The decision to continue to work with Breitbart aside, this post shows the failure of civics education in this country. > Products are a form of speech, and free speech must be fiercely protected, even if we disagree with some of the voices. The right to free speech that's protected in our constitution refers to speech being protected from the government . Nowhere in our constitution does it state that other individu…
The concept of freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction. You're of the misunderstanding that the First Amendment and the last ~300 years of judicial precedent somehow transcend this concept (QED: it doesn't). Not once does Lütke mention the First Amendment. You did that all on your own. More to the point, he isn't…
Yes!
> or societal sanction
No! This is absolutely not the case. If you call someone the N-word, you should expect to be treated as a racist by society. Call someone a fag and expect to be treated as a homophobe. Freedom of speech does not guarantee the right to speech without any consequence. The government can imprison, tax and has many other abilities not granted to Shopify. For that reason, dissenting speech must be protected from them in a way that's fundamentally different than the way it must be protected from Shopify. But non-governmental actors absolutely do have a role in guiding speech to be more civil and create the society we want to live in. We do that through social pressure rather than with force majeur. It's that crucial difference that requires protection from the government but not from Shopify.
> Not once does Lütke mention the First Amendment
Except that he does. He quotes the ACLU talking about speech protected by the first amendment:
... Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups
if they’re going to be preserved for everyone.