On Tuesday, Shopify decided to take down a website from the rapper Ye that sold nothing but a T-shirt with a swastika on it, more than 24 hours after the item first appeared. The e-commerce community has applauded the decision, but many still have questions about why it took Shopify a day and a half to remove the site.
Retail leaders first caught wind of the shirt on Sunday. That day, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West aired a Super Bowl ad in which he sat in what appeared to be a dentist’s chair and directed viewers to visit his apparel website. The spot aired in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Within an hour of the ad going live, Yeezy.com wiped its inventory except for one item: a $20 swastika T-shirt labeled as “HH-01,” Variety reported. Just days earlier, Ye had posted on X, “I’m a Nazi.”
Shopify pulled Ye’s site on Tuesday morning. In a statement to Modern Retail, a Shopify spokesperson said, “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.”
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