Discriminating companies

[Gummibeer]

For all on the search for a sticker service.
The well known stickermule is run by a discriminating Trump supporter.
On Twitter they pretend to support the #BLM but in fact they don't.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268325041197867008

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[tom]

I thought about using StickerMule for my company but due to the latest occurrences I'm going to look for some other place to get my stickers from.
Thanks for the information @Gummibeer

 

[Gummibeer]

I've changed the thread title from "Stickermule CEO supports Trump and anti-LGBTQ" to "Discriminating companies" because Gumroad decided to join this list. 🤯😱
By blocking PoC instead of the racists using their platform and abusing the #BLM hashtag for marketing.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268448926572691456

 

[Mangini]

What kind of insanity is being promoted here? The only obligation a company has is to provide their product and service, and caving into a mob that demands anything else is a direct ticket to the same self-own we are seeing Gumroad and many other companies inflict on themselves now.

Notice that once the mob arrives, nothing these companies say for themselves helps them. In fact it only gets worse as they continue to grovel in front of a mob who only exist to loot their time, resources, and destroy their brand by force under a political movement that will crucify you for speaking against it in any way.

You are free to discriminate against "Trump supporters" and you feel safe to do so because it is a mainstream opinion (not majority), but the mob will not care when it comes for you next.

 

[blaq]

What kind of insanity is being promoted here?

just read their tweets and it doesn't make sense that gumroad owner used his business to express his personal view which is wrong and then he went ahead and blocked some of his customers on his business twt page...

it doesn't matter what situation you're in but his actions towards his customers were wrong!!!

 

[Gummibeer]

What kind of insanity is being promoted here? The only obligation a company has is to provide their product and service, and caving into a mob that demands anything else is a direct ticket to the same self-own we are seeing Gumroad and many other companies inflict on themselves now.

Notice that once the mob arrives, nothing these companies say for themselves helps them. In fact it only gets worse as they continue to grovel in front of a mob who only exist to loot their time, resources, and destroy their brand by force under a political movement that will crucify you for speaking against it in any way.

You are free to discriminate against "Trump supporters" and you feel safe to do so because it is a mainstream opinion (not majority), but the mob will not care when it comes for you next.

The quoted tweets were only examples.

It's a fact that supporting anti-LGBTQ+ is discriminating - and it should also not be a topic how Trump is a racist and for sure also discriminating beside the "race"/skin-color.
So I hope that the stickermule isn't in question why it's discriminating?

Gumroad is for sure free to only care about his service and customers/creators. But these are also PoC and blocking them if they don't feel comfortable on the platform isn't a good/right reaction. And keeping out of the road is different than tweeting that they will keep accountable and one week later blocking the users demanding this accountability.
And what do you think does this tweet mean?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268307703794827264

The offered a free account for "black creators" and one demanding it they ask if she's sure because of an outdated overexposed picture?

Sorry but you can't try to keep out of this topic and blaming all trying to get you in it and using this exact same topic to promote your own service and find new customers.
For sure every company is free in its decisions (as long as being legal) but (potential) customers are also free in their decisions and opinions.

And companies are one of the most important parts in this whole story to end discrimination. Starting with their internal behavior and employments to their partners, customers and public communication.

 

[Gummibeer]

To complete the Gumroad story: they've posted an apology thread.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268441264166326277

 

[Sharkie]

Darn, I was looking into StickerMule, glad I didnt follow through. Thanks for the other options @Gummibeer!

Gumroads apology thread is nice, but still doesn't get rid of the fact they messed up. How can you even justify blocking black customers for giving criticism? Or asking "Are you sure?" When a customer responds to your marketing tactic?

Companies are free to do what they want, but they also have to understand there will be criticism. There will be losses of customers. And they just have to decide if staying silent or continuing to market themselves is worth it during a time like this.

 

[Gummibeer]

Darn, I was looking into StickerMule, glad I didnt follow through. Thanks for the other options @Gummibeer!

