Etsy Deactivating Listings With No Right To Appeal

Legitimate Handmade Creations Are Being Removed From The Site, And Shops Closed

With recent changes to sellers' ability to appeal automated listing removals, Etsy's AI bots are now almost uncontrolled. While the process has never been easy, many Etsy shop owners are now being told there is no way to have actual human beings check the validity of the computerized flags that took down their handmade goods. This is leading not only to the loss of popular listings for some of Etsy's long-time sellers, but also to shop suspensions.

I have been helping sellers appeal these deactivations for over a year, and have tracked developments in Etsy's procedures during this time. Late last month, I was (un)lucky enough to experience the process first-hand, and now have proof that the corporation is making it almost impossible to get someone at Etsy to look at evidence the items are handmade.

Background - The "AliExpress Bot"

Etsy has always had rules about what can be sold under their Handmade section (now under their "Creativity Standards"), and will enforce them with removal of the product listing when they catch violations. In 2023, the company introduced AI technology that looks for Etsy photos on some discount sites; when it finds a match, it then deactivates the Etsy listing on the assumption it is a reseller product. Unfortunately, many of these sites have some stolen photos from around the internet, leading to numerous legitimate items being deactivated on Etsy.

The resulting outcry over some well-established sellers having handmade items removed was loud enough that Etsy's Vice President of Trust and Safety, Alice Wu Paulus, announced planned changes to the process in the Etsy seller forum a year ago:

"when a listing is flagged by our automated controls for potentially violating our Handmade Policy, it will remain active but not appear in search results and recommendations in order to give our specialists time to review the listing. Our team will determine if it should be removed, or if it can be sold on Etsy and be made visible again. The review process typically takes less than 24 hours."

I was pleasantly surprised by that announcement, but to my knowledge, this process has never been introduced across the site in the past year. It was briefly tested, but now seems to have been abandoned. Etsy sellers currently do not receive warnings prior to their items being removed from the site under the Creativity Standards.

CEO Josh Silverman assured investors in May 2024 that sellers could appeal the process as well:

"You as a seller can appeal that, you can tell us how you made it yourself, and it still ended up on AliExpress. And by the way, that's true sometimes. You can appeal that, but our default now is we take that down."

How The Appeal Process Has Been Working Lately

For the first year or so, shop owners could appeal these removals caused by stolen photos, although it was often difficult to do so. I closely tracked this situation and often get emails from sellers looking for my advice on it, so I am generally in the loop.

For the past few months, the situation has gradually changed. Often, sellers are now told one of the following:

• that they can’t appeal. Frequently, this is the only response, despite talking to multiple Etsy Support staff. Some sellers just give up at this point.
• more rarely, Support says that the problem has been escalated to the correct team (Trust & Safety), but the shop owner never gets a response, even after months. This often happens after the merchant posts in the Etsy seller forum, and a moderator closes the thread with a promise of escalation. That used to be one of the best ways to resolve an incorrect handmade deactivation, but now it is very hit or miss, even for long-time sellers.
• occasionally, sellers are advised to just take new photos of the product and make a new listing for it, which means that Etsy staff are acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with the actual item for sale. The only problem is the photo. When sellers follow these instructions, shoppers lose the benefit of the many reviews on the established-but-deactivated listing, and shop owners lose the benefit of search and other algorithm rankings that a strong-selling listing has.
• recently, Support is directly telling some people that their items have been removed due to the photos being found elsewhere, and may even link to the stolen image on AliExpress, Temu, etc. In at least a few cases, the other photo is not the same, and may not even show an identical product! It may be a hairbow made of completely different fabric, or earrings made with the same charms but not the same hooks. And no, they cannot appeal.

I've been puzzled by these events, especially the last 2 points. Etsy's Creativity Standards allow making earrings with commercial charms or common stones, as many shops do. If Etsy is going to accuse their merchants of being resellers just for having a product that resembles one sold somewhere else, shouldn't the seller at least be allowed present evidence they really make the articles?

And telling a shop owner to upload new photographs and start over indicates Etsy's C-suite is less concerned with passing off manufactured items as handmade than it is with the appearance of passing off manufactured items as handmade. If Support is so sure that the merchandise is fine to list again, why not just restore the old listing? I guess that might lead a shopper thinking the item was actually bought on Shein, where the stolen photo is on display. Etsy obviously prefers harming a seller's livelihood to the option of educating the public.

