Shopify Powers a Racist Group’s Online Store. It’s Not the First Time

If you’ve ever wanted a T-shirt, hoodie or baseball cap representing a racist Canadian group pushing for mass deportations, your purchase is just a few clicks away — all thanks to the e-commerce giant Shopify.

The Dominion Society of Canada is a group that advocates for an extreme far-right policy known as “remigration.” They propose to remove up to nine million people — as much as 21 per cent of Canada’s current population — by deporting immigrants as well as revoking birthright citizenship.

They’re also selling hoodies and T-shirts in a shop using the e-commerce platform Shopify.

Shopify, one of Canada’s largest companies by market capitalization, provides the infrastructure for online retailers to reach their customers. The business model has made its CEO one of the richest people in the country — but it hasn’t been without controversy, largely due to the company’s decisions to power online stores belonging to some questionable characters.

We don’t know how much (if anything) the Dominion Society has made off the site, though several members can be seen wearing the group’s gear in footage posted online. Shopify takes a cut of each sale, between 2.5 and 2.9 per cent, plus a 30-cent credit card processing fee, meaning the Canadian company could be profiting from merchandise that normalizes and funds a racist group.

The Tyee contacted Shopify for comment about the services it provides to the Dominion Society. In response, a spokesperson explained that Shopify is “an infrastructure provider, not the arbiter of what people can buy and sell, and we don't remove merchants over objections to their worldview.”

“Every merchant on Shopify is required to follow the law where they do business, and if they break it we take action up to and including termination,” the Shopify spokesperson said.

At the time this story was published, Shopify continued to power the Dominion Society merchandise store.

This is just the latest example of what extremism researcher Amarnath Amarasingam called Shopify’s “relationship to hate content,” which he said “has fluctuated for several years now.”

As its executives, particularly Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, are increasingly trying to shape Canadian public conversations and policies, it’s raising questions about what the men behind one of Canada’s largest companies stand for — and when they’re willing to sacrifice profit for public good.

Shopify’s CEO first felt the sting of a major public backlash in 2017, when people noticed Shopify was powering the online store belonging to the extreme right-wing U.S. outlet Breitbart.

Lütke resisted the backlash with a post on the blogging website Medium, which he titled “In Support of Free Speech.” While the post has since been deleted, the page was archived before it was scrubbed from the site.

“To kick off a merchant is to censor ideas and interfere with the free exchange of products at the core of commerce.