
Why Shopify doesn't kick Breitbart off - haaen
https://medium.com/@tobi/in-support-of-free-speech-275d62670203
======
danpalmer
Free speech is a right, and something that the government must allow. People
and companies have no imperative to provide the same freedom on platforms they
control.

While I respect the decision to remain neutral, I have more respect for
companies that say no to hate on their platforms. There is no requirement for
them to provide a platform for it, and I think it's courageous for companies
to have human morals, too many don't.

~~~
greggman
Just paying devil's advocate but it seems by your logic all the phone
companies should be ok to monitor all conversations and ban anyone having a
hate converations. All email providers should be ok to scan email and ban
anyone for hate emails or any other topic they dislike. They're private
companies right?

The phone companies may be regulated as public utilities but most of my
friends don't use the phone company's voice services anymore. Instead they
call on Facebook Messenger or Line or WhatsApp which are not regulated as
public utilities.

I don't know where to draw the line. Kicking them off say youtube? Maybe.
Kicking them off the entire internet? I'm not so sure. Allowing them to stay
on the internet (if you agree banning them from the internet is going too far)
requires some companies to carry their content.

~~~
kennywinker
There is a way to carve out exceptions to corporations ability to limit free
speech. The cost of laying phone lines or setting up a network of cell towers
and buying bandwidth makes entering the phone market prohibitive. If even one
company bans your speech from their phone network, you are likely to be unable
to speak. Phone companies should be considered the infrastructure of speech,
and thus not be allowed to limit the types of converstions you have.

Shopify is just one of many ecommerce platforms. There are simple roll-your-
own ones as well. If they ban someone, there is no major impedements to
getting their speech out still.

Right now all I see is shopify profiting from hate, not defending free speech.
Brietbart can go set up opencart on a vps.

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dvfjsdhgfv
This is well said:

> 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.

~~~
maxerickson
What's the opposite side of ludicrous propaganda?

You don't even have to pick and choose, the headline story on the 'bart right
now:

[http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/20/source-
mc...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/20/source-mcmaster-
fails-to-brief-trump-before-thats-too-bad-error/)

It's not Trump's fault he doesn't do a lot of briefings and just says whatever
the hell whenever, it's the Whitehouse staff and NatSec Advisor!

~~~
Flush2017
Another kind of propaganda? E.g. can you please remind me how many genders
there exist today?

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dna_polymerase
It is just sad that they actually wrote a post about that. As long as it is
not clearly illegal stuff Breitbart should be able to sell their merch no
matter what idiotic positions they might have. That should not be something to
brag about but standard business practice, even for Silicon Valley.

~~~
phil21
Cutting unpopular industries/sites/businesses off from payment processing has
been a popular sport of activists behind the scenes since I've been in the
industry.

It's a huge chilling effect no one really discusses very much, and is why I
was originally so obsessed with the Bitcoin idea - finally a payment method no
one could subvert to force their political and moral ideology on you.

The level of censorship the typical banking partner (e.g. merchant account)
exerts on a business is probably the largest out of any vendor by an order of
magnitude - perhaps only shared in scale by telecommunications/hosting
provider.

------
mcbruiser3
since when is breitbart equivalent to hate speech? has anyone here even read
it? I have, and it looks like it's just a bunch of news that would be
interesting to conservative types. I see no evidence of "hate speech".

are you sure that this isn't just left wing propaganda trying to reduce the
influence of conservatives? don't forget, all of this is just a simple power
struggle, and we're the pawns.

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vim_wannabe
I remember watching the media report on Donald Trump's campaign speeches and
debates late 2015. It seemed crazy, how could he say all those things! Why
were the minorities getting beaten up at the rallies!

I became interested and downloaded a lot of them and proceeded to watch. There
was nothing there! Everything he said seemed to be straight out of 90s/early
2000s policies and campaign promises. Some dude spat on another dudes face and
got punched.

Now I'm wondering if I should read what is on Breitbart and Daily Stormer.

------
mankash666
In yesteryears, utilities were the domain of the government. However, big
internet companies are the utilities of today. Increased reliance on their
services makes them as powerful, or sometimes even more, than the government.

In this new world, companies need to recognize the importance of free speech
when it's within their right to control the same. I laud shopify for
acknowledging their power and place in the e-commerce world, and for doing the
right thing.

If corporations are the new government, then they should live by Othello's
saying - "I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your
Right to Say It"

~~~
throwawayjava
_> big internet companies are the utilities of today_

IMO this is a dangerous conflation.

Many large internet companies are monopolies. Anti-trust mechanisms should be
used to force competitive market places. But there are substantive differences
between being the far-and-away best option in a competitive market place, and
the sorts of things we typically call utilities.

This comment on a story about Shopify is even more disturbing. Amazon or
Facebook or Google... okay. But Shopify?! _Nothing_ about Shopify is utility-
like. Shopify isn't even a monopoly, let alone a natural one.

