Tech Won't Save Us - Shopify’s Right-Wing Inner Circle w/ Luke LeBrun & Rachel Gilmore

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Luke LeBrun and Rachel Gilmore to discuss Shopify's connection to right-wing politics, through its interpersonal connection to a far-right news outlet and its reluctance to enforce its content policy on users selling hateful merchandise through their platform. Luke LeBrun is the editor of PressProgress and Rachel Gilmore is an independent journalist.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Luke reported on Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian’s involvement in and funding of a right-wing Canadian “news” website called True North.Rachel reported on Shopify’s decisions not to disable support for stores that sell fraudulent goods and promote hate that’s in violation of their Acceptable Use Policy. She recently pointed out a series of stores Shopify still supports that sell Nazi memorabilia.Last year, an anonymous former Shopify worker spoke out about the right-wing culture at the company. Rachel confirmed the person had worked for Shopify.In 2022, Tobi Lutke was granted a “founder’s share,” guaranteeing him 40% voting power. 46% of shareholders voted against the proposal.Shopify found itself in the spotlight in 2021 when employees found a noose emoji had been added to the company’s Slack system.Shopify President Harley Finkelstein has been publicly opposing plans to raise taxes on capital gains. Only 0.13% of Canadians will be paying more tax under the plan.Some right-wing figures in Canada deny the truth of the residential schools.Support the show

A lot of these tech bros lean back on free speech arguments to absolve themselves of responsibilities for the world that they are having a huge hand in creating. Because money is a huge driver for people. And when they can profit off of hate or profit off of ideologies that they also espouse, if you're not doing something about that as tech bros, then you are effectively contributing to it. And I would add, they are effectively contributing to it. And I would add, they are profiting from it.

Hello, and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week I have two guests. Luke LeBrun is the editor of Press Progress, and Rachel Gilmore is an independent journalist. They have both recently been doing reporting that touches on the right-wing orientations of the leadership at Shopify. And if you're not familiar with that company, it makes basically a shopping platform that allows businesses to set up their own independent stores to sell their products and services to whoever wants to buy them. They've been around for a while, but they really took off during the pandemic as people couldn't easily go out to stores and businesses had to quickly switch to selling their products online. And while their growth has, of course, slowed as life has gone somewhat back to normal, they are still the third largest publicly traded

company in Canada, where they are based, and are a major player in the tech industry. But their leadership, like many of these large tech companies, has a mix of libertarian and right-wing ideals that are shifting more and more to the right and that I think you could argue have been quite harmful. Rachel's reporting has looked at the actual leadership that these companies provide and the environment and the culture that they create within the company, right? Where certainly they promote themselves as being these enlightened tech CEOs who want to create a different kind of company, but in fact, create a harsh environment for workers, push back on people when they try to

speak out about the discrimination and the problems that they face in the workplace. And of course, now we're subject to a lawsuit over severance packages that were not fully given after some layoffs that were done last year. And of course, Luke reports a lot more on right-wing media in Canada and the effects of right-wing politics in this country. And one of his recent stories talked about this website, True North, that was actually partly set up by the chief operating officer of Shopify, Kaz Najatian, and which recently posted an interview with Gavin McInnes, who was part of a registered terrorist organization here in Canada. And it does a lot of work to push

right-wing politics in a particularly extreme form of right-wing politics in Canada. So since Shopify is a company that we don't talk about a whole lot, I figured it was worth taking the time to have Luke and Rachel on the show so that we could dig into this, right? So that we could understand this company a bit better and the impacts of its leadership, because certainly while Shopify exists in a vacuum, it's its own company, the effects of its leadership's actions have particular impacts on their own. I think that looking at this company also provides us some insight into what's happening in the larger tech industry, where you had these leaders who had more libertarian ideas, who, ideas, who certainly didn't want government intervening on them and certainly didn't want to have to pay a lot of tax on the money that they were making, are now increasingly finding themselves ignoring or justifying the hate of increasingly far right wing groups that are using their platforms, are making sure that they are protected when they use their platforms and saying that it's just about free speech. And then in some cases, as we see with Najatian, going much further in actually funding and helping to carry out right-wing propaganda that can justify some really harmful political opinions.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation. You might occasionally hear us trip over the name Shopify, because every single time I feel like I go to say it, I almost say Spotify instead. So you might notice that a few times through the conversation. But if you do enjoy this interview with Luke and Rachel, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can join supporters like Mariah in San Francisco, Tobias in Germany, and Dominic from Bern, Switzerland by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation.

Luke, welcome to tech won't save us. Thanks for having me Paris. Absolutely. Great to talk to you and Rachel. Thanks for coming on the show. Very stoked to be here. Awesome. I'm happy to speak with both of you and to dig into, you know, some of the stuff that has been happening with Shopify recently, not so recently, but to talk a bit about its politics, because it's one of these companies that, you know, is important, is out there. A lot of people recognize we're all in Canada. So it's more important up here when we think about the domestic tech industry.

But, you know, it also kind of illustrates this broader right-wing turn that we're seeing in the tech industry with some of the people who are involved with it. I wonder, you know, if you were to explain Shopify to somebody who is listening and maybe doesn't know what that company is or what it does, how would you describe it to somebody? Well, Shopify runs an e-commerce platform. Essentially, you know, it helps people to create web stores that they can sort of plug into their websites. I mean, it's a little bit different from something like Etsy or an eBay, where you have to go to a dedicated website. So this is sort of something that kind of lives freely from the website, and you can put into whatever your website is, if you're a company.

