When Censorship Goes Wrong
Redbubble's prohibition of criticism of Putin as punishment for his war crimes is enabling him to continue to commit genocide against the Ukrainian people.
By Alexander Muse ·
Businesses like Redbubble (a global online marketplace for print-on-demand products based on user-submitted artwork) are banning criticisms of Putin on their platforms in an effort to punish the dictator. I contend that censoring criticism of Putin is the same as supporting him. Hiding our heads in the sand won’t stop his illegal invasion of Ukraine or rally the international support it will take to free the Ukrainian people and ultimately bring him to justice. Ironically, while Redbubble bans criticism of the murderous dictator companies like Twitter continue to give Putin a platform to reach millions.
Yesterday, Toyotomi Yukimura, a Japanese artist I work closely with, posted a series of images critical of Twitter’s current management team. His work pointed out that the company’s most influential shareholders and users are, in many cases, murderous dictators (or just plain murderers). Toyotomi does most of his work as NFTs but he posted these images to Redbubble so that he could order t-shirts with the images for friends who live in San Francisco. The first piece, as seen below, included Vladimir Putin who has over 1.7 million followers on Twitter (his account is still active despite his illegal invasion of Ukraine and the fact that he’s committing genocide against the Ukrainian people (seen below).
This morning Toyotomi got the following email from Redbubble explaining they had removed the image from their platform:
If you visit Rebbubble’s community guidelines there is literally nothing in them that prohibits the criticism of murderous dictators like Putin; however, given the fact that they ONLY removed images that included Putin’s likeness, it is clear that Putin was the reason for the removal. Shortly after getting the notice, Toyotomi uploaded a replacement after removing Putin’s face and name from the description as seen below:
Perhaps more interesting than Redbubble’s opposition to Putin’s likeness is the fact they have no problem with the inclusion of even worse murderous dictators. At the end of the day, think twice before you censor criticism of murderous dictators like Putin - your censorship may be giving them the cover they need to commit their crimes. But you shouldn’t feel compelled, like Twitter, to continue to provide the murderous dictators a platform to spread their own messages…
