18 ms·

As usual in these "big company did something bad" stories on HN, OP carefully avoids saying what they were actually selling.

martin_a 3y ago
Well, the problem is that the HN crowd is smart enough to build that part itself and ruin any chances for me in the market. ;-) It's an accessory for the caravaning/vanlife scene. Nothing obscene, nothing legally critical.
- mousetree 3y ago
  I’m not so sure that anybody is going to go out their way to compete with you on this
- lolinder 3y ago
  You really need to spell it out anyway. If you get back on Etsy it won't be long before you have copycats to compete with regardless of what you say here, and avoiding being specific doesn't help anyone here help you. Aside from what your parent said (which is 100% accurate), we can't give you any suggestions on what might've flagged the algorithm if we don't know the contents of your listings.
  - martin_a 3y ago
    Done, see above/OP.
- throwaway675309 3y ago
  Ehhh. It doesn't sound like you were selling massive orders of them, so this sounds like an excuse to me. If it was genuinely that simple to re-create and easy to sell, you'd have a million counterfeiters who would have stumbled upon your publicly accessible Etsy site and copied it en masse.
- kbenson 3y ago
  You're looking at this wrong. This is free advertising here if you get your etsy site back, and if you don't it doesn't really matter, eh? If you have so little faith that paying you for the item is time better spent than creating it theirselves or putting up a store to do it theirselves, then you don't really have anything worth protecting. If it is worth just paying you a few euros/dollars, then all you're doing it foregoing a bunch of free advertising while also keeping anyone from actually helping much. My spouse uses Etsy as the primary way to sell goods. It's a crappy company with crappy policies for sellers, so I'm with you on that, but all you've done here is take much of the initial interest in your story and immediately route it to a dead end.
lolinder 3y ago
Downvoters: this is legitimately a huge problem on HN. If you come back to most of these threads a few hours after they've made it big, someone will have done the research and figured out that the OP was in clear violation of the TOS and knew it. Whether that's the case here is irrelevant, it's important for people coming on HN with complaints like this to be specific, and it's worth calling it out early when they're not.
- kodah 3y ago
  > edit2: The part in question is a little addition to the normal window locks. You can slide the part over the window lock handle and it will anchor itself between handle and window frame due to its geometry. My friend asked for this, so his children would not be able to open the windows and fall out. Posters do need to be specific but we also don't need to Boogeyman our own community. Nowhere in that post did OP ask for HN to be their personal army. They asked for advice at the end.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    Hmm, this line seem like asking for action on their behalf: > Anybody out here with some connections who can help?
    - martin_a 3y ago
      Obviously that would be the jackpot: Somebody working at Etsy, helping me understand WHY exactly the account was banned and not only the product (which would probably have been an option?!?). Give me back the account, I will come up with something else to design and sell, that's okay. But nuking the whole account and keeping the money while warning/prohibiting me to create another account is just shitty.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Yes, they did, but only after my parent comment was resurrected from being grayed out at the bottom of the page. I wasn't trying to turn anyone into a boogeyman, but I have watched more than enough outrage parades on HN that turned out to be in support of a scoundrel. If we can establish the expectation that you're fully upfront about the details, then we as a community can avoid repeats of those events while still helping people like OP who are genuinely confused.
weaksauce 3y ago
> Etsy is also FULL of people who just print articulated dragons and other "entertainment stuff", where copyright/proper CC-licensing is, I would say, seems to be handled rather lax. could be in the DnD space. could be some kind of hentai thing which kinda runs in that kinda direction but also way more likely to run afoul of the tos. could be a brigade of bot accounts that reported their account as a competitor. could be all sorts of things... automated scam heuristics. tough to say.
- martin_a 3y ago
  Just search for "3d print dragon" and you'll see what I mean. Everybody is selling the same model. Licensing seems tricky to me on that model for example, not sure how Etsy would control if you've really paid the original creator or just downloaded the STL file from Thingiverse. Anyway, that's not the space I want to work/compete in, those people shall print and sell articulated dragons all day if they want.
martin_a 3y ago
I've added it in the original post: > The part in question is a little addition to the normal window locks. You can slide the part over the window lock handle and it will anchor itself between handle and window frame due to its geometry. My friend asked for this, so his children would not be able to open the windows and fall out.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  I thought Etsy was an e-commerce platform targeted to arts and crafts? It makes sense to me that they would kick off a window safety system which doesn't seem to match their use case.
  - martin_a 3y ago
    Yeah, I always thought about them that way, too. The wife of my friend thought Etsy would be a great place, because lots of people put caravaning accesoires up there for sale. There are also various hooks, cup holders and whatnot coming from 3D printers.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    To be fair to OP, I don't see anything in Etsy's policies that would clearly prohibit this. It's not what they're known for, but it seem to me to fall under "handmade": > Everything listed as handmade must be made and/or designed by you, the seller. ... Regardless, makers must be creating their items with their own hands (or tools). My best guess is either their bots suspect that OP is outsourcing the work and didn't properly disclose it OR there's some unwritten policy that a 3D printed part that requires no additional assembly doesn't count as handmade. I can definitely sympathize with them wanting Etsy to at least spell out what policy they supposedly violated. https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/?ref=list#selling https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/?ref=list#selling https://www.etsy.com/legal/handmade https://www.etsy.com/legal/handmade https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited
    - martin_a 3y ago
      > that OP is outsourcing the work and didn't properly disclose it Well, I could send them a photo of the 3D printer right behind me and me waving hands and displaying the OpenSCAD model code in the background... ;-)

martin_a 3y ago

Well, the problem is that the HN crowd is smart enough to build that part itself and ruin any chances for me in the market. ;-) It's an accessory for the caravaning/vanlife scene. Nothing obscene, nothing legally critical.