Interestingly, they're also currently now Canada's third largest publicly traded company, which just kind of gives you a sense of the scale to which that they've grown. I mean, they're based, I'm based in Ottawa here in the capital of Canada. And they're also a company that was based in Ottawa. And they've really expanded, I think, over the last five to 10 years or so. Yeah, they're massive. Like I when I was researching them in the past, I saw that Skims uses Shopify, like all kinds of major brands use Shopify as sort of the building blocks or the infrastructure of their merch websites or various kind of e-stores. So yeah, it's just sort of everything.

It's like a one-stop shop if you want to set up your own store. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like there was at least a while, like during the pandemic where it was kind of positioning itself as the alternative to Amazon. Like, you know, Amazon is this big kind of centralized e-commerce company, but anybody can start their store with Shopify and sell to their own customers and blah, blah, blah. I think they've made some deals with Amazon since then, but that was kind of a positioning like we're for the small guy, the small business, because that's what they all like to say.

But so the company Shopify obviously saw significant growth through the pandemic. As you were saying, Luke, there has been more and more attention on the company itself in recent years, of course, as it's continued to grow. You did some reporting recently about, you know, someone who is at the company, the chief operating officer and his involvement in, you know a right-wing website here in Canada. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Sure. So, Kaz Najatian is the COO of Shopify, the chief operating officer. He's the number two in the company. So, you know, very important, influential person within the company and, you know, its overall culture and so forth. But he also helped launch a right-wing news website in Canada called True North, along with his spouse, Candace Malcolm, who acts as the editor-in-chief of True North. So, you know, they launched several years ago in 2017.

And, you know, it's a very prominent right-wing media website in Canada, just to give you a sense. Pierre Polyev, who's the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, gave a year-end interview with a personality from this website. It has been explicitly endorsed by a previous leader of the Conservative Party in Canada. So, you know, this is pretty mainstream stuff. It's not like some fringe website. I mean, it is within conservative circles. It does have some cachet, I would say. And what happened is that about two weeks ago,

True North did an interview with someone by the name of Gavin McInnes, who might be better known as the founder of the Proud Boys. As you know, the Proud Boys are a group that gained some notoriety, I guess, you know, after Donald Trump came to power in 2016. And they were involved with all these protests and street fights that kind of broke out during the, you know, the culture wars of the late 2010s. And in Canada, they are actually designated as a terrorist entity. So they actually have the legal designation of being a terrorist entity. And they actually have the legal designation of being a terrorist entity. And that happened after January 6, because the Proud Boys played a pretty prominent role in all of that. So, you know, this website, True North, they did an interview with Gavin McInnes.

And as you can imagine, it kind of went off the rails. The whole interview was basically a lot of immigrant bashing. The True North host and Gavin McInnes both kind of went off the rails. The whole interview was basically a lot of immigrant bashing. The True North host and Gavin McInnes both kind of traded racist jokes throughout the whole interview. McInnes is doing kind of racist voices and impersonations of different accents and that kind of a thing. And then also starts disputing the idea that they are a terrorist organization and kind of floats these racist conspiracies about why they had that designation in the first place. And when I contacted True North about this, Candace Malcolm, the editor-in-chief, got back to me, told me that she was actually on maternity leave.

She just welcomed her fourth child into the world, as she told me. But it sounded like she was not aware that her own website was putting out stuff involving, you know, the founder of a terrorist entity onto her own media website. So they immediately took the interview down, deleted all traces of it from the internet, from their social media accounts and so forth. But, you know, it is pretty striking because as I mentioned, you know, one of the people to help launch this website and a person who currently sits on the board of directors of this organization, Kaz Najichian, is the CEO of the third largest publicly traded company in Canada, a very influential tech company. So it does raise a whole bunch of other questions.

And if I could just piggyback on that, one thing I would flag about Candice distancing herself from this interview and everything is that the reporter, and I'm using that word very generously here, who conducted that interview, Harrison Faulkner, I had already reported on the fact that he had been sort of getting more extreme in his rhetoric. He had been taking pictures with members of the far-right extremist group Diagonal on. He had been liking tweets before Elon Musk hid those that featured racial slurs for Indian people. He also was, it turns out, the president of a university conservative club at Ryerson, as it was then known. I'd have to double check

how long ago it was. It was a little bit. But that club was actually ended up being disavowed by the conservatives because it came out that it had these ties to this youth white supremacist group. And that was when this guy was the president of it. So, you know, a lot of just kind of red flaggy stuff. And I asked them about this reporter who they had predominantly covering immigration, and none of them would acknowledge, you know, that I had even tried to contact them. But I was using the same emails that I'm sure Luke used and that they were able to answer in those moments. And also I had a friend who I knew was interviewing one of their personalities,

who's I think filling in as editor-in-chief, Andrew Lawton. And I asked her to ask him about this. And he just said he didn't think it was a good faith question from me. So when they try to say that they had no idea about any of this stuff, I just find that I question that. That's all I would just throw out there. To echo that too, you know, Harrison Faulkner had a really big day on July 5th. So not only did he interview the founder of a legally designated terrorist organization. He also condemned a conservative MP for denouncing a hate crime. So got into a fight with a, you know, conservative MP,

and also went on to a podcast that also featured alt-right influencer Lauren Southern. So, you know, three big things on one day. I mean, this kind of gives you a sense of some of the stuff that's going on in True North. Yeah, busy boy. Yeah, it's kind of shocking to see all those things just put together. You know, obviously, we know that Canada is, you know, a good kind of breeding ground for a lot of these fascists who then kind of make their names in the United States, whether it's Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes. McInnes, of course, was also around in the early days of Vice, which is another place that people might have heard of him before.

Would you say that, you know, if you're talking about True North, obviously a lot of people outside of Canada will be less familiar with that. Would you say that that's kind of trying to do in Canada with, say, something like Daily Wire is doing in the United States? Or, you know, would it be a bit different than that?

