The headline is offensively misleading. A boycott, or severance of commercial relationship, is not censorship. It's people using commerce to express their values, which is also a form of free speech. Unlike true censorship, which comes from the government, both parties are free to seek other partners in promoting their products or messages. Lütke's attempt to paint this as a defense of free speech is disingenuous, and his attempt to portray anyone who disagrees as a censor is downright dishonest.
[edit: "refuses to censor" seems to be a local modification to the original headline, which is definitely supposed to be against the rules]
> Lütke's attempt to paint this as a defense of free speech is disingenuous
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."
I don't see the two as being equivalent. For one thing, the contractual issues involved in the two cases are quite different. For another, one case could be considered to have involved criminal activity while the other clearly does not. On the other side of the ledger, Visa/MC enjoy a level of monopoly power that nobody in this case does. Those are just too many differences for a comparison to be very informative. I'm slightly inclined to say Visa/MC's actions were wrong, but not on that basis. The principle still stands. It also stands regardless of whether I or anyone else applies it consistently in disparate cases. Legal severance of a commercial relationship is still not censorship, and it does not harm anyone's right to free speech. Denying people that manner of expressing themselves, on the other hand, does abridge free speech.
That's not censorship, and as such is not "consistent with the position of the ACLU". In fact the ACLU has supported boycotts, which is what it would be.
Refusing to voluntarily engage in commerce is hardly censorship. All this post is saying is "We're totally fine with neo-Nazis, so long as we make some money from them."
A principled boycott is not censorship, it is further free expression. Shame on shopify for abandoning principles in favor of profit.
No but I don't think they should be legally required to process payments if they don't want to. I found other payment methods where I could though and did what little I could to oppose that decision.
Is this a serious question? It should be evident why it's okay to ostracize an ideology founded on the belief in genocide of "lesser" people. While some interpretations of Islam lead to violence, the same can be said about probably any religion, and Islam is not foundationally rooted in violence.
If you legitimately can't tell the difference between a genocidal ideology and a religion then I cannot continue this conversation.
Islam (like any religion) is based on the idea that this religion is better than any other religion (or belief system, like atheism). Nazism is based on the idea that being white/Aryan is better than others.
If this is true for any religion, as you claim, then why the inordinate focus on Islam? It seems like bigotry against Muslims is the most likely explanation.
Also claims of being the "one true religion" no not inherently incite genocide, whereas Nazism does.
In principle, it's the same for any religion - I don't think that discrimination on the basis of religion is any different from discrimination on the basis of any opinion (not that Jewish can be an ethnicity as well as religion). However, religions such as Judaism and Christianity don't punish heretism with death, and in general their proponents seem to be much less radicalized than many of the proponents of Islam (there are exceptions, of course - e.g. Mormons or Hasidic Jews). I'd guess Christianity was also similar before enlightenment, and sometimes even after it!
I support their views on free speech, but as a matter of conscience, principle, and (more cynically) optics, they should donate all proceeds they make off of Breitbart or neo-nazi orders to civil liberties/rights organisations like the ACLU (which they mention in their post).
Should Apple donate the profits of every Macbook sold to neo-Nazis? How do you identify them?
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.
These are neo-nazis buying products from a neo-nazi publication that happens to use Shopify for their online store. They're not going to opt-in to an ACLU donation. What the GGP is proposing is that Shopify take their cut of the transaction and donate it to the ACLU.
Funny how similar argument is used by white nationalists to assert that they have a right not to do business with minorities. The mindsets of far left and far right are oddly similar.
You are walking around one day when you overhear someone accosting someone else. You run over to witness the accoster shouting vicious racial, religious, and/or sexual epitaphs at the accosted. You interrupt them and ask what's going on. It's clear the two don't know each other, and the accosted, who seems in shock, says he/she was just going about his/her day when this person noticed something about his/her appearance and started screaming. The accoster does not dispute this, and indeed, as soon as you've stopped asking questions, resumes accosting.
If you respond to this situation by any action (other than smiling and walking away or joining in the accosting), you are demonstrating intolerance for the accoster. Even simply trying to reason with him/her about his/her beliefs demonstrates some level of intolerance. But you feel sympathy for the accosted, you don't share the views of the accoster, and you want to help in some way. This is known as the paradox of intolerance and it's a challenging philosophical issue.