------
jkaunisv1
Personally I think the deeper reason they don't kick Breitbart off is because
they can't be seen to be vulnerable to pressure from activist campaigns. If
they kick off Breitbart, it sets a precedent for the next time an internet
shitstorm gets whipped up over a controversial organization.

------
dsfyu404ed
E-commerce is easy.

If it's not illegal or doesn't fit into one of a few categories that cause
legal headaches for the platform (porn, guns, etc) you can sell it. If people
don't like it they can just not buy it.

If you hate the presence of a particular seller so much then don't go to the
flea market.

~~~
icebraining
How does porn cause legal headaches for US-based platforms?

~~~
throwawayjava
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act)

~~~
icebraining
From your link: "The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds
of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009."

------
nrjames
I disagree with this in the context of their argument. If you own a business,
you have the right to make "moral code" decisions about how your business
operates. In the same manner that individuals who dislike big oil don't have
to purchase Exxon stock (even though they might profit from it), business
owners don't have to pander to clients that operate in a market they despise.
Writing it off as some grander definition of refereeing the world's "moral
code" is just a convenient boogeyman to hide behind.

The simple fact is that Shopify, as a business, supports Breitbart. This
article presents an inflated sense of importance of their role in policing the
world.

> 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.

~~~
kemitche
> If you own a business, you have the right to make "moral code" decisions
> about how your business operates.

They are making that decision. Their decision is to act as a service provider
that does not pass judgement on any users of their platform operating within
the law. There is nothing wrong with this decision - it is a non-decision.

I'm more perturbed by providers that choose to take a side. Those providers
are now implicitly morally approving of all remaining users of their platform.

~~~
ajamesm
No, that doesn't constitute implicit moral approval. We all understand that
platforms and providers can't police each individual user. That's a concern
about logistics, not moral consistency.

That said -- there are products that Shopify does (and would) kick a user for
selling. Shopify isn't neutral, in fact, they're saying Breitbart is
acceptable.

~~~
shkkmo
Do you not see the inherent difference between prohibiting the sale of whole
classes of goods and services, and prohibiting certain types of political
speech by your users?

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Do you not see the inherent difference..._

No. Things that get banned almost always have significant political content.

Homosexual content (not necc. porn) comes to mind as a perfect example of
"whole classes of goods and services" that are also very much political
speech. "obscene speech" (see The Howl trial) is another famous example of an
attempt to re-brand "political speech" as an apolitical "whole class of goods
and services".

Taking some class of controversial goods and services and branding it as "not
political" is just begging the question. It's saying "this thing is so
obviously bad that discussion of its acceptability is beyond the scope of our
current politics." IMO saying something is "beyond politics" is the ultimate
political judgement.

~~~
shkkmo
> No. Things that get banned almost always have significant political content.

If you look at list of banned goods and services, most of them are not
politically related, but are related to liability, abuse potential and
(probably) payment processor restrictions.

I'm not saying that banning whole classes of goods doesn't have an impact on
free speech.

Yet there is still a fundamental difference between having a list of
prohibited goods / services and removing a member selling allowed goods and
services because you don't like their politics.

The first one is banning the sale of pornographic products on your platform,
the second is banning the sale of (otherwise permissible) t-shirts by
pornography companies on your platform.

------
KevanM
Not sure I agree with their position.

Whether you see it as Breitbart paying them, or Shopify paying Breitbart; both
are profiting by the presence of the other party.

I guess it would take other major clients to start leaving the service to make
them change their minds. So if you wanted to pressure Shopify, petition the
other clients.

------
ajamesm
They frame it as "imposition of morality" though the issue is broader than
that, i.e. Breitbart's tendency to incitement and spreading disinformation.

Crying "free speech" over issues of incitement or violence is the bread-and-
butter of the alt-right, and I'm deeply curious as to why Shopify decided to
employ that tactic.

> 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.

This is bankrupt, morally and intellectually.

------
PeachPlum
Let's bake a cake.

------
mikeash
And yet Shopify Payments won't let you sell marijuana or adult products. So,
Nazis = cool, dildos = gtfo.

~~~
0x27081990
I don't read Breitbart (nor most media tbh), but I just skimmed through this
site and can't find anything related to national socialism. It just looks like
another right-wing news site, being that national socialism is a center-wing
political stance, I think it is incompatible in principle.

Do you have any link of them claiming to be nazis or taking nazis stances
about something? Or do you just call nazi anyone who disagrees with you? Not
trying to pick a fight, just honestly asking.

~~~
mikeash
Nazis are centrists now? What the fuck.

~~~
0x27081990
Maybe you're a bit confused about political ideologies. Check
[https://www.politicalcompass.org/test](https://www.politicalcompass.org/test)

~~~
mikeash
If you want to use your own version of "left" and "right" then you can put
Nazis anywhere you like.

~~~
0x27081990
Aren't you using your own version? The original meaning of left and right is
the French Revolution, where people who sat on the left wanted revolution and
people who sat on the right wanted to keep the status quo. People who sat in
the center wanted a little bit of both. Then the definition transitioned to
left being collectivism and right being capitalism.