Yeah, that's the exact equivalent I would draw. I wouldn't even compare it to Breitbart necessarily, or like something like Infowars. It is kind of aspiring to do sort of like straight reporting, but on very contentious hot button topics. So yeah, I would compare it to something like the Daily Caller or the Daily Wire. Candace Malcolm, you know, she has a history as a columnist with the Toronto Sun. You know, there's some people involved. I mean, Andrew Lawton, who's another figure associated with True North. I mean, he was a radio host for a long time. So there are some people, you know, who were part of the, you know, quote, unquote, mainstream media who have now kind of,

you know, migrated over to the sort of more right wing alternative media thing. But as I mentioned earlier, this is something that is operating within kind of mainstream Canadian conservative politics, too. Yeah, it's less that they do disinfo reporting than it is that they do reporting that I would argue sometimes lacks extremely relevant context, and therefore paints a bit more of a narrative. Yeah, like, for example, reporting on vaccines in a capacity that just makes them seem terrifying instead of, you know, including context about how safe they are and things like that. They've also done coverage on issues like residential schools and raising, you know,

questions and kind of floating some conspiracies about what really happened in the residential schools and the graves that were found, some of which is just really kind of disgusting and racist stuff. Also, they've done a lot of coverage on issues relating to stuff like LGBTQ plus kind of issues from the sort of conspiratorial sense that there's, you know, this gender ideology menace out there that, you know, so anyways, they've been doing like stuff focused on those sorts of issues. Yeah, that makes sense.

And of course, the residential schools are these schools that were set up to basically take Indigenous children from their families to kind of anglicize or frankicize them and deny them of their culture. It was basically a cultural genocide that was carried out in Canada. And I can, of course, put more in the show notes about that. But you talk about it as this right-wing website trying to do what Daily Wire is trying to do. It's, of course, registered as a charity. And do we know where its funding comes from, how that all works, how the support actually happens for this right-wing media to exist and then, of course, be pushed out across social media and influence the larger discourse?

Yeah, that's an interesting question because I did a story that kind of did a deep dive into the charitable organization that kind of exists to support True North. So, you know, basically in 2017, Candace Malcolm and Kaz Najatian, they actually took over an existing charity that was set up. And this charity, it existed to help welcome British immigrants to Canada and help them integrate into Canadian society because Lord knows the British immigrants need a lot of help to do so. They're really hard up those ones. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, so they took over a charity that for all as far as I can tell was, you know, a legitimate charity trying to do some kind of good deed for the world. They took that and then they changed the name and converted the charity into a right-wing media outlet. And this raises some questions for me because under Canadian charity law, you're not allowed to run a charity that is for the sole purpose of journalism or news

or running a media outlet. You know, I've actually asked CRA about this and they've been pretty unequivocal. The only way you could do something like that is if it look at between federal and provincial tax credits, it varies depending on what province you're in. But you could be looking at something like 30% to 40% of your donation, basically getting it back as a tax deduction. So if you donated $1,000 in Ontario, you could deduct $360 from your taxes. If you donated $100,000, you're looking at something like $40,000 in tax deductions. So pretty significant incentives to donate. And we do know that there are some large foundations that have donated to True North, one of which is a foundation set

up by an individual by the name of Gwyn Morgan, who is a former oil CEO from Alberta, went on to become the chairman of S&C Lavalin. He also ran the, I forget the name of the organization, but it's basically the Council of Canadian Chief Executives, so a CEO association, basically. They've donated half a million dollars to True North over the last several years and so i mean that information is all out there on the cra website so that does seem to be giving them some

advantages in terms of how they are able to fund themselves and operate that other media organizations are not able to make use of well especially when you consider as well that Kaz and Candice can donate to, like I read that in your story, Luke, about how they are major donors. Didn't you write that they're the biggest donors to True North? Sorry, thank you for reminding me that. Yeah, so Candice said that she and her husband

are among the biggest donors to True North also. And I mean, it should be said too that Kaz, according to the Globe and Mail, he made $76 million last year largely through stock options from Shopify. So doing pretty well for himself. Yeah, you can tell why he wouldn't like higher capital gains taxes, but we'll get to that. So you've mentioned that Kaz Najatian is married to Candace Malcolm and, you know, they kind of took over this charity

to create True North. What do we know about their politics, right? Because Kaz is, of course, the chief operating officer at Shopify now, was previously at Facebook before that. What do we know about his politics and, you politics and the politics of this couple as they took this over and helped set up this media organization? Well, Candace and Kaz previously worked for Jason Kenney, who would later go on to become the Premier of Alberta. At the time, he was the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism in Canada. So that's where they got their start. I mean, Jason Kenney does have quite a few people who are alumni of his office who have gone on to do, you know, pretty important

things in different levels of government throughout Canada. So we do know that that's where they got their start. I mean, I would say Candace Malcolm and Rachel, maybe you might have more to add to this as well. But you know, she's pretty big into sort of culture war kind of politics. She's pretty partisan, you know, in terms of her columns and her commentary that she posts, not just on True North, but previously with the Toronto Sun and so forth. Yeah, all of the sort of reporting I see from her is heavily critical of immigration. She does a lot of stuff on immigration. And I couldn't speak extensively to her personal politics, but I will say it's always been very, you know, kind of partisan, conservative supporting,

you're not going to get a ton of hard hitting anti conservative, or even just critical stories about the Conservative Party on their website, especially not from her. And yeah, a lot of stuff about immigration, like one thing I noticed is on the website, they use the word illegals to refer to immigrants. And that's an accepted nomenclature for referring to a group of people, which is problematic. So that's just sort of the vibe, just heavily conservative, not super politically correct, and bordering on some rhetoric that could be considered a bit prejudicial towards certain groups. Another thing to note too is that Candace Malcolm also runs an organization called the Civitas Society, and they host these kind of closed-door conferences once a year. It's a very socially conservative, like a highbrow, socially conservative type conference where they bring together all these quote unquote heterodox thinkers who will talk about subjects that are, you know, kind of considered too contentious to speak about publicly. And they kind of get

