Given the recent world events, the impressive global response to racism and concerns about the clarity of our ethical position, we have created a statement to provide more information:
Spreadshirt as an organisation
Who we are
Spreadshirt has over 900 colleagues from over 40 different countries. We have always been and always will be an organization that is against racism, sexism, discrimination and bullying for any reason. This is ingrained in our DNA. We value diversity at Spreadshirt and talent takes priority regardless of age, skin color, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, marital or disability status.
This understanding of who we are influences our recruiting, corporate social responsibility and our everyday behaviour. These values we carry with us every day also flow naturally into the basis of our platform and our guidelines.
Spreadshirt as an open platform
Who we are as an open platform is about the responsibility to our fellow human beings.
We believe that the free and open exchange of ideas on products is key to self-expression. Spreadshirt has set standards for our community and ourselves – and we enforce the law. Racism, sexism or discrimination have never and will never find a home on our open platform. It goes without saying that we oppose them from the bottom of our hearts which is why they are fundamental elements of our Community Guidelines. Those state that we do not accept anything with illegal content, hate speech, pornography or glorification of violence.
We do have to make subjective decisions on many borderline topics or designs that may not directly contradict our guidelines. Sometimes current events or the context a design is used in can radically change its meaning or impact. We have and will always live in this environment and act and adapt accordingly. We are proud that we capture and remove a great many unacceptable things from the over 100k designs a week uploaded to our systems. The vast majority of the political or social statements on our platform are for good, for freedom of speech and have constructive thoughts. At the same time Spreadshirt’s open platform still provides a place for topics that we might personally disagree with or which live in a gray area. For the value of freedom speech we are convinced that we as an open platform need to give those messages room for exchange.
Spreadshirt as we look forward
What we are doing to support our beliefs, guidelines and responsibility
While we have experts and processes in place, we do make mistakes and don’t always get it right. Balancing freedom of expression with our commitment to our Community Guidelines and values is an extremely difficult task, but we aim to learn from our mistakes. We are constantly tested on our position and its boundaries and we are open to a fair and constructive exchange on them. And through that exchange we will make changes to our guidelines where necessary.
We will continue to remove content and accounts that go against our values and guidelines. We vehemently oppose content and users who abuse our platform and to jeopardize this freedom of expression.
We will continue to commit time and resources to filters, algorithms and report processes which help us identify content that violates our Community Guidelines. These tools, processes and teams are key to empowering our community to live self-expression through our open platform in an undisguised and free way.
Statement by Spreadshirt CEO, Philip Rooke