Gumroads apology thread is nice, but still doesn't get rid of the fact they messed up. How can you even justify blocking black customers for giving criticism? Or asking "Are you sure?" When a customer responds to your marketing tactic?

Companies are free to do what they want, but they also have to understand there will be criticism. There will be losses of customers. And they just have to decide if staying silent or continuing to market themselves is worth it during a time like this.

I would say that the apologize is a start and required courage. But it's only a start and not even complete because they haven't apologized to the victims.
So future will tell if it's only the last hope action after being called out or if they've really learned something.

 

[Sharkie]

I would say that the apologize is a start and required courage. But it's only a start and not even complete because they haven't apologized to the victims.
So future will tell if it's only the last hope action after being called out or if they've really learned something.

Yeah, once we see more from them we'll know if they've actually grown. I truly hope they have!

 

[avena]

Wow, this is crazy bad. I recently started using Gumroad. Definitely looking closely at their future actions.

 

[adam]

I like this image that is floating around Twitter. From the Design in Tech Report 2019.

Hopefully the Webwide Code of Conduct and track record of moderation speaks for itself as far as we are concerned on the matter. I love how our feed is simply chronological and not based on any kind of opinionated popularity contest.

We're very lucky to welcome members from all over the world from all kinds of backgrounds and if there's anything you think that we could be doing better in any aspect I would be very receptive and keen to implement.

I have stayed mostly quiet on the matter as far as social media is concerned so as not to seem like some kind of marketing attempt that it seems Gumroad has been found guilty of. I think it can definitely be difficult for a brand to come off as sincere. I find Facebook's attempted positive publicity on the matter fairly abhorrent considering their continued and accepted promotion of hate groups.

 

[Gummibeer]

I like this image that is floating around Twitter. From the Design in Tech Report 2019.

View attachment 184

Hopefully the Webwide Code of Conduct and track record of moderation speaks for itself as far as we are concerned on the matter. I love how our feed is simply chronological and not based on any kind of opinionated popularity contest.

We're very lucky to welcome members from all over the world from all kinds of backgrounds and if there's anything you think that we could be doing better in any aspect I would be very receptive and keen to implement.

I have stayed mostly quiet on the matter as far as social media is concerned so as not to seem like some kind of marketing attempt that it seems Gumroad has been found guilty of. I think it can definitely be difficult for a brand to come off as sincere. I find Facebook's attempted positive publicity on the matter fairly abhorrent considering their continued and accepted promotion of hate groups.

You are doing a great job! 👏🙏🎉

I think the only thing that could get improved and is also part of equity/justice is performance outside of Europe.
So far I know the server is located in the UK!? And even I (Hamburg, Germany) have sometimes latency issues. I do t think that it's the overloaded server but the cable between.
Ideas here would be route all assets (CSS, JS, IMG ...) via CDN (cloudflare free - I know I know, but I'm a big cloudflare fan! 😅).
This would free up server resources and bring the heavy network traffic into a geo-redundant network.

Regarding this thread: I had to say it because both are tools heavily used by techies. And it wasn't only that they were passive but actively working against justice.

Gumroad wasn't only the marketing Fauxpas but also several tweets before and after.

 

[Mangini]

just read their tweets and it doesn't make sense that gumroad owner used his business to express his personal view which is wrong and then he went ahead and blocked some of his customers on his business twt page...

it doesn't matter what situation you're in but his actions towards his customers were wrong!!!

No, it doesn't make sense for a business to be used as a vehicle for sharing personal views and Gumroad is showing us all why you should just stick to business. It is also incorrect to get bullied into making a statement when you previously did not intend to in the first place. The same repercussions apply.

It's a fact that supporting anti-LGBTQ+ is discriminating - and it should also not be a topic how Trump is a racist and for sure also discriminating beside the "race"/skin-color.
So I hope that the stickermule isn't in question why it's discriminating?