together and talk about these things. Press Progress has reported on these meetings that they have every year. It's held under Chatham House rule too. So, I mean, everybody comes there and talks about this stuff behind closed doors. We can only see the program of who spoke and on what topics, but it does tend to have people who are... So some of the panels that they have at these conferences, it's stuff about cancel culture, as I mentioned before, stuff about the residential schools and questioning the whole narrative about unmarked graves. There's also stuff about stuff to do with, you know, trans issues and gender issues. There's a big focus on that. The last one that they actually had was in Toronto at the Albany Club, which is this sort

of basically a clubhouse for Toronto's conservative elites, so to speak. And so two people, one guy by the name of Bill Ward-Chris and another guy by the name of Josh Alexander, pretty prominent anti-trans activists in Canada, they actually staged this rally outside of two schools in Ottawa. So a month before that rally, they were actually attending this closed door meeting and kind of talking about stuff to do with quote unquote gender ideology and that sort of thing. Yeah, the anti-trans panic slowly making its way into Canada through people like this. One of the things that really stood out in reading some of what you guys have both written, some of the things that I've seen you write about these people is Najatian and

Candace Malcolm, of course, were staffers, as you said, in Jason Kenney's office. Jason Kenney, you know, for people who aren't clear, is a really right-wing conservative politician in Canada who was part of the Stephen Harper government. And then, as you said, Luke went on to become premier of Alberta. There was a lot of controversy around, you know, especially some stuff that he had done in the past in advocating against gay rights and gay marriage and things like that. But, you know, he had some really kind of right-wing politics. They were in his office. They were staffers with him. I believe Najatian was actually kind of removed or fired as a staffer in his office at one point. And yeah, you know, these are obviously quite right wing people who now are in command of this right wing media organization

in Canada. That's goal, it seems very clearly is to push right-wing politics. Like they're not trying to be unbiased journalists who, you know, are holding to like a certain code or whatever. Like they are very clearly trying to do this ideological work of pushing conservative politics in Canada. And one of the people who was really driving that is, you know, one of the highest executives at, as you say, the third largest publicly traded company in Canada. Yes. I mean, I would just mention too that like, you know, related to Jason Kenney's sort of stances on LGBTQ rights issues and stuff. I mean, he fought to prevent AIDS victims, lovers from seeing their dying partners. So his track record on these issues is really

deeply kind of upsetting, frankly. Yeah, Jason Kenney is kind of like Canada's arch social conservative. I mean, he is someone who has been kind of waging a culture war for, you know, 20, 30 years or so until he kind of got ousted as the Premier of Alberta by forces that were even further to the right than him. But that is pretty significant too because he is someone that has been kind of playing a long game and he, like, I really do believe that Jason Kenney's, you know, his larger mission is to kind of move Canada

from what he perceives to be pretty left-wing. Like, he wants to move Canada to the right. Like, he wants culture change. He wants, like, a social transformation. Yeah. And obviously as staffers in his office, these would presumably be people who feel quite similarly about that, you would imagine. You know, one of the things that really stands out based on some of the things that you've both been talking about with regards to this website, True North is, you know, their perspective on immigration, right. And, you know, quite a, an oppositional perspective to that and not wanting people to come into And, you know, quite an oppositional perspective to that and not wanting

people to come into Canada, you know, related to these broader kind of right-wing politics that we've been seeing in many Western countries where it's very opposed to immigration, as Rachel was saying, using these terms like illegals to describe immigrants. But of course, Shopify is a tech company that relies on immigrant tech labor. What do we see in their perspectives on those sorts of things? It's interesting, actually. So I would say that in general, when True North talks about immigration, it tends to be a little bit more kind of highbrow and a little more abstract. But it was kind of a mask off moment, I think, in this interview, because I mean, if you just listen to some of the stuff that, forget Gavin McInnes, I mean, what Harrison Faulkner, who's a True North employee, what he's

saying on this, he's complaining that the city of Toronto is too ethnically diverse nowadays. He says, quote unquote, Toronto is completely ethnically changed. And then he says that, you know, opposition to mass immigration has become mainstream. And then interestingly, too, you know, at one point, they start kind of talking about high skilled immigrant workers in the tech industry. And Gavin McInnes is talking about how his brother used to work in tech, and he can't compete with immigrants anymore, or something like this. And Faulkner's complaining that rural white Canadians can't get these kinds of jobs. So they're bringing in people from other countries. And it's really interesting because like Najatian is himself someone who immigrated from Iran. You know, it's also awkward, too, because Shopify CEO Toby Lutka is himself an immigrant from Germany. He actually came to Canada and started creating Shopify because he didn't have a work permit in Canada. And as well, you know, Shopify has made some pretty public efforts to recruit foreign tech workers to come and work for them here in Canada. And as well, you know, Shopify has made some pretty public efforts to recruit foreign tech workers to come and work for them here in Canada. When Trump was kind of doing

a lot of his anti-immigrant rhetoric around 2016 or so, Luca made kind of a big deal about encouraging people to come work for Shopify in Canada. So it is really striking and a little bit awkward, I mean, to say the least, that they're kind of using this kind of rhetoric. Yeah, I think that's important context to have as we have these discussions. But, you know, to broaden this conversation out from your story, to talk about Shopify, Rachel, you have been doing quite a bit of reporting over the past number of years, looking at the types of content and stores that Shopify is okay to support. And in particular, how, you know, it has been criticized time and again for allowing people with really right-wing

