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As the creator economy grows, platforms like Shopify have increasingly leaned on influencers, content creators, and affiliate marketers to drive product awareness and sales for their merchants. But behind Shopify’s polished branding and creator-friendly PR lies a disturbing reality: creators especially Black creators are being mistreated, silenced, and stripped of their earnings with no transparency, no accountability, and no real recourse.

I should know. I’m one of them.

In April, without warning, Shopify’s Collabs platform automatically filed disputes on over 300 of my brand collaborations, freezing access to earnings I had rightfully earned over months of work . The irony? These disputes came five months after Shopify had previously flagged my content in November a flag I addressed, corrected, and received no follow-up consequences for.

Despite my account being active and compliant, I was told I needed to contact each brand individually to ask them to lift their disputes. That might sound reasonable until you realize Shopify’s system wouldn’t even show me which brands had active disputes with actual money tied to them.Their own support staff admitted the interface was flawed and they were “working on a fix.”

I contacted the brands I could see and multiple of them lifted their disputes.

But days later, Shopify sent an email saying I would no longer be allowed to respond to any disputes and that all disputed earnings were being canceled. No warning. No appeals. No way to retrieve thousands of dollars that I had already earned. I was punished not because I failed to act, but because Shopify’s broken backend made it impossible to even see all my disputes in the first place.

This kind of treatment might seem like a one off glitch. But it isn’t.

After speaking with other creators many of them Black, like myself I’ve learned that this isn’t an isolated incident. There’s a pattern: Black creators being flagged, frozen, ghosted, or quietly removed from Collabs without explanation, while non-Black creators with similar content or performance histories are allowed to continue.

We are held to a different standard. A silent one. One enforced through platform opacity and algorithmic gatekeeping.

Shopify’s own guidelines claim to support “authentic creators,” but when we create authentically and speak up, we’re penalized. When we ask for clarity, we’re told, “Contact the brands.” When we prove brands have lifted the disputes, they pivot again: “You’re no longer allowed to respond.” The narrative changes every time someone gets too close to the truth.

Shopify wants the marketing benefits of Black creators without respecting our labor or our worth. We are good enough to boost your brand visibility, but not valuable enough to be paid or even told the truth when your system glitches.

The silence and erasure aren’t accidental. They’re systemic.

This is more than a creator support issue. This is about equity in the digital economy. Shopify’s actions speak louder than their polished emails and inclusive mission statements. If a multi-billion dollar company can take your work, withholdyour earnings, and then block you from contesting it all while hiding behind broken tech and conflicting support responses, then what protection do any of us really have?

To Shopify: Do better. Fix your systems. Honor your commitments. And most importantly, stop targeting the very creators that helped build your credibility in the first place.

Because we see it. And we will speak on it.

 

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock