Founder and CEO of Your American Flag Store James Staake recounted his censorship battle with Facebook, Shopify, and PayPal, revealing how the tech giants targeted his patriotic business the day after January 6, 2021.
Staake’s business, which started as a side job involving him building wooden American flag pieces featuring patriotic artwork created by his wife, grew from a small local operation in 2018 to a full-time gig once the products were available to purchase online.
In addition to having well over 100 patriotically themed flags available on Your American Flag Store’s website, the business also will fulfill made-to-order requests.
Staake said one made-to-order request, in particular, set the stage for his battle with the Big Tech giants that intended to ruin his family business.
“We made a flag for a customer who called us and asked us if we would mind making a flag with President Trump on it…We sent it off to the customer, the customer took a picture of it, posted it on the internet to Facebook and tagged us in it. And that was the deadly tag,” Staake explained on Tuesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Noting how the incident occurred on January 7, 2021 – one day after the January 6 Capitol riot – Staake said sales stopped coming through “all of a sudden” after all of the business’s advertising was “gone.”
Not only did Facebook pull all advertising, but Shopify, which hosted the business’s website, started deleting the family business’s best-selling flags, and PayPal withheld more than $110,000 in revenue.
Regarding Shopify, Staake said flags supporting first responders, the American military, former President Donald Trump, and religious ones were all deleted.
“What happened immediately next was we went into full-on panic mode because, you know, this is about a month we’re looking into it, can’t figure anything out,” Staake said. “We got a mortgage due, we got food to buy and that kind of thing, and the money is drying up. And we were kind of dead in the water. So for about 60 days, we were in panic mode. I’m calling anybody that can place an ad. I’m calling, you know, anybody and it’s either we can’t afford it or they’re not interested in advertising with us.”
Staake said with the help of nationally recognized lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, PayPal eventually released the money after a nearly year-long fight.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Your American Flag Store Product” by Your American Flag Store.