politics, promoting hate speech, and, you know, even kind of support for Nazis to be allowing them to continue using the platform. Can you tell us about what the company is doing there and how it responds to these sorts of criticisms? In my experience reporting on this and, you know, reaching out to the company to ask those exact questions about how they intend to respond, whether they're aware that they are providing. I mean, they provide those services to tons of vendors, so you can maybe give them a little bit of grace. You know, oh, maybe they missed this. Maybe they didn't know. But in my experience, you know, when I've reached out to them about Shopify providing its merchant services to vendors that, you know, are quite icky, that I would argue violate their acceptable use policy,

which prohibits, I believe, condoning and promoting hate against any sort of vulnerable or marginalized group. they have acknowledged that they got my email, but then I don't see any action. And they usually kind of ghost me after that point. You know, I've even found myself blocked by both Toby and Harley, two of the highest ranking executives at Shopify, both times in the wake of me asking those specific questions. So Shopify doesn't, to me, seem overly committed to enforcing its acceptable use policy. And I think that that became incredibly clear when they actually did answer me when I was working for Global News. And I wrote about the fact that they were creating the pathway to lips of TikTok monetizing.

So that sort of anti-LGBTQ hate account that has, you know, there's been this track record of bomb threats following the people who Libs of TikTok posts about. This website was selling merch, this Libs of TikTok website that said, stop grooming our kids. And I interviewed, I think it was the president of the highest ranking LGBTQ rights organization in Canada, one of the most prominent ones, EGAL. And they told me that they view this stop grooming our kids as sort of arguably an incitement to violence against LGBTQ folks, because it's a trope that's been used against that community since like the 70s. It's honestly really tired and, you know, outdated vintage hate. But yeah, like I brought

this to them, this story came out, and they told me that Libs of TikTok doesn't violate their acceptable use policy. So I don't know when they enforce that policy, but it doesn't look like it's in cases that you would think would be pretty cut and dry. And I mean, apart from groups like Libs of TikTok, there's also been controversy about Shopify hosting Breitbart's web store. I mean, apart from groups like Libs of TikTok, there's also been controversy about Shopify hosting Breitbart's web store. I mean, something that Rachel put on my radar that I wasn't aware of until putting out this story is, you know, they actually have web stores that are selling Nazi memorabilia. In my story, I cite this Adolf Hitler bronze sculpture desktop ornament that's being sold. You know, you can also buy stuff with swastikas and whatever.

But Shopify is aware of this because we know that they've been contacted about it. I contacted them also and they didn't respond to me. Rachel contacted them about this previously. And they're still continuing to allow stuff that is literally glorifying Hitler and glorifying Nazis. I don't see how that doesn't violate their acceptable use policy. One thing I have encountered with those is I think they would argue that it's not glorifying, it's just memorabilia. But I think you can't assume the intent of whoever is buying this product and whether they would then be using it to glorify this individual,

the individual being Hitler. I mean, this is, I'm looking at this right now. It's a side profile of Hitler's head. I'm going to say it's probably glorifying Hitler. I don't know. As a person who is pretty visible and opinionated online, I'm hyper aware of safety and security. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online and all that data can have actual consequences in the real world. Thank you. prevent potential ID theft, doxing, and phishing scams. To put it simply, DeleteMe does all of the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal info off the web. Data brokers hate DeleteMe.

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When I hear you talk about these things, what immediately comes to mind is, you know, at the end of last year when there was controversy about Substack, you know, platforming, you know, Nazis having Nazi newsletters on its platform and how that created a lot of backlash. And some of them were removed. But in general, the leadership was like, listen, we support free speech. We are allowing these things to be on our platform. And it feels like when Toby Luckey has actually responded to these things, you know, when the company really does, it seems to be that is kind of the line that they seem to tow as well, right? This particular definition of free speech that we see more and more from these people

high up in the tech industry that is also repeated, you know, by right wing websites like True North. Well, and it's a version of free speech, too, that is where speech is mobilized to then further limit the rights and participation in society of vulnerable groups. So I don't really understand that logic. And it's one that you encounter a lot in the tech world. But it's only really a logic that you can hold when you have a degree of privilege and you don't recognize the ways in which free speech can then be weaponized to hurt and silence and infringe upon the rights of others. So I don't know, it's just frustrating. And one thing I would flag too, in the context of all of this, I mean, there was this whistleblower who came forward

speaking about the intentions behind the leadership at Shopify and the ways in which they choose to enforce their rules or not enforce them. And this whistleblower, and I will say this is, I independently verified this whistleblower sent me documentation that proved that they did previously work for Shopify. Beyond that, this is just their allegation. But what they wrote publicly on Twitter was the rumor mill in Shopify has long been churning with stories about how Najadian had brought his right wing agenda into work. Implied in the rumors was the idea that he wasn't going to let something as banal as an AUP, that's the acceptably used policy, prevent him from imposing his will. So, you know, there's

rumors and speculation and discussions behind the scene from individuals who at least formerly worked at Shopify about the ways in which this sort of ideology is permeating decisions that then impact what is monetized and what is not and what can make money from its merchandise and what can't. It's interesting too, because even going back further in 2017, Toby Lutka wrote a blog post on Medium. It's since been taken down for whatever reason, but it was titled In Support of Free Speech. And he kind of talks about Shopify's rationale for resisting calls to kick Breitbart off of its platform. And what was interesting to me in that was not just that he, you know,

kind of took this free speech, fundamentalist kind of perspective, which is, you know, I think something that's kind of a pretty, you know, common sort of libertarian perspective or whatever, but he kind of extends it further. And he actually says at one point that he sees commerce as a form of expression itself. So the right to sell

things, the right to sell objects is in his mind a form of speech, I guess. And he actually has this quote where he says, products are speech, and we are pro free speech. So I feel like there's a lot to unpack there. But it really is kind of illuminating about Toby Lutka's thinking about this whole issue. Yeah, I think there's definitely a lot to unpack there. And I'd be interested to ask him about his thoughts on the difference between free speech in the United States and Canadian free expression. And I think he would not have an answer. Well, it's interesting, too, because he's from West Germany, right?

I don't want to generalize or read into things, but that would be a question for me as to what extent does his, you know, there is like a different cultural context if you're from West Germany when it comes to issues like free speech or whatever. But yeah, no. And he also, you know, says pretty explicitly that he sees his company as being a liberal company. He sees his employees as being a liberal workforce. And I think he means that in a sort of small L liberal sense of the word. So it does really kind of give you some insight into the way he sees the world. He also kind of, well, I don't know if this was him specifically, but the leadership at Shopify did sort of fire a warning shot to their own employees about that sort of free speech ideology

in the form of a memo that they circulated internally that when I was investigating this a couple of years ago, someone leaked to me and I interviewed a few different employees who were upset about the lives of TikTok decision and the fact that they were going to continue allowing this vendor to use their services. And one thing I would flag to that website has been taken down completely. So it's hard to say whether Shopify, I don't know, maybe like a week before they pulled their services, but at least at that point in time, when I was investigating all of this, they said they were standing by it. Yeah. I noticed loops of TikTok doesn't have a store at all anymore. So maybe

it's just, she decided not to monetize with merch anymore. I don't know. I guess. I don't know. Maybe she's making all that big money from the ad rev sharing on Twitter. So I don't know. Yeah. So basically this memo that was sent to their employees told them why it might be hard for you to work at Shopify, which is interesting again, in the context of this free speech ideology, because I know, and I have seen with my own eyes, screenshots from their Slack chats when all of this was going down, that a lot of people were really unhappy with the way that the AUP was not being enforced. This memo, which I believe was actually sent prior to that, I think it was circulated around the time of the Breitbart issue. They detailed a tension that Shopify

employees have to hold, which is like such weird, like burning man, you know, tech bro rhetoric between opposing ideas that may need to coexist. And they said Shopify makes a deliberate trade off to enable more opportunity, particularly for those who have historically been shut out or shut down by prevailing economic systems, like I guess, whips of TikTok and Nazi memorabilia vendors. The thing that really stood out to me was the fact that they said that if you disagree or feel as though you cannot hold this tension, you can talk to your boss about whether you can continue to feel engaged at Shopify, which to me, reads like a threat to your job. It's like either get on board with us monetizing really gross or allowing really gross

vendors to monetize and, you know, enabling them to do so through our services. Or you can quit, you can quit your job. So that's not very free speech to me. But I don't know what you guys think. So I want to remind everyone, this is the third largest publicly traded company in Canada. And they're talking to their own employees about holding the tension inside of them like this is some kind of wellness retreat or something like it's just bizarre to me when I read some of this stuff, how a company that is this big, I think the companies that are larger than Shopify are TD Bank and maybe RBC or something like we're talking about large, large corporations, they don't normally talk in this way, you know, usually they're very,

you know, maybe you can criticize them for being so rigid and sort of legalistic in their HR practices. But it just is such a strange workplace culture to me. And I mean, the other thing too, is, you know, from living in Ottawa, Shopify was kind of known as the company that had, you know, foosball tables in the office, and they had swings and hammocks. And, you know, they were like, really reinventing what a workplace was, it was just sort of portraying it as like the anti workplace or like the anti company or something. And it's just so bizarre to me that this is now a, again, third largest publicly traded company in Canada. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the things that stood out when I was looking at this too,

is like, you know, Lutke is very powerful at the head of this company. In 2022, shareholders passed a motion to give him what was called the founder's share. So for his life, he will have 40% voting control over the company, regardless of what share of the company he actually owns. So he has, sure, it's not a majority share. He can't just fully decide what's happening, but I'm sure he has enough clout to get another 10% of shareholders on board with him for whatever he wants to do. So he's someone who has immense influence there. And Luke, I know you've been watching like some videos with him recently. Like what is the vibe

that this guy gives off? Well, I'm glad you asked me about that. Because after writing this article, my YouTube algorithm got completely scrambled. And now I'm just getting these really weird kind of podcasts or whatever. It'll just be kind of like these YouTube live stream podcasts with Toby Luca, the CEO of Shopify, Kaznajitian, the COO and President Harley Finkelstein. And these podcasts are like this weird mix of like a TED Talk meets executive coaching meets sort of like this wellness and spirituality kind of thing. And it kind of veers at times. So it'll sort of start off giving tips to aspiring entrepreneurs about how they can start their own business, how they can become a founder. They like to use the

word founder all the time. And so that part seems kind of harmless enough. But then it kind of veers into stuff where it's talking about the mindset of a founder, the mindset of an entrepreneur and how you get ahead. And then it starts turning into something that's almost like a self-help guru thing or yeah, just it's really strange. Like I'm just encountering this for the first time and I'm kind of like, how did I just discover this weird corner of YouTube that seems to be populated by all these people who want to become millionaires in tech? And it's sort of like this cult of personality thing. Now, you've never seen this before. Am I the only person who's actually watched these videos?