The argument against Shopify that is being made here is that the behavior and actions of Breitbart and similar groups and publications bring about an atmosphere that leads to intolerance towards minorities. Or, if you prefer something more concrete, a store in Indiana refusing to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple demonstrates intolerance towards homosexuals. What can we do to help or make them stop being intolerant? How can we respond to this intolerance without demonstrating intolerance ourselves? Or is intolerance of intolerance a moral obligation?
These examples just show that 100% tolerance, or tolerance of all ideas, equally, is a fairly tale proposition, not practical, and not conducive to well-functioning society. I like the concept of fuzzy-tolerance: try to understand where the accoster is coming from. Maybe some of his ideas have merit, while clearly others do not. Society should be in a constant tug-of-war, or re-negotiation, between tolerance of some ideas and intolerance of other ideas. The same thing happens, on a smaller scale, in your own mind.
Well, it's a fact whichever side uses it: refusing to do business with someone is not, by definition, censorship. In which cases it's right or wrong is a matter for debate, but it doesn't serve that debate to incorrectly call it censorship in order to benefit from the stong negative connotations of that word.
ANTIFA stands for the elimination of fascists, i.e. people who want to exterminate minorities.
BLM stand for bringing the police who shot notably innocent black people to justice.
Richard Spencer and the Fascist-Right have openly proposed and spoken in great depth about the sterilization and or extermination of PoC, Jews, etc. and how exactly to achieve it.
BLM leadership condemned the shooting. Googling "BLM + racism" mostly results in opponents of BLM calling them racist without backing up their arguments.
I find it odd that this needs to be either a post or something the community talks about. It'd be like an article titled "Local gas station provides gas to Nazis"
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.
Being a Nazi is a priori violent. They have declared an intent to commit genocide by subscribing to that ideology. They ought to be excluded from society at every turn, because their goal is the destruction of our society and the mass murder of our peers.
The problem with this argument is that everybody can be called a Nazi. The only people who're using the word "Nazi" to describe "Breitbart" seriously are those who completely disrespect the millions of actual victims of the Nazi regime.
OK, so I would and have made the argument that brietbart is Nazism rebranded, since identifying as a Nazi is unacceptable these days (but decreasingly so it would seem).
However, there are far more clear examples of Nazis, like Richard Spencer, who writes pieces on the best way to genocide the black race and things like that. You do a disservice to the people they are harming by refusing to acknowledge that actual Nazis exist, are recently emboldened, and are gaining state power in some cases.
Crazy people can be as crazy as they want, as long as they don't harm others. But restricting the freedom of speech is a slipery slope that I want to avoid for all costs, lest people that are not Nazis start being called Nazis and are silenced.
This [1] is an article about what real Nazis are like Ipossibly simlar to Spencer, but definitely not similar to Trump).
If they want to prove it's about principles over profit, they could donate profits from the Breitbart account to the ACLU. Until they do that, they are allowed to work with whomever they like, but they can't take the moral high ground.
Hacker news users were all up in arms when US financial giants VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, the Bank of America and Western Union engaged in a banking blockade against WikiLeaks. The argument was that these companies should be neutral in their dealings.
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.
No, freedom of speech refers to the -ability- to speak freely. The _1st amendment_ refers to the government. If, after speaking out against abuses by your employer, you find yourself fired and blackballed from any decent job due to corporate collusion, your freedom of speech is harmed, even though the government never got involved.
As a comment on the post notes, Shopify already "censors" certain viewpoints. From their TOS:
"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.
The decision to continue to work with Breitbart aside, this post shows the failure of civics education in this country.
> 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.
The concept of freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction. You're of the misunderstanding that the First Amendment and the last ~300 years of judicial precedent somehow transcend this concept (QED: it doesn't).
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.
> freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship
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.
Well sure. But if your policy really is "anything that's legal" then there's no need to CYA. The only reason you'd have that clause in the first place is if you thought you might want to remove legal but offensive content.
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....
The CYA is there in case the policy changes for some reason.
