Not "engaging in authentic commerce" sounds like it wasn't taken down because of the swastikas, but because the shirts weren't actually for sale?

> Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday that the website’s owners “had an entire day” to prove they weren’t violating the company’s policies, “which did not happen.”

I'm not trying to say that was intentional/hostile or not, just that it just sticks out really significantly from the earlier days where it was more in line with "willing to see the reality of the country and not just a smoothed over view" (which is a sentiment shared across most polarization I can think of) and now is more about a label/badge about certain values.

Language is fascinating.

Shopify took down Yeezy, because it was listing a product he indicated he wasn’t actually going to ship.

B2B services companies generally won’t police content, because content moderation is highly subjective and companies care about the perceived reliability of vendors, especially business critical ones. While this particular instance might be obvious, the slippery slope does exist so companies will tend to avoid vendors who are anywhere near that slope.

The way to combat hate is by educating people better, instead of banning swastikas or whatever.

It's not enough to just depend on educating people - we can see that education hasn't been very effective, and education has been subverted in several countries, including the United States and Canada.

You say that as if there is some conscious decision to explicitly allow each and every instance of questionable speech like it's their job to police it.

Do you consider Cloudflare agreeing with the speech on 4chan by allowing them to use their services?

I take comfort in knowing that (many) companies understand they should not be the judge of what speech should be allowed, I see them merely as a conduit and not an arbiter. This is exactly why Section 230 exists in the US, it shields providers from what other people say or do when using their networks. And if we didn't have that, I think the Internet as it stands would be completely different.

Not sure what good you thought it was going to do to come into a thread about a US company, say they are defending free speech and then turn around and go "yea I don't believe in free speech".

I would die for their right to free speech even if I don't agree with what they say. Are you prepared to do the same for your beliefs?

Yes I do; it is a choice to profit by delivering services to different communities. Over and above being a good company and having lots of interesting technical challenges, one of the reasons I stayed at Fastly for nearly 5 years was because of the good neighbours practice, and the fact that the leaders at Fastly chose not to do business with companies that platform hate.

> Not sure what good you thought it was going to do to come into a thread about a US company, say they are defending free speech and then turn around and go "yea I don't believe in free speech".

Well, Shopify is a Canadian company, and I am Canadian, so I thought it might be useful to share a Canadian perspective.

> I would die for their right to free speech even if I don't agree with what they say. Are you prepared to do the same for your beliefs?

Yes. I enlisted in my countries military, and indicated my preference to join a peace keeping regiment because I believe that as someone who has the ability to stand up for and defend others, I should. I believe very strongly in Freedom of Expression, but when that expression turns to hate and advocating eugenics, genocide or any number of things that my country and my grand-parents fought against, well.. sometimes you have to punch Nazis... (or Hutu war criminals, or Bosnian war criminals, etc).

Are you referring to the anti-Israel protests on college campuses in the US?

Tolerance paradox, etc

One argument:

> The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945),[1] where he argued that a truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance. Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> The way to combat hate is by educating people better, instead of banning swastikas or whatever.

This can lead to a human 'DoS' attack:

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.[1][2]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

But I will make an exception for any extremist will ill-intent. If that somehow makes me seem inconsistent, I'm OK with that.

Stopping racists is a public service. I'm OK with shutting them down hard.

freedom of speech has many good and important aspects which must be protected

but there really is no reason to extend it to every kind of hate speech and implicit promoting white supremacy and genocide

not only is there no reason to tolerate it there are a lot of reasons to not tolerate it

I mean there are quit many examples from small scale to international scale showing how letting hate speech go unchecked leads to endless pain and suffering of innocent.

Defending spreading hate speech without any limit in a time where all this history is available just a few clicks away is either highly ignorant, or outright with evil intent.

And yes there is a gray area between speech which really should be protected and hate speech only doing harm. Seeking swastika T-shirt very clearly isn't in that area.

Lastly nothing prevents you to keep hate speech in check and also educate people better. Most (all?) EU member states do take educating people better at least slightly serious. But history has clearly shown that keeping hate speech in check is fundamental needed, too.

Something is quite messed up when it's a Kanye West selling this stuff. Not too many overtly Nazi pop stars in the US in the aftermath of WW II.

You make it sound like that's a bad thing.

But it's not.

Incredible quote

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-summer-camp-...

> A California summer camp tucked away in a woodsy pocket of the Silicon Valley abruptly canceled all summer sessions after several staff members quit over a controversy around a swastika symbol on one of the buildings.

> The camp administration explained in its letter that the house had three tiles, each about 12-by-12 inches, with Buddhist swastikas and a lotus embedded in them. When the home was constructed, the symbol would have been considered good luck.

1. It's an old symbol. Buddhists had it first, and I don't blame them for wanting to hang onto it.

2. Regardless of context, I don't want a picture of me on the Internet playing and having fun in front of a swastika. By the time you get to the part of the explanation that would show you're not actually a neo-Nazi, people will have stopped listening (if they ever did in the first place).

I don't think there are any unreasonable people in that story. It's just an awful situation.

Thing is, I will die for their right to free speech but I don't have to like what they say nor quench my right to free speech. Plus, when you're walking around with an 82nd Airborne combat patch and a Combat Infantry Badge you get to talk a lot of shit.

But in general IRL people tend to not humor someone trying to bypass rules by definition nitpicking if their intend is very clear. I mean there is a reason law tends to focus on outcome, over intend, over exact details of your actions. Through naturally if they need an excuse for their (in-) action then humoring definition nitpicking sometimes does the job.