Etsy

Etsy believes in creating a welcoming community for our diverse global marketplace, including all religious beliefs. However, the reselling of consecrated hosts is a violation of our policies, and we removed the 'sold out' listing as soon as it was brought to our attention. Currently, there are no listings for these items for sale. As this petition noted, items and listings are not pre-approved before they become active on the site. We rely on each seller to ensure the items they list adhere to our policies, and our specialized teams take action when we see items that violate these policies. We strongly encourage anyone who sees an item that violates our policies to submit a flag by clicking the “Report this item to Etsy” link at the bottom of the listing. Thank you for continuing to bring these prohibited items to our attention and for helping us keep Etsy an inclusive community. Sincerely, Jess Kallberg Policy Manager

At Etsy, we believe that business can be a force for good, and we are always striving to find ways to more closely align our business practices with our values. Many of our sellers also share these values, and have taken it upon themselves to make ethical choices in the running of their businesses. It is important to note that Etsy is not a traditional retailer with a curated inventory, but a marketplace comprised of 1.8 million independent sellers. We are very careful about the policies we promulgate for our platform. We consider many different and often divergent factors before coming to a decision about what is best for our community and platform. We know that even those items we allow are subject to a variety of valid and sometimes conflicting interpretations and values. Art, animal products, and historical pieces can be provocative, emotional, and divisive. There are some topics on which we may never reach a consensus as a community. Unlike many other online venues, we have just one global marketplace instead of a separate marketplace for each country. This also creates unique policy challenges, because we want to come up with a global policy that strikes the right balance for all of our buyers and sellers, as well as our broader stakeholders. Sometimes certain jurisdictions have stricter regulations than our global policies, and in those cases we rely on government agents to identify any listings that violate local laws, and we will remove them. Our policy regarding animal products on our platform is to follow international industry standards to ban endangered and threatened animal species, as outlined in the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I. With the help of trusted NGO partners, we proactively remove ESA and CITES Appendix I species from our marketplace. We also require that our sellers agree to our policies when they list items for sale on our site, which includes following their local laws and obtaining any necessary permits. Seahorses fall under CITES Appendix II, which means that they are not endangered, but some jurisdictions require sellers to obtain permits in order to sell them. While we do not monitor CITES Appendix II species, we will remove listings reported to us by a government agency in jurisdictions where their sale is prohibited. We are certainly empathetic to your concern about seahorses and support your advocacy, but as we are not qualified to make decisions about the classification of endangered species, we will continue to rely on the CITES Appendix I (as well as compliance with local law) in our policy enforcement. Perhaps you could lobby CITES to move seahorses to Appendix I, which would place greater restrictions on their trade, and bring them within the scope of our Prohibited Items Policy. Our policy development is an ongoing process, and we thank you for your suggestions, which we will take into consideration as we continue to develop our policies around animal products.

From our earliest days, Etsy has been a global marketplace connecting buyers and sellers around the world. Etsy provides buyers with access to the work of artists and collectors from far away places. We’ve heard from many sellers that having customers from other countries gives you a unique thrill and helps drive your sales. We have no plans to change the global nature of Etsy. Products that ship to a country will always be available to buyers in that country – no matter where they’re shipped from. We also believe that it takes more than simply making products available to build a people-centered marketplace around the world. The change that we made to search in the United Kingdom and Australia made some items from shops based in those countries easier to find in search. We often hear from buyers outside of the US that they prefer items from their own countries due to factors such as lower shipping costs and customs fees. We are making it easier for buyers to find items from shops in their home countries. We’re happy to report that since we’ve made this change, we’ve seen buyers in the UK and Australia buying more, making for a positive experience for buyers and sellers in those markets. Helping buyers have a better experience ultimately helps sellers be more successful. We know that our announcement created concern for some of our sellers. We’re committed to building local marketplaces globally. With search, we want to help buyers find the right items, but we also want to support the long-term health of the marketplace. Some sellers have asked why we made this change if location filters are already available to narrow search results. We have found that very few members used location filters because they weren’t familiar with the functionality. In the future, we may test improvements to this functionality. We are not currently testing this search algorithm in other markets. Here are some steps you can take to benefit from this adjustment to search: + Learn more about the types of shops we feature on Editors’ Picks: www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-etsy-editors-picks... + Be sure to set your profile location: www.etsy.com/help/article/67 Set up a shipping profile to indicate where your items ship from: www.etsy.com/help/article/190 + If you’re participating as a seller in an local market, add the event to Etsy Local, or join the event if it already exists. Get more information about improvements to Etsy Local in the Seller Handbook: www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/improvements-to-etsy-local/245… You can read more about our global strategy here: https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/supporting-etsys-global-marketplace/34461594427 Sincerely, Nicole Vanderbilt Etsy VP, International

At Etsy we strongly believe in freedom of thought, expression, and religion. That means all religions. Indeed, in Etsy’s diverse global marketplace, you can see a tremendous range of items celebrating virtually any religion you can think of. We are not, nor will we ever, target shops because of their religious beliefs. While Etsy is proud to be home to so many great items celebrating the faiths of the world, we do not allow services to be sold in our marketplace. This has long been the case, but we recently clarified our longstanding service policies, making it clearer that any religious or metaphysical service that promises or suggests it will effect a physical change (e.g., weight loss), medical cure, or other outcome (e.g., love, revenge) is not allowed, even if it delivers a tangible item. These rules apply equally to all religions and beliefs and are equally enforced. You can see Etsy’s full policy for services here: www.etsy.com/help/article/4524 While we continue to prohibit services, metaphysical or otherwise, it is important to note that Etsy has not banned metaphysical items nor are we considering it. Sellers may continue to sell items such as astrological charts, tarot readings, and other tangible objects, as long as they are not making a promise that the object will effect a physical change or other outcome, such as weight loss, love, or revenge. And of course, anybody who wishes to sell a qualifying handmade or vintage Pagan item is absolutely welcome on Etsy! Mark Shaw Etsy Policy