It's kind of like those "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" signs you see in mom and pop shops. Just because they reserve the right doesn't mean they're going to exercise it.
There's a difference between a blanket CYA like that which is totally general, and a version that calls out specific reasons like this.
Would you consider a "We reserve the right to refuse service to black people" clause to be a benign CYA, or would you consider that maybe this clause is in conflict with a supposed policy of no racial discrimination?
In that particular case, I reckon such a clause would run afoul of various regulations prohibiting discrimination against a protected class (specifically, a racial/ethnic minority). Thus, there's no "right to refuse service to black people" to reserve.
That aside, my point is that this is a very common clause for online businesses, and the existence of such a clause - again - does not mean it has to be enforced. Plenty of companies add all sorts of things to their terms of service / privacy policies / EULAs / etc. to cover all sorts of contingencies, and this seems very ordinary and mundane in that context.
https://xkcd.com/1357/ makes it seem like it'll be your peers that get your message silenced, but what if it's some board of directors for a conglomerate, that dislikes any attention to the environmental impact of their industrial pig farms/how much they profited from post-war contracts after the most recent invasion/their push for privatization of water sources?
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.
I don't like Breitbart, but I believe Shopify is making the right call, for a long list of reasons.
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.
Being liberal doesn't mean that you block everything that the other side is doing. It's also about being open and accepting to others and their views. Shopify did the right thing here.
Being liberal does not require accepting Nazis. I will defend their right to hold their views and say what they want, but they have no right to do business with a particular e-commerce site.
The US eagle has its wings going up, not straight sideways. And the head is pointed to the eagle's right, not the left. (This is also the difference between the reichsadler, which is a more generic symbol of Germany, and the parteiadler, which is a Nazi symbol: the riechsadler's head points to the eagle's right, while the parteiadler's head points left.)
I think the shape is quite dissimilar to either (e.g. the Nazi one has legs and no tail). I wanted to agree with you on the head thing, but it seems that Nazis used both directions... I'm not sure I'd call the Reichsadler a "generic symbol of Germany" if it was used during the Third Reich...
The reichsadler goes back a long way and has been used in other times. That particular style appears to be used in the third reich, but the distinction remains: the right-pointing head signifies "Germany," and the left-pointing head signifies "NSDAP."
In any case, that shirt design screamed "Nazi!" to me the moment I saw it. I didn't set out looking for Nazi symbols, either, I was just browsing to see if there was anything that might be considered offensive. I was rather surprised that they would be so brazen. I can understand if you don't think it's sufficient, but I do.
"If for no other reasons than manners and aesthetics, we ought to think about shoving the next generation [of gays] back into Narnia."
Yes, I know Milo is gay, doesn't mean this isn't advocating violence against a group of people, fitting most definitions of hate speech. I feel dirty linking to the article but you can google it for the source.
This [1] is a pretty tongue-in-cheek article (the quip about anal sex was particularly funny), but given that his main point seems to be that gays are smarter than average, so they should have more kids, I just cannot possibly interpret the above quote (or any other part of the article) as advocating violence...
Milton Firedman's most famous work is Capitalism and Freedom and yet within that work, he completely rejects Hollywood blacklists (or "boycotts" if you prefer). If you consider his main point is that under communism, people are un-free, it seems odd that he would sympathize with avowed members of American communist party, who would ultimately like to bring communism to the US, and in Friedman's eyes, result in societal catastrophe. Doubly so given the power of persuasion that Hollywood writers wield. So why does he reject the ability of studio execs to simply exercise their freedom of association, and not contract with blacklisted writers?
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.
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".
>implying Wikipedia is the authority on freedom of speech
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.
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.
Shopify somehow arbitrarily intermingles an "objective" point of view (deferring the moral judgment to the law) and a "normative" point of view ("We need to protect the free speech"). I think the very statement and conduct of Spotify in fact demonstrates the hypocrisy (i.e. performative contradiction): "We are liberals who do not think it is okay what Breitbart does." vs. "It is okay what they do since it is within the bounds of law"
I think they simply want to be neutral. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. I think the average person appreciates that most of their vendors are neutral.
Imagine if your ISP or your bank took a moral stance on everything?
