Simply Elegant Glass has been selling hand-crafted sex toys on Etsy for nearly a decade. In that time, the shop has made over 7,000 sales and racked up more than 1,500 mostly five-star reviews. The Etsy shop — which offers glass dildos, anal plugs and other insertable items — drives the majority of the small business’ overall sales. But as of Monday July 29, the bulk of the shop’s catalog won’t be allowed on the marketplace anymore under Etsy’s new restrictions around sex toys.
The Adult Nudity and Sexual Content policy, which was quietly published at the end of June to the platform’s “House Rules,” states that “Etsy prohibits the sale of adult toys that are: inserted into the body; applied to the genitalia; designed for genitals to be inserted into them.” Among other things, it specifically forbids vendors from selling “dildos, vibrators, anal plugs, sex dolls and fleshlights.” The policy update, spotted first by Mashable, came in tandem with a community forum post by Etsy’s head of Trust & Safety, Alice Wu Paulus, who wrote that it was designed to reflect “evolving industry standards and best practices so that we can continue to keep our users safe.”
The note about the impending change said Etsy would, in the coming weeks, “communicate directly with sellers who may need to update their listing images to be compliant.” Enforcement would begin on July 29, it said, and non-compliant listings would be removed. But up to three weeks after the new policy was published online, sellers that spoke to Engadget said they were never contacted directly by Etsy. All of them found out about the ban through social media or other means.
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Source: Artisanal sex toy businesses might not survive Etsy’s new seller policies
Robin Edgar
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