We always appreciate feedback from our community, and we appreciate your comments regarding the new homepage. We understand that it’s a big change, and want to share some of the thoughts that went into the design process. Our primary goal is to make the homepage more democratic. The homepage has been a major pain point of our community for many years. We’ve heard that more sellers would like the opportunity to have their items featured on the front page. The old experience allowed, at most, a few hundred sellers to be featured a day, while our new design will allow thousands of sellers to be featured constantly, personalized to the tastes of buyers. The new homepage will allow buyers to have very personalized shopping experiences, and to see more of the wonderful shops and items that they already love. We’ve seen very positive results so far with the personalized homepage. Buyers are already favoriting more items and shops, and they’re looking at more listings in the marketplace. We want to give as many buyers exposure to as many shops as possible before the holiday season. We understand that many teams build Treasuries together as a way of building community and of promoting your businesses—and we want to continue to give you tools to support this activity. One of the main improvements we are focused on is the development of Team Pages (https://www.etsy.com/help/article/5211). Teams can collaboratively build curated lists on Team Pages — and, like Treasuries, you can promote them together to help buyers discover your shops. Treasuries that have been created or favorited by members will appear for those members and their followers on the new personalized homepages. If you enjoy creating Treasuries together, please continue to create and promote them across all the places shoppers go for inspiration, but we encourage you to check out the Team Pages feature as well. We're always listening — please contact us at our help center with additional feedback: https://www.etsy.com/help/contact. Thanks again for the feedback, and for being part of the Etsy community. Sincerely, The Etsy Team

We appreciate your feedback about the recent changes to our Mature policies. At Etsy, it's always important to us that we find the right balance between allowing artistic expression and providing a positive member experience. The decision to restrict access to mature listings involved several discussions with stakeholders (both internally and externally), an in-depth analysis of listings and community feedback, and taking a holistic view of how these items contribute to the overall vision and mission of Etsy. The most upsetting part of our research was learning how some of the more graphic taxidermy and wet taxidermy deeply offended members of our community, many of whom are animal lovers. You may have read other change.org petitions that called for an all-out ban on all wet taxidermy on Etsy. While this may have been easier for our operations team, after much research, we ultimately concluded that taxidermy and wet specimen preservation are art and have a place on Etsy. Our goal is not to censor you or your shop, but to identify the areas that are causing concern for our members and ensure that we're providing them with the best experience as they browse the site. We appreciate suggestions for improving our products and have passed those suggestions along to our product teams. We hope this provides a little more detail into our decision and that you will continue to use Etsy under these new terms. If we are able to provide product solutions in the future, we will certainly keep you informed. We greatly appreciate your attention and feedback! Sincerely, Etsy Policy Team

In October of 2013, an important issue was brought to our attention: an Etsy shop that sold t-shirts promoting rape and violence against women, among other things. Although our policies already prohibited items or listings that promote, support or glorify acts of violence or harm towards self or others, we didn’t have a protocol in place to make quick decisions about immediate, permanent action. Because we are a creative community, we have always prized freedom of speech and have tried not to inject our personal values into our policies. We want Etsy to be a community where people of all backgrounds, nationalities, religions, political affiliations — even different types of humor — feel welcome. Art is incredibly subjective, and what is offensive to one is not necessarily offensive to others. We want Etsy to be a space for creative freedom. In this particular instance, however, we were confronted with a very clear-cut case of something that violated our policies, and that we found incredibly offensive and completely inconsistent with our values. It was something we don't want in our marketplace or our community, and it required immediate action. Effective since October 2013, we changed our protocol as follows in order to allow for swift, permanent action in these kinds of situations in order to better protect our community. -Shops that incite or talk about performing specific acts of violence on groups of people will be banned from our community on their first offense, and will not be offered second chances. -We continue to update our detection systems to find and remove potentially controversial listings that aren't in line with our policies. You can read more about our decision here: https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/13254904. The intelligent and supportive reaction from our community was inspiring and educational, and we look forward to similar discussions in the future. Sincerely, Bonnie Broeren Policy Manager, Etsy

When Etsy became a Certified B Corporation in 2012, we made a commitment to lead by example with the impact our business can have on the world. That included making values-based decisions, instead of just thinking about the bottom line. One such decision started as a conversation with our community about products made from endangered animals and ivory. Etsy’s community of more than 30 million sellers and shoppers is mindful, progressive, and outspoken on issues that matter dearly to them — and in turn, to us. After internal research and planning, we took an important step towards minimizing our company’s and our community’s impact on the depletion of some of our world’s most precious natural resources. In July 2013, Etsy banned the sale of products made from endangered animals and ivory. You can read the announcement here: https://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2013/policy-update-prohibited-animal-products/. The support we received from our community about this decision was incredible, as seen here: https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/12715475/. Thank you for being a part of the conversation! We will continue to listen and engage with our community as we strive to make more values-based decisions. Signed, Bonnie Broeren Policy Manager, Etsy