I don't know. I haven't watched them. Rachel, have you? No, they might be making them just for you, Luke. I might be the target audience, actually. Yeah. Audience of one. I love it. They're looking at you through their office building windows and putting out these videos for you. So it's interesting, though, because in these podcasts, you do kind of get these glimpses

at their ideologies and their kind of underlying belief systems. For example, one thing that stood out to me was at one point in one of these podcasts I was listening to, Luca starts describing Shopify workers as heterodox thinkers, which to me is like immediately a bit of a loaded term, holes. So again, kind of this idea that these are outsiders who don't fit within the, you know, normal kind of structures of society. And so, again, it kind of goes to this idea that Shopify is this anti-company or something, again, just raises all these questions for me about their internal workplace culture. And yeah, I guess just because they sort of see themselves as sort of heterodox thinkers, it does sort of point to this, I don't know, just this kind of like hardline libertarian orientation to the world.

So I find that really interesting. Yeah, I know there was a bit of controversy, I think, in the past couple of years because Shopify didn't want its employees to be doing many things outside of the workplace. Like you couldn't take on side projects or anything like that. And there's been a class action lawsuit against them because of layoffs they did last year and basically told their employees that they were going to get these great severance packages. And then after they signed the document said, Hey, I'm not actually getting as much money as we told you, Rachel, you know, as you have been following this company for the past few years, as you have seen these memos and

things that the company has put out, what is your kind of view and feel on Toby Lutke as kind of a leader and how he manages this company, basically? I mean, I kind of get the sense that there's the, what these executives at Shopify think of themselves as and what they actually are. I mean, you have this public persona where they're, as Luke just described this, you know, anti-company. They're not like the other companies. You know, they're kind of like a pick-me company. I remember there was this whole big thing right around the time that I was reporting the lives of TikTok story, actually. There was a huge thing around the fact that they were getting rid of meetings.

Like, ooh, we're not going to have as many meetings. We're, like, so different. But then at the same time, you know, I was speaking to these employees who were internally feeling incredibly isolated because Slack channels were being shut down where there was dissent going on. And there's this memo circulating. They're not being heard when they're talking about their concerns about lives of TikTok. At one point, there was a controversy internally, where I believe someone added a noose to the emojis selection in their Slack channel. And a lot of Black employees were concerned about this and really upset by it. And they were basically just kind of told to get over

it. I mean, the account that I referenced before actually made an allegation publicly about what Toby said at that point in time, which was that employees who engage in endless slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us versus them divisiveness and zero sum thinking must be seen for the threat that they are. Like, I obviously haven't independently verified that memo's existence, but I do know for a fact that that person did work for Shopify, they have sent me the proof that they did. So if that is how Toby is talking to his employees behind closed doors, when you contrast that decision to get rid of meetings with the way that employees are being treated internally, the way that any dissent or criticism isn't really being heard, or it's outright being shut down, or Slack channels, you know, may or may not be being shut down, as an employee did allege to me when I interviewed them. That's not really in line with the free speech or this kind of ethos that is, you know, you could argue that the decision

to not do meetings and stuff is done with a conscientiousness and an awareness of the mental health of the workers. But that certainly isn't reflected, it sounds like, in the internal structure and the ways that they go about, you know, encouraging or discouraging free speech behind closed doors. Yeah. And I feel like one of the things that you're both kind of picking up on there is the workers and how you have this leadership that, you know, as you're saying, Luke is making millions of dollars a year that is really disconnected from the people who are actually there who, you know, are suing the company because they didn't give them adequate severance or told them they were getting one severance package and then actually giving them

a much lower one once things had kind of been sorted on the company's end. But we've been talking about the right-wing politics and the libertarian politics of these sorts of people. And there was another event recently that I feel like really kind of drew that into focus and into contrast. The Canadian government is in the process or has recently increased the amount of taxes that you need to pay on capital gains in Canada. You know, you need to pay taxes on a higher percentage of the capital gain that you make in a year. So for someone who is making millions from stock, they are going to be paying higher taxes on that. And the president of the company, Harley Finkelstein, made a tweet about this where he was clearly not very happy. And I know he was really not happy with Rachel in particular about some of that. Do you want to tell

us what he was up to, Rachel, and why he's so mad about capital gains taxes? Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to find the tweet here, but I just found it really funny. I mean, he basically just responded to Justin Trudeau tweeting about the capital gains tax and called it, you know, divisive and political. And I just found that incredibly ironic when juxtaposed against the fact that, you know, he's taking historically like hateful phrases being deployed by a merchant like Libs of TikTok and his company is saying that that isn't hateful and that isn't divisive. And, you know, they're doing all of this stuff, like allowing Breitbart to monetize and, you know, things like that, that really seem quite divisive in my mind. So I just kind of pointed out that difference in response to his tweet. And, you know, also just that it's funny how that is where they draw the line. And Harley blocked me, which to me seemed a bit thin skinned for the free speech bros. But, you know, and also I think that it could have had something to do with the fact that I started tweeting out the source code

of the Daily Wire website and these Nazi memorabilia websites and you know other websites that have slightly icky content and showed that Shopify was all over them I guess maybe that was embarrassing for him or just made him a little grumpy. So he blocked me. But it was funny because, you know, you see these guys choose their moments to take political stances publicly and to decry division. And it never really seems to be in the moments where it could actually make a difference for vulnerable groups. Instead, it's just when it helps them, their rich buddies. Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't find it divisive if the Canadian government was planning to cut taxes on capital gains, because that would be a great benefit to him. And just to kind of

read out the tweet, because I think it's quite funny. He wrote, I truly love Canada, and I'm fiercely Canadian. This country will always be my home, and I try my best to always spread Canadian pride all over the world. But this isn't the way to unite us and move us forward. This is divisive and political. We are better than this. It's the most, it's the wildest tweet. Well, it's interesting. So several years prior to this, I mean, Shopify was also pretty opposed to the attempts to change the way that stock options were taxed in Canada too, which was a big, they were kind of leading the push mainly by the tech industry against that and again here they are coming out against capital gains and i mean if you just look at how they have their compensation the executive compensation structured i mean uh you know in many cases

