Viewpoint: Shopify should sever ties with alt-right site Breitbart News
By Veronica Newbury
Shopify, the Ottawa-based e-commerce juggernaut, was recently thrown into the political ring of fire when the company announced it would not be cutting ties with Breitbart News, a far-right American news site and merchandise shop known for its racist and sexist views.
Formerly headed by Steve Bannon — now the chief strategist for U.S. President Donald Trump — Breitbart has been using Shopify’s platform for its online store.
Its merchandise includes T-shirts and beer cozies proclaiming support for Trump’s planned wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
The website has published articles with headlines like “There’s no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews,” and “Data: young Muslims in the West are a ticking time bomb, increasingly sympathizing with radicals, terror.”
Naturally, many progressive people are angry at Shopify for helping Breitbart sell its wares.
An online petition demanding Shopify cease doing business with Breitbart was circulated, collecting nearly 200,000 signatures. And yet Shopify has stood its ground, refusing to send Breitbart packing.
Shortly after the controversy broke, CEO Tobias Lütke issued a statement in defence of Shopify’s decision to keep Breitbart as a client. “Products are a form of speech, and free speech must be fiercely protected, even if we disagree with some of the voices,” Lütke wrote.
Centretown restaurant Union 613 recently announced it would be ending its relationship with Shopify until the company changes its stance.
But does Shopify really have a moral obligation to dissociate itself from Breitbart, a company accused of promoting racial prejudice and misogyny? From a purely business perspective, not really.
Shopify is a business, and as a business it needs to cater to a diverse range of consumers. The company’s mandate is to provide an accessible platform for other businesses to sell merchandise, not to take a political stance or to tell customers what they should or shouldn’t believe.
So, no. Shopify doesn’t have to sever ties with Breitbart. But the company probably should — especially if it’s going to appeal to free speech in its defence.
For one thing, the decision to continue doing business with Breitbart does not bode well from a PR standpoint.
A simple breeze through the comments below Lütke’s post at Medium reveals what appears to be a widespread dissatisfaction with Shopify’s rationale.
“Free speech is a right. A public platform is a privilege,” one commenter wrote.
There are also parts of Lütke’s argument that don’t quite hold up.
Shopify’s terms of service state that the company reserves the right 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.”
While the language of the company’s carefully-constructed policy protects it from being obliged to kick Breitbart off its platform, it leaves me scratching my head wondering, what could possibly be more “offensive” or “otherwise objectionable” than Breitbart?
Free speech aside, I don’t think anyone is questioning the media outlet’s potential to cause offence. And not just mild offence, but, ugly, society-dividing offence.
Choosing to waive the terms of your own service agreement in favour of protecting the freedom of a polarizing website — one that once published an article about the “glorious heritage” of the Confederate flag just days after a racially-motivated mass murder at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 — is simply saying you don’t believe Breitbart’s content is “objectionable” enough.
Adding further to the hyprocrisy, in January Shopify added its name to the list of companies in the technology sector opposed to Trump’s travel ban, an action that sends a clear message against intolerance.
The company is, consciously or not, contradicting itself and sending a confusing message to its direct customers and their millions of consumers.
If Shopify wants to stay in business with Breitbart, so be it. It’s within the company’s right to do so. But chalking it up to free speech doesn’t quite cut it.