If I understand you correctly, your logic is that Trump is definitively a racist (something that can't be proven true OR false), we shouldn't examine the nuance of that extremely huge accusation, but we can safely conclude that anybody who supports him is also bad and try to shut down their business. Not only is this lazy thinking but also an easy scapegoat to justify all kinds of illogical actions and unfounded discrimination, kind of like what we are seeing now.

And companies are one of the most important parts in this whole story to end discrimination. Starting with their internal behavior and employments to their partners, customers and public communication.

What's your evidence? At what point has enough been done, if it ever can be? After decades of government meddling, affirmative action, diversity quotas, and all kinds of media uproars it is clear that companies not only do not play an important part in solving these issues (as evidenced by how bad things are now) but have in fact been detrimental by inserting themselves into conversations that divide their customers (the people) on issues completely unrelated to their business.

----

For what it's worth I appreciate that we can have these discussions without malice and thank @Adam for providing a well laid out platform for them to happen.

 

[adam]

You are doing a great job! 👏🙏🎉

I think the only thing that could get improved and is also part of equity/justice is performance outside of Europe.
So far I know the server is located in the UK!? And even I (Hamburg, Germany) have sometimes latency issues. I do t think that it's the overloaded server but the cable between.
Ideas here would be route all assets (CSS, JS, IMG ...) via CDN (cloudflare free - I know I know, but I'm a big cloudflare fan! 😅).
This would free up server resources and bring the heavy network traffic into a geo-redundant network.

Regarding this thread: I had to say it because both are tools heavily used by techies. And it wasn't only that they were passive but actively working against justice.

Gumroad wasn't only the marketing Fauxpas but also several tweets before and after.

Great point! This is something I've been working on moving attachments and most assets to a static subdomain cached by Cloudflare as you suggested. I have a test site with this up and running that seems to be working fine with it. Expect this live in the next week.

I don't think there's much I can do at the moment on our budget for speeding up dynamically generated stuff but I hope that will certainly help. There are quite a few 'static' requests for avatars, styles and scripts that will all be improved as you say! :)

 

[adam]

No, it doesn't make sense for a business to be used as a vehicle for sharing personal views and Gumroad is showing us all why you should just stick to business. It is also incorrect to get bullied into making a statement when you previously did not intend to in the first place. The same repercussions apply.

If I understand you correctly, your logic is that Trump is definitively a racist (something that can't be proven true OR false), we shouldn't examine the nuance of that extremely huge accusation, but we can safely conclude that anybody who supports him is also bad and try to shut down their business. Not only is this lazy thinking but also an easy scapegoat to justify all kinds of illogical actions and unfounded discrimination, kind of like what we are seeing now.

What's your evidence? At what point has enough been done, if it ever can be? After decades of government meddling, affirmative action, diversity quotas, and all kinds of media uproars it is clear that companies not only do not play an important part in solving these issues (as evidenced by how bad things are now) but have in fact been detrimental by inserting themselves into conversations that divide their customers (the people) on issues completely unrelated to their business.

----

For what it's worth I appreciate that we can have these discussions without malice and thank @Adam for providing a well laid out platform for them to happen.

I think that the social media uproars in general are often a response to many people feeling otherwise powerless to change things when it feels like they're trying to do everything else right.

It can be so crushing to get so invested in party-politics only to be disappointed and it's hard to boycott your local police department. It seems from news media at least that many police across the US are simply doubling down.

These companies are so easily accessible online that they can be scrutinised and called-out at tap of a finger. I don't think this is neccesarily a bad thing like in these cases, if they're inserting themselves in to a conversation in a disingenuous way then it's good that many people see right through it. I think people have a right to know where their custom is going and the responsibility to vote with their wallets.

 

[Gummibeer]

No, it doesn't make sense for a business to be used as a vehicle for sharing personal views and Gumroad is showing us all why you should just stick to business.