Do you ask the guy at the hot dog stand what his position is on trade policy? Or the folks who bag your groceries how they feel about police brutality? Do you only purchase from Amazon vendors who make it clear that they support increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year? Do you only buy TVs from companies that back legalization of marijuana? Do you only make bids on eBay for products sold from countries who support human rights progress? I mean you pay taxes on those products, which support those nations.
This actually increases my desire to use Shopify, really. Not because I like Breitbart (I consider it to be drivel like most other news sites), but rather because if even they won't be booted off Shopify, it's highly unlikely that I would be. Shopify therefore looks like a very reliable and safe choice regardless of political viewpoints.
If the argument is making money off of neo nazis is about protecting free speech then you cant get upset when customers exercise their free speech to not use your product.
I wish more businesses would simply be that. A business. I don't want to hear about your moral superiority, because it's a race with no finish line. I don't care what a burger joint's position on world economics is, you sell burgers. I don't care what the tech industry has to say about immigration, you sell software. Nor Nike when they just sell shoes, or Coca-Cola when they just sell soda. Chick-fil-A shouldn't be selling traditional values and Oreo shouldn't sell gay rights. Shut up and sell your product. And guess what, it's far less controversial that way. Let people cast their vote, not corporations.
It depends on the laws and regulations of the relevant jurisdictions. If it's not illegal, then it shouldn't be restricted, IMO, but that's ultimately up to the bank in question.
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.
It's an abuse of HN to use it primarily for political or ideological battle. Since you've ignored our repeated requests to stop doing that, we've banned your account.
HN exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity. We can't be both that and a political battlefield, much as one can't go hiking in a forest fire: the one destroys the other.
Occasional flareups are unavoidable, but when an account begins to use HN primarily for political battle, that clearly violates the intended use of the site.
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.
Please bear with me, as I'm honestly having a hard time figuring out what you mean here.
Your guidelines don't cover obvious bias in the headline as it exists without modification.
Does this mean that you think the actual article title "In Support of Free Speech" includes obvious bias? Or that the title submitted by 'jletroui, "Shopify refuses to censor Breitbart", includes obvious bias?
If the former, I don't see that it's egregiously biased. It appears to be an accurate representation of what the author describes in the piece. It's definitely not biased enough to warrant changing the title.
If the latter, I agree with the guidelines: the article title should stand unless it's clearly link bait, which I don't think this is. I think the modified title definitely editorializes and adds the bias of the submitter, which is definitely against the guidelines.
As an aside, these aren't my guidelines any more than they are yours. They're the site guidelines.
It's clearly a political piece, written from a particular point of view, so in that sense you could consider the piece biased. The title accurately represents the intent of the piece.
For the title to be biased in the sense that it requires modification would mean that it is in some way either misrepresenting the piece (i.e., click bait) or misrepresenting facts. "In Support of Free Speech" is doing neither. If you're of the opinion that that Shopify's stance is wrong, that's fine, but that doesn't mean that the title of the piece is wrong or biased in a way that requires updating. Shopify's position is one where people disagree, as is abundantly clear from this (and similar) threads.
At this point it's pretty clear we're at best talking past each other, and as there's not much else I have to say on this topic, I'll leave it at that.
To boot, on a prior subject - give me a font that works in BRAILLE for capitalization, please.
Because most of the traffic which I direct to YOU is from BLIND PEOPLE - in which my ALL CAPS is the ONLY thing they can discern as NOTHING exists for italicization font-wise in that domain.
Thanks for clarifying the context of the prior comment. I think this may be something you'd like to email the mods about (at hn@ycombinator.com). This isn't a domain I have any experience in. Back in the day, I read pieces on accessibility by Joe Clark[0] with interest, and had hoped by now the tech had reached a point where elements such as <i> would be interpreted by Braille devices. I'm sorry to hear that doesn't seem to be the case.
.svg){kind=link}
_(andere).svg/1280px-Parteiadler_der_Nationalsozialistische_Deutsche_Arbeiterpartei_(1933–1945)_(andere).svg.png){kind=link}
[edit: "refuses to censor" seems to be a local modification to the original headline, which is definitely supposed to be against the rules]