Shopify Shuts Down Yeezy.com For Its Swastika Tee

The apparel website belonging to the artist formerly known as Kanye West was disabled by Shopify yesterday after selling nothing but a t-shirt bearing the Nazi symbol for more than 24 hours.

It all started with the Super Bowl. Toward the end of the game, Ye’s face appeared on-screen in some markets for a 30-second ad, seemingly recorded via iPhone from a dentist’s chair. “Um…um…go to yeezy.com,” he said in the spot, which aired in cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, according to the Washington Post.

• Within an hour of the commercial airing, Ye’s website wiped its normal inventory to feature only one new product: A $20 t-shirt with a swastika on the front, labeled as “HH-01,” Variety reported.
• Almost two hours after Philadelphia finished routing Kansas City, the ad ran again, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Shopify kept Ye’s online store open for orders through Monday, drawing widespread online condemnation, before it took the site offline Tuesday morning, citing a violation of its terms.

This isn’t Shopify’s first scandal: Despite monthslong public outrage, another Shopify-powered store that sells Holocaust denial merch is still active. Shopify, a ~$160 billion e-commerce giant that underpins online shopping for retailers from Allbirds to Heinz, removed a ban on “hateful content” from its user policies last year.—ML