By Cindy Harper – Reclaim The Net
Shopify has reintroduced restrictions on certain types of merchandise, targeting what it calls “hateful content.”
This marks a significant shift back toward censorship, though the company has avoided framing it that way.
The change comes more than a year after Shopify eliminated similar content bans in what was then seen as a move toward supporting free expression in commerce.
Recently, the company updated a help page related to its Shop app and payment system to include a ban on products promoting “hateful content, violence, gore, profanity, or offensive content.”
This revision, made sometime after May, and noticed by Bloomberg, applies specifically to the Shop sales channel.
While Shopify’s main platform-wide acceptable use policy still does not include a hateful content clause, this new rule effectively reintroduces content control through a different path.
The company had previously removed its ban on hateful content in July 2024.
That decision appeared consistent with CEO Tobi Lütke’s long-standing defense of open commerce.
In a 2017 blog post, Lütke wrote, “commerce is a powerful, underestimated form of expression.” He went on to say, “We don’t like Breitbart, but products are speech and we are pro free speech,” and added, “To kick off a merchant is to censor ideas…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?”
Rather than restoring the original company-wide policy, Shopify has now imposed restrictions within a specific tool. This segmentation allows the company to present itself as a neutral platform while still controlling what merchants can sell. In practice, it results in censorship through back-end enforcement.
The use of vague terms like “offensive” and “hateful” gives corporations wide authority to define acceptable speech according to their own shifting standards. This raises a fundamental issue for anyone who values freedom of expression. If major platforms can decide which messages are allowed to appear in the marketplace, they become gatekeepers of public discourse without accountability.