Sadly, my own experience with a removed listing provided no better understanding. After I received the email from Etsy, I found the following on the Appeals page:

Etsy's deactivation email did not provide a way to get more information; it just listed all of the Creativity Standards and told me not to break any more. I am pretty familiar with Etsy's rules and knew I wasn't in violation. Since I did find a (now-removed) copy of one photo on Alibaba through reverse image searches, I assumed that was behind my takedown. I then spent time collecting my evidence:

• a video of me making the item, also displaying all of the components in their suppliers' packaging, and a unique fossil shown in one of the listing photos.
• screenshots of my supply orders, which matched the items shown in my video
• the 4 original unretouched photographs I used in my listing, with the data still attached.

I do sell the same jewellery item on my own website, so I uploaded the video on an unlinked page there, proving I own the website.

I then submitted a Support ticket via email, and waited. Over the next several days, I was told 4 separate times that there was nothing I could do to change Etsy's decision, all in cut and paste replies. I requested my appeal evidence be passed along to Trust & Safety, but was ignored. I then switched to live chat, where the above screenshots came from (denying my ability to appeal).

Then, for no apparent reason, a manager from Etsy Support contacted me via email and said my listing was now reinstated, because it had been removed in error. He refused to provide any more information, including why I had been repeatedly told I was not allowed to appeal. So why was my listing restored? My best guesses are my mention of Silverman's statement about appeals, or possibly mentioning I would tell my story to the media or investors. But who knows? It may have simply been corrected due to Support's quality monitoring.

The video on my website has no views; that's right, they didn't even check my evidence. All of this research and communication took 2 hours of my life I will never get back, and will not be compensated for. But hey, at least he said he was "very sorry"!

How This Situation Affects The Humans Behind The Microbusinesses That Rely On Etsy For Their Livelihoods

I was pretty lucky - just a few hours of work, plus a week of lost income on an inexpensive article, and then my listing was available for sale again. I'm slowly downsizing my Etsy shop, as I no longer trust the site, and was thinking of letting that item expire anyway. My experience alone is hardly worth this long article.

But unfortunately, many other innocent sellers have it much worse.

• Some never get their product pages reactivated, because they can't get Etsy to look at the evidence. Since it is usually the most popular items that have photos stolen, this can mean losses totalling thousands of dollars. (This can be true even when the listing does get reinstated, because that can take a few months).
• Furthermore, an item that is down for any time gradually loses its "listing engagement rate", meaning it will drop in Etsy search and other algorithms on the site if/when it returns. This loss of momentum can be permanent, torpedoing a shop.
• Any policy violation, including breaking the "Creativity Standards", can also harm a seller's visibility on Etsy, including in search. Multiple violations result in the loss of Star Seller badges (which many of these shops have, because of course they had products that get ordered often and reviewed well. Thieves don't take the unpopular ideas.)
• If Etsy takes enough listings down, a shop will be forced into "vacation mode" for a month, then closed permanently. Yes, this is happening, and not just to one shop.

All of this from the corporation that likes to claim it wants to "Keep Commerce Human".

What Should Etsy Do About Erroneous Takedowns of Truly Handmade Items?

Some people will argue that Etsy had to do something to remove scammers from the site, and that of course errors will be made even if humans do all of the removals. I don't disagree. The biggest problem is the removal of the ability to appeal, so that those errors can no longer be corrected in many cases. Etsy is damaging real lives here.

But another extremely important part of this current debacle is that Etsy is shockingly bad at doing automated removals. In 2022, only 5% of items flagged by the AI were permanently removed. That number appears to have improved in 2023 - the year the AliExpress bot was first introduced - when I calculated that around 12% of the flags were indeed accurate. I suspect the error rate is still dropping a bit, but we won't ever have accurate results from 2024 because Etsy is not allowing sellers to appeal the bad bot removals. The real numbers will be worse than the ones Etsy publishes. I guess that's one way to improve the stats...

As someone who has had numerous items removed or shadow-banned due to Etsy's constant AI errors, I have zero faith in Etsy's ability to automate these processes. But unlike my false removals for selling amber (it was an agate), drug paraphernalia (they were natural tektite earrings), and prohibited plant materials (it was fossilized dinosaur dung), Etsy apparently no longer has humans reviewing the automated decisions, and doesn't really allow sellers to appeal any more.

Etsy wasted years of great financial results doing very little about the reseller problem, and is now scrambling to repair its poor public image as the place to buy cheap manufactured goods at inflated prices. Its handmade sellers - which now centre Etsy brand advertising - are the collateral. Etsy's AI is literally taking our jobs.

UPDATE (September 13 2024): The issues continue; this is just a sampling of the threads closed in the Etsy forum today on this topic:

and remember, most Etsy sellers never visit the forum.

UPDATE (September 20, 2024): More shops are being suspended or threatened with suspension, and very few have heard back from Etsy, even when they are told their case is being looked as, as with these examples: