IN DEFENCE OF FREE SPEECH
Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke explains why, despite all the unhappy emails, his company won’t drop Breitbart.
Shopify powers the online stores of hundreds of thousands of businesses in the world. One of those is the store for Breitbart, a controversial right-wing website. This article is about why we have not kicked them off.
Shopify’s position doesn’t fit into a tweet. Reality doesn’t fit into 140 characters. The reasons we are continuing to host them are nuanced and require thought. It would be easy to kick off merchants we don’t like, and doing so would actually make our lives significantly easier. If you want to understand us, please read the entire article.
I have now received more than 10,000 emails, tweets, and messages saying the same thing: Stop hosting Breitbart’s online store. Shopify employees are facing similar pressure.
Shopify is an unlikely defender of Breitbart’s right to sell products. I’m a liberally minded immigrant, leading a predominantly liberal workforce, hailing from predominantly liberal cities and countries. I’m against exclusion of any kind — whether that’s restricting people from Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S., or kicking merchants off our platform if they’re operating within the law.
Commerce is a powerful, underestimated form of expression. We use it to cast a vote with every product we buy. It’s a direct expression of democracy. This is why our mission at Shopify is to protect that form of expression and make it better for everyone, not just for those we agree with.
People sell millions of products a day. Almost all of those are uncontroversial. We love the electric skateboards, the animal-friendly outerwear, and the pottery. But some are unsavoury and controversial, and that’s where we’re put to the test.
On a regular basis, we face pressure from groups who disagree with some of these merchants or products and want us to censor them. This has been a constant for as long as we’ve been around.
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.
Products are a form of speech, and free speech must be fiercely protected, even if we disagree with some of the voices. Our view is consistent with the position of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that we agree with:
“Over the years, the ACLU has frequently represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That’s because the defence of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they’re going to be preserved for everyone.”
On Nov. 8, the day of the U.S. election, the whole world got more black and white. People in the centre have been called upon to choose sides. In a way, my position is an appeal to preserve some of the grey 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.