What Is Going On At Etsy

[@SWIMMINGDOWN]

It's been unusable on the customer end for years too. Not sure what their goal is, as I only hear bad things about the seller experience too. The search function is basically useless. Gave up on it years ago sadly. I remember eBay became a bit tyrannical, but finally with competition (vinted, depop, etc) they have made seller terms more reasonable again. Hopefully the same happens for Etsy. Seems like a huge gap in the market honestly.

[@4-kathryn]

I'm coming from it from an Etsy buyer prospective, when I do my shopping I ensure before anything else that the Etsy store-front folks are in my state, that way I feel more confident they are local to me and less likely to be a drop shipper. It can happen but if I limit my search, I tend to find more genuine (non-corporate) folks selling crafts. Also support anything going on in your area, look occasionally if there's a festival near you or artist alley or if a comic convention is occurring; I usually find lots of original, one of kind items from attending those seasonal events.

[@LilyPi-m1m]

what's an alternative that would be good to use?

[@wendy-zarate]

Probably craft markets in your area. Like local craft shows are the best case solution for buying/selling or reaching out to sellers and asking if they sell online *their own website. It's more work but hey atleast you're guaranteed a handmade product, with more of the profits going to the seller. Or Etsy not squeezing every last dime out of your profits.

[@Lisa_ink]

Last time I visited (i don't visit it a lot) I got advertised actual porn (with a graphic promo video). Told me enough how their monitoring works...

[@sustainablejungle]

Wow, that's crazy! I use ad blockers on all my browsers so I've never actually seen what Etsy's ads are like but hoping they're not putting stuff like that on my shop!

[@Lisa_ink]

@@sustainablejungle not an ad, an actual "item" you could buy in the Etsy shop.

[@sustainablejungle]

Wow that's even more insane! So confusing and disheartening to see sellers selling genuining handmade harmless stuff get banned while stuff like that makes it on the platform :(