypto-Nazis, it would not be an act of censorship. Their words would still be available to anyone who chooses to obtain them, Shopify just wouldn't be helping anymore.
Imagine if someone made a big deal about being inclusive of all races, but their TOS said, "We reserve the right to kick out black people." Nothing says they have to exercise that right....
> When we kick off a merchant, we’re asserting our own moral code as the superior one. But who gets to define that moral code?
Well, who do you want to define your moral code? Do you want to define your own moral code, or do you want Breitbart to define your moral code?
Imagine if your ISP or your bank took a moral stance on everything?
Should _companies_ define moral code or _people?_
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_speech...
From: "'Freedom of speech' is the concept of being able to speak freely without censorship. It is often regarded as an integral concept in modern liberal democracy."
To: "'Freedom of speech' is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction."
Note how retaliation and censorship might no longer be considered an attack on free speech, if done by private individuals or non-government entities. Also, free speech is apparently no longer "an integral concept in modern liberal democracy".
None of this is censorship, because Breitbart may still sell their merchandise using other storefronts and have not been impeded from publishing their authors' work.
Pragmatically speaking, if both are legal, then both provide a relatively safe return on any investment made; both are very big (and growing) industries, for better or worse.
[P]lease use the original title, unless it is misleading or link bait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
When the mods are aware that a title has been unnecessarily editorialized, from what I've observed they always update the title, either back to the original or to something conforming to the guidelines in the case of egregiously bad original titles.
If you see a title that's been editorialized, make a comment (as others have done here), and if it's something you feel particularly strongly about, contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/power-boycott?width=7...
A more accurate title would be "Shopify refuses to stop working with Breitbart".
Edit: jszymborski beat me to make this comment
"We may, but have no obligation to, remove Store Content and Accounts containing content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Service."
So they're actually saying "We don't find Breitbart violating the moral code as set in our TOS". This is not about free speech.
Instead of focusing on Breitbart and giving it undue attention, we should all be listening to each other. Not listening-to-reply, but listening-to-understand.
The problem in Friedman's eyes is that this boycott reduces to collusion. And under collusion, the benfits of free market dry up: for example, in the free market you can shop your script, no matter who you are, and if your product is good, you could make a living out of it. When firms collude to establish acceptable political beleifs as a pre-condition to an economic exchange, you have reduced the economic freedom of everyone who is not wealthy enough to establish a movie studio for themselves. In effect, you have by-passed democracy ("one person, one vote") and moved to [benevolent] oligarchy ("one chairman, one vote"). As the old saying goes - you're freedom to swing your elbows ends where my nose begins, and so too with economic association. If you would starve a man until he renounced his political preferences - even if you deem them antithetical to the good of society - you're no better than Stalin.
On November 8th, the day of the US election, the whole world got more black and white.
People in the center have been called upon to choose sides. In a way, my position
is an appeal to preserve some of the gray in the world. All solutions necessarily
have to come from the middle ground. No progress happens when ideas are censored
and everyone sorts into one of two camps. The world is a nuanced and complicated
place. Let’s accept that and use rational discourse to make the world — and commerce —
better for everyone.