Etsy to Update Policies and Expand Enforcement

by: MIscetal

Oh for Pete's sake -

There are rug sellers on Etsy with dozens of different "hand made" rugs of identical design in multiple shapes and sizes using the site as advertzing - you find that out when they are always out of the rugs they list.

Handmade - someone ties on the fringe?

It used to be fun, when you felt you were buying and selling within a community of at least a few common values.

At this point, it's Walmart Online

by: Shikari

Yes--thats all to the good but absolutely no mention of policing the counterfeit fake artists that are proliferating on Etsy.
Particularly hard hit is the jewelry market where numerous bad actors are using terms like "AAAA grade" or "Natural Gem" in their headings on obviously fake items with fake authenticity certificates offered at 10 to 15% of the price of the real thing.
People are buying them thinking they got a huge deal and then give the fake artists five star reviews which aids even more buyers buying fakes.
Worse yet Etsy is offering up these fakes in their "Gift Guide" emails.
Reporting these fakes results in nothing.
I mentioned to Etsy in a reported item that most of these fakes were originating from India and that resulted in getting me banned from the forum--calling me out for "Hate Speech!!!
Hopefully Etsy will find some way of combatting these deceivers--maybe using AI --but a friend selling on Ebay reported a fake and the answer from Ebay was that their AI system saw nothing wrong with the fake.
Thats my rant for the day for whatever good it does.

by: LDWCallsOut

Did you mean to type ''eBay'' in paragraph four?

What I've seen:  

-- Reseller listings disappear, and then reappear, in search results.  I see many obvious reseller products that are finished goods being relocated to Supplies.  

-- Vintage is worse than ever.  Items pretending to be vintage can have a date -- say, 2006 -- in the title, and then show that the item is ''vintage from before 2000''.  Obviously, Etsy's bot can't ''do the math''.  Also, the bot sees nothing wrong with ''vintage'' 2024 presidential campaign items.  Reseller items that are not relocated to Supplies are being pushed into Vintage.  Authentic Vintage items are a challenge to find now because the pages are saturated with new items the shop owner purchases wholesale by the case lot.

-- It is still super easy to see listings that violate Etsy's rules for what can be sold on the site by simple visual inspection.  I do a simple search and just scroll down the page, and the reseller items are clearly visible.  Too bad Etsy staff hasn't got much of a clue as to how to teach their bot to find reseller products.  

by: Shanna

The leadership at Etsy got a free taste of mass market items being sold on their platform. People were buying them, sellers continued to list them, and Etsy made good money on them. Without that hit of Mass Market Crap (MMC), they would not have been able to show investors that their site is growing and makes money.

Now they are addicted to MMC, they have to have it to survive. They can talk every day about getting clean, going back to the way it was, but they have that extra stash hidden in the toilet tank, in the glove box, and on top of the kitchen cabinets. No one they can go cold turkey at this point, they will talk about it for a month, then they will bring their fix back out for all to see.