But for some reason a good portion of academia (to not say most) labeled right
as authoritarian and violent, and left as humanitarian and progressive. Hell,
even Wikipedia and Google definitions says that national socialism is a far
right-wing movement. So I don't blame you, definitions are a bit messy

~~~
mikeash
I'm using the common version. It's not that the right is authoritarian and
violent and the left is humanitarian and progressive. It's that extremes on
_both_ sides are authoritarian and violent, but differently. (Nazis vs
Communists being the obvious example there.)

I actually think the 2D version discussed in your link makes a lot of sense
overall. But I think it's a mistake to label the horizontal axis as
"Left/Right." Just label it "Collectivist/Individualist" like the vertical is
labeled "Authoritarian/Libertarian."

------
moomin
Yet another guy who thinks he's a government entity. Refusing to do business
with someone isn't censorship, _it's speech_. No-one's campaigning to remove
Breitbart's license to do business, they're just saying Shopify shouldn't be
doing business with them.

If a guy says offensive stuff in a bar and keeps starting fights, sooner or
later you'll have two groups of people. The ones who don't want to hang around
with him any more, and the ones who are okay with his behaviour.

All of which, frankly, is pretty much covered by the obvious XKCD comic.

And yeah, there's plenty of grey in the world. But I'll let you in on a
secret: even the grey stuff doesn't like Breitbart.

~~~
shkkmo
>Yet another guy who thinks he's a government entity

Free Speech is more than just a legal right, it is an important social
institution. We impose stricter controls on government entities than we do on
business entities, but that doesn't mean that business entities don't have
huge effects of the freeness of speech in our culture.

>Refusing to do business with someone isn't censorship, _it's speech_.

It is censorship and it is also speech. Some types of this speech are not
legal, for example: Refusing to do business with someone based on their race
is illegal.

It's not entirely clear to me that we as a society have thought through the
consequences of making political discrimination wholey legal.

Do we allow businesses to blacklist customers based on political affiliation?

Do we allow businesses to blacklist customers who support abortion or gay
marriage?

Do we allow employers to fire you if you don't agree with them politically?

> No-one's campaigning to remove Breitbart's license to do business

You are campaigning to compel Shopify to say what you want and in doing so
impinge on the speech of another. This assaults not just Breitbart's freedom
of speech, but also Shopify's. While legal, this is also directly harmful the
freeness of speech in our society.

~~~
moomin
I think you're confusing campaigning with saying, and compulsion with
ostracism. You're not talking about free speech, you're talking about freedom
from consequences. If you truly believe all political speech should be
considered equal, I suggest you upvote this comment.

And yes, some forms of speech can be used to close down other speech. Online
harassment is an obvious example but I seriously doubt it's what you had in
mind.

Incidentally, the answer to your above questions is: in many states, actually,
they do. If that's something that concerns you, maybe campaign to make that
illegal.

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wellboy
As far as I know freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech does it?

Blatant fake news are also not freedom of speech, are they?

~~~
docdeek
As I understand it - at least in the US - hate speech is protected speech.
Inciting someone to commit a violent act or to otherwise break the law might
not be, but hate speech is protected speech.

~~~
wellboy
What do nazi ideologies fall under? They are illegal in Germany and not
protected by free speech no?

Furthermore, why is hate speech protected by freedom of speech, is it so that
dictators can't accuse people critisizing them of hate speech?

~~~
docdeek
>What do nazi ideologies fall under? They are illegal in Germany and not
protected by free speech no?

I believe in Germany you are correct, yes.

>why is hate speech protected by freedom of speech, is it so that dictators
can't accuse people critisizing them of hate speech?

In a decision on a 1st Amendment case Samuel Alito wrote:

"Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age,
disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of
our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the
thought that we hate.”"

I see legally protecting hate speech as the 'cost' of not having someone else
decide what counts as allowable speech.

I live in France where there are stricter limits to speech. Quoting Wikipedia
on French hate speech laws, French "laws forbid any communication which is
intended to incite discrimination against, hatred of, or harm to, anyone
because of his belonging or not belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an
ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, or a sexual orientation, or
because he or she has a handicap ."

That's all well and good for me...up until the point where someone starts
questioning what a nation is, for example. Or what an ethnicity is.

We also can't deny crimes against humanity and genocides here. I wouldn't want
to do so, but having that restriction on speech means that there is someone
charged with deciding whether something rises to the point of genocide (where
denial is illegal and punished by law) or 'merely' a mass killing (deny it all
you like). Given the choice between the French and American laws on hate
speech, I'd prefer living under the latter.

~~~
wellboy
I just had a look and in almost all western countries hate speech is forbidden
based on race, sexual orientation, gender, religion and is punishable by law
EXCEPT in the united states.

So what does that mean?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech)

~~~
oh_sigh
That the US has stronger freedom of speech protections?