They started with personal views.
Gumroad tweeted that they will keep accountable. Members reported racist creators using Gumroad to spread racism. After Gumroad hasn't took action more and more reported this creator. Because of the incoming "shitstorm" the CEO started to react with personal, aggressive comments and blocked those commenters. This was the moment it escalated.
There is a group of users requiring Gumroad to act like promised and Gumroad CEO (Gumroad Twitter manager) being pissed and aggressive.
So users pulled content from Gumroad platform to don't support them anymore and called them out.
After it escalated more and more Gumroad (CEO) apologized to the public.
There we are now with a broken customer relationship and expectations for this company because of the last tweets.

It's part of a business to have and enforce any kind of code of conduct - or in other words: define your wanted audience and act to keep this audience. For sure they could also decide to be a (extreme) Nazi platform spreading hate speech. But it seems like that's not their wanted audience.

If I understand you correctly, your logic is that Trump is definitively a racist

Only one example: telling an asian looking reporter to go to China and ask the question there.
How would you rate this? It's simply racist point.
And that's only one example out of the last weeks.

Not only is this lazy thinking but also an easy scapegoat to justify all kinds of illogical actions and unfounded discrimination, kind of like what we are seeing now.

I'm not requesting to shut down these businesses. It's simply a list of tweets, commented. What anyone does with these information is up to you. Same like it's up to me to don't order stickermule stickers and sell them on Gumroad.
To make them a scapegoat would mean that we now could end all this because we now have the bad one?
No!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268234003221377025

on issues completely unrelated to their business

Okay, so as long as a company doesn't has discriminating people as their product it's not part of their business?

 

[tom]

Just for me to understand and for personal interest...

In your opinion: How should/would a company behave that has a product that's software related or eg. a platform as a service, who has no political interest or whatsoever, in such a situation?
Based on "no private tweets", "no shared personal interests", ...

What should be done if a mass of people is attacking you based on their beliefs of what is wrong and what is right?
What should be done if you want to stay neutral, like Switzerland, and don't want to get slurred into that whole topic?

Please remember, this is not about approving or denying the current topics that are shaking our world to the core.
It's solely based on "How should/would a company or how should/would you behave if you would be the CEO of a company".

Personal addendum: I find it deeply disturbing what's going on right now all over the world. Like...batshit crazy.

 

[Gummibeer]

Just for me to understand and for personal interest...

In your opinion: How should/would a company behave that has a product that's software related or eg. a platform as a service, who has no political interest or whatsoever, in such a situation?
Based on "no private tweets", "no shared personal interests", ...

What should be done if a mass of people is attacking you based on their beliefs of what is wrong and what is right?
What should be done if you want to stay neutral, like Switzerland, and don't want to get slurred into that whole topic?

Please remember, this is not about approving or denying the current topics that are shaking our world to the core.
It's solely based on "How should/would a company or how should/would you behave if you would be the CEO of a company".

Personal addendum: I find it deeply disturbing what's going on right now all over the world. Like...batshit crazy.

Good question. At first I have to say that even the Swiss isn't neutral - they try to be but aren't.
There are topics you really can't be neutral to because being neutral is most times acceptance. There's a reason why there's a tacit consent in contract law (at least in Germany).

So of you are accused to support racism, provided with evidence, saying nothing would mean that this is okay for you. So let's say that the accusation is valid you will react - if you take action or not.

So the best thing you can do is elaborate on the accusation, check what they want and if it's possible for you or not and take action.
Being afterwards accused to do the wrong action is most times better than being accused to do nothing. Because if you do something only one party can be pissed, if you do nothing possibly both parties are fucked up.

 

[blaq]

How should/would a company behave

The golden rule is the answer you're looking for here. treat every Human being the same way you would want to be treated or your race, ethnicity, tribe and etc.. the best way to understand certain situations is if you put yourself in the victim's shoes.

I'm black and I don't think they should have used the incident to give us free stuff as if the day had anything to do with black people struggling financial... and I'm not saying that was wrong but they should have donated what they were willing to spend to NGOs that need it not just mentioning free stuff for black creators.

So as a company if you have a different view I think you're doing it wrong in the first place and keeping quiet doesn't solve or change anything.