carne-asada-fries: FYI, during the week of April 11-18th a coalition of independent artists and busi

carne-asada-fries:

FYI, during the week of April 11-18th a coalition of independent artists and business owners who sell on etsy will be temporarily closing their stores and are calling for a boycott in support of their petition for better treatment by the site’s corporate management. Despite record profits during the pandemic, transaction  fees were recently raised by 30%, shop owners with revenue over a certain threshold are forced to participate mandatory advertising programs, and sellers are subject to a draconian review system in which anything less than five stars counts as no stars. Drop shipping is now rampant (I have been bitten by this twice in as many months) and while etsy will refund buyers’ money and take a report, little is done to tackle the problem and legitimate sellers’ stores are lost in a sea of mass produced items from aliexpress being sold at handmade prices, thus eroding the confidence of buyers in the quality of ‘handmade’ goods.

I enjoy shopping with independent sellers on etsy and while I knew things were not great since the company voluntarily relinquished its B-Corp status in favor of increased profits, I did not realize that it was this bad. Where possible, I will now be supporting these artists through alternate platforms. Please visit https://etsystrike.org/ for a more detailed summary of the current situation and consider boycotting etsy completely (including just browsing) during the week of April 11-18 to help these sellers bring home their points.