they are you know their actual salary is quite low and then they're making hundreds of millions of dollars and with stock options and what have you. So they clearly do have a vested interest in reducing their tax bill in that way. And I also found it funny how bad faith he was. I mean, he tried to justify his proclamation by implying it's the view of a large number of Canadians by using this Angus Reid poll that came out, which is a Canadian polling company. And he said that new polling from Angus Reid finds Canadians more opposed

than supportive of the changes to capital gains with 20% expecting to pay more over the next five years. And the key word there is expecting. The main takeaway that you should read from that polling is that Canadians are not adequately informed, are not being misled about the impact that this effectively like wealth tax is going to have on them as individuals, because 20% of Canadians will not be paying more in capital gains. So it's just to me really funny how just the kind of two-facedness of a company that is doing this whole wellness Burning Man. Maybe I should stop referencing Burning Man. I just listened to your recent podcast about Jack Dorsey, so I think it's on the mind.

But this sort of like hippie tech bro idea that seems to be about wanting to make things better when actually they're advocating for policies that for many people will make things a little bit tougher. If people are not paying more in taxes, there's less money in the pot to go towards social programs and everything. So it's just, I don't know, I find it really hypocritical. Absolutely. Because the actual number of Canadians who are going to be paying more taxes under this is not 20%, but 0.13%. So, you know, it's really targeting the wealthier people who can afford to pay more, like the Harley Finkelsteins and the Toby Lutkes and the Kaznijakians. So, you know, we've been talking about many aspects of this company about, you know, the right wing and

libertarian ideas of its leadership, the fact that it won't take down many of these stores that are selling, you know, merchandise that really promotes hateful views against minority communities often, or Nazi memorabilia, you know, especially as we see rising Nazi movements in many countries. I wonder, you know, what your final takeaways are on the kind of individual reporting that you have done on this company and the ways that its leadership uses their influence to push these right wing and libertarian ideas and the harms that that causes. I think that the thing that I find frustrating at the end of the day is when you reflect on the fact that this is the third largest publicly traded company in Canada. It's an e-commerce platform that provides its merchant services to tons of major companies. And without the ease of a platform

like Shopify, some of these guys might have a harder time making money. And the people behind these websites are people who are in some cases engaging in speech. I mean, just look at some of the reporting showing what follows Libs of TikTok's posts targeting members of vulnerable communities. And I think that a lot of these tech bros lean back on free speech arguments to absolve themselves of responsibilities for the world that they are having a huge hand in creating. Because money is a huge driver for people. And when they can profit off of hate or profit off of ideologies that they also espouse, if you're not doing something about that as tech bros, then you are effectively contributing to it. And I would add, they are profiting from it. Shopify takes a cut of every one of these sales. So, you know, nut up, do something about it. I think for me, the question based on my reporting, you know, nut up, he's on the board of directors. He has certain legal duties to

oversee, you know, how that charity is operating and everything that's going on there. And when I talked to Candace Malcolm for this story, she claimed that he was just a placeholder as if he had nothing to do with things. You know, she said that he had nothing to do with the, you know, day-to-day operations of True North, which is true because that's not the role of a board member. But, you know, he does have duties here. And clearly, something broke down if Gavin McInnes, the founder of a legally designated terrorist entity, is going on your website, and then you're later on taking it down after the fact, because, you know, clearly there was some kind of editorial breakdown that happened there. So, you know, I sort of see something kind of broken in the accountability structure at True

North in this one specific incident. And then you turn and look at Shopify. And I think you can ask the same kind of question here. Like, why is it that you have this acceptable use policy, but then you're selling bronze sculpture ornaments of Adolf Hitler? Why are, you know, groups like Libs of TikTok or, you know, whatever far right hateful organization, like, why are they running web shops? So, you know, and again, it goes to this, I think this ideology, it's a very flaky kind of libertarian ideology, where I don't think they've fully thought through the implications of the whole logical implications of what they're advocating. So I think that for me is my big takeaways. There is a breakdown that's happening.

And I think that this ideology is kind of at the center of it. They either have to do something about the inherent issues with the lack of enforcement of their acceptable use policy, or stop pretending that they care because that's the real issue here is sort of this two-facedness I mean you're projecting this personality of loving Canada but do you love all Canadians if you're willing to allow people to profit off of merchandise that hurts them you know it's just to me that is a level of falseness that they need to kind of figure out what they are actually about and be honest with themselves and the world, because otherwise they're just kind of coming across

as really flaky and people are going to see through that eventually. Yeah. I think you think about the broader consequences of, you know, making these decisions where you're allowing these companies, you know, these, these companies that are promoting hate, that are promoting Nazi ideology to profit off of selling these goods through a platform that you control and make money off of. But then the other piece of it getting to what you were saying, Luke, is I think thinking about this libertarian ideology that a lot of these people in tech have espoused, and how that has really left a lot of them open to moving to the right, as they have gained wealth and power and saw where the tides are

shifting and what is going to protect them ultimately from, say, paying higher capital gains taxes or seeing any effective regulations and things against them. But yeah, it was great to talk to you both, to learn more about your reporting, to learn more about what's going on with Shopify and how its leadership is contributing to these right-wing politics, not just globally with their platform, but directly in Canada through this right-wing website, True North. Thanks so much to both of you for taking the time to chat. It was really great. Thank you. Thanks so much, Paris. Luke LeBrun is the editor of Press Progress, and Rachel Gilmore is an independent journalist.

Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Eric Wickham, and transcripts are by bridget paloo fry tech won't save us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry you can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own thanks for listening make sure to come back next week Thank you.