And no, that doesn't stand for “point of sale”…
Last Sunday during the Super Bowl, Kanye West aired ads on local stations in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Philadelphia in which he appeared sitting on a dentist's chair and directed viewers to visit his Shopify-powered apparel website, Yeezy-com. Within an hour of the ad going live, the website wiped all of its inventory except for one item: a $20 t-shirt featuring an image of a swastika.
Just days earlier, Kanye had posted on X, “I’m a Nazi,” alongside multiple posts supporting the actions of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who currently sits in jail for federal charges surrounding sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution.
Shopify removed the store on Tuesday, but subsequently faced backlash for taking 36 hours to do so, as well as for its generic statement which did not directly address the hateful product or provide it as the reason for the store's removal.
All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify.
I defended Shopify in a LinkedIn post that went semi-viral after Shopify President Harley Finkelstein left a “❤️” comment on it.
In the post I wrote:
I'm no Shopify apologist… and I'm also Jewish. So keep those two things in mind when you read this post…
I think that Shopify is getting unnecessary heat today over the Yeezy hate store. They removed the store in one business day.
I'd imagine that given the high profile of the erratic store owner and/or contracts in place outside of their standard TOS, legal had to be consulted before action was taken.
Could they have moved any faster? Sure. Maybe they will next time.
Could they have made a bigger statement about it? Sure, but what else is there to say other than what they said? “The merchant violated our terms so we removed the store.”
How much more attention does Shopify want to bring to this topic? Does Harley Finkelstein as a fellow Jew need to personally tell you that antisemitism is bad? Again?
Shopify took the right action, and they did it relatively swiftly.
I went on to reject the conspiracy that Shopify kept the t-shirt online for longer so that it could profit from the transactions. I wrote:
The idea that a platform like Shopify cares so much about their slice of a 2.9% payment processing fee on any one particular store — let alone an antisemitic store featuring a swastika — that they'd keep it up for an extra day to profit from the transactions…. well, the notion seems absurd to me.
Shopify isn't counting pennies, especially ones that cost them dollars in brand reputation.
Then I wrote that we should point the heat where it belongs — at Kanye's antisemitic ass — and anyone else who bought those t-shirts (if they actually sold).
Some readers agreed with my assessment of the situation. Kimberly DeCarrera of Springboard Legal commented, “1 day is moving very fast here.”
Others disagreed that Shopify moved fast enough, blasted the company for not directly speaking out against West's actions, and pointed to other examples of Shopify permitting hateful content on its platform.
All are fair points in my opinion.
West has since moved his website off of Shopify and replaced it with a landing page that reads, “Yeezy stores coming soon,” with the letters “I” and “N” shaped in a way that resembles a swastika. West later deactivated his X account, with his last tweet expressing gratitude to Elon Musk for allowing him to ‘vent'. It was also reported that West and his wife Bianca Censori are headed towards a divorce. Might it have anything to do with him being a self-proclaimed Nazi?
On one hand, I hate to bring more attention to Kanye West, as perhaps it's best to suffocate him with lack of attention. On the other hand, it's my obligation to report major industry news — and this issue with his Shopify store certainly made headlines last week.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Should Shopify have removed the store faster and made a more direct statement addressing the issue? Or were their actions sufficient? Hit reply and let me know or join the conversation on my original LinkedIn post.