mousetree 3y ago
I’m not so sure that anybody is going to go out their way to compete with you on this
lolinder 3y ago
You really need to spell it out anyway. If you get back on Etsy it won't be long before you have copycats to compete with regardless of what you say here, and avoiding being specific doesn't help anyone here help you. Aside from what your parent said (which is 100% accurate), we can't give you any suggestions on what might've flagged the algorithm if we don't know the contents of your listings.
- martin_a 3y ago
  Done, see above/OP.
throwaway675309 3y ago
Ehhh. It doesn't sound like you were selling massive orders of them, so this sounds like an excuse to me. If it was genuinely that simple to re-create and easy to sell, you'd have a million counterfeiters who would have stumbled upon your publicly accessible Etsy site and copied it en masse.
kbenson 3y ago
You're looking at this wrong. This is free advertising here if you get your etsy site back, and if you don't it doesn't really matter, eh? If you have so little faith that paying you for the item is time better spent than creating it theirselves or putting up a store to do it theirselves, then you don't really have anything worth protecting. If it is worth just paying you a few euros/dollars, then all you're doing it foregoing a bunch of free advertising while also keeping anyone from actually helping much. My spouse uses Etsy as the primary way to sell goods. It's a crappy company with crappy policies for sellers, so I'm with you on that, but all you've done here is take much of the initial interest in your story and immediately route it to a dead end.

lolinder 3y ago

Downvoters: this is legitimately a huge problem on HN. If you come back to most of these threads a few hours after they've made it big, someone will have done the research and figured out that the OP was in clear violation of the TOS and knew it. Whether that's the case here is irrelevant, it's important for people coming on HN with complaints like this to be specific, and it's worth calling it out early when they're not.

kodah 3y ago
> edit2: The part in question is a little addition to the normal window locks. You can slide the part over the window lock handle and it will anchor itself between handle and window frame due to its geometry. My friend asked for this, so his children would not be able to open the windows and fall out. Posters do need to be specific but we also don't need to Boogeyman our own community. Nowhere in that post did OP ask for HN to be their personal army. They asked for advice at the end.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  Hmm, this line seem like asking for action on their behalf: > Anybody out here with some connections who can help?
  - martin_a 3y ago
    Obviously that would be the jackpot: Somebody working at Etsy, helping me understand WHY exactly the account was banned and not only the product (which would probably have been an option?!?). Give me back the account, I will come up with something else to design and sell, that's okay. But nuking the whole account and keeping the money while warning/prohibiting me to create another account is just shitty.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Yes, they did, but only after my parent comment was resurrected from being grayed out at the bottom of the page. I wasn't trying to turn anyone into a boogeyman, but I have watched more than enough outrage parades on HN that turned out to be in support of a scoundrel. If we can establish the expectation that you're fully upfront about the details, then we as a community can avoid repeats of those events while still helping people like OP who are genuinely confused.

weaksauce 3y ago

> Etsy is also FULL of people who just print articulated dragons and other "entertainment stuff", where copyright/proper CC-licensing is, I would say, seems to be handled rather lax. could be in the DnD space. could be some kind of hentai thing which kinda runs in that kinda direction but also way more likely to run afoul of the tos. could be a brigade of bot accounts that reported their account as a competitor. could be all sorts of things... automated scam heuristics. tough to say.

martin_a 3y ago
Just search for "3d print dragon" and you'll see what I mean. Everybody is selling the same model. Licensing seems tricky to me on that model for example, not sure how Etsy would control if you've really paid the original creator or just downloaded the STL file from Thingiverse. Anyway, that's not the space I want to work/compete in, those people shall print and sell articulated dragons all day if they want.

martin_a 3y ago

I've added it in the original post: > The part in question is a little addition to the normal window locks. You can slide the part over the window lock handle and it will anchor itself between handle and window frame due to its geometry. My friend asked for this, so his children would not be able to open the windows and fall out.

mvdtnz 3y ago
I thought Etsy was an e-commerce platform targeted to arts and crafts? It makes sense to me that they would kick off a window safety system which doesn't seem to match their use case.
- martin_a 3y ago
  Yeah, I always thought about them that way, too. The wife of my friend thought Etsy would be a great place, because lots of people put caravaning accesoires up there for sale. There are also various hooks, cup holders and whatnot coming from 3D printers.
- lolinder 3y ago
  To be fair to OP, I don't see anything in Etsy's policies that would clearly prohibit this. It's not what they're known for, but it seem to me to fall under "handmade": > Everything listed as handmade must be made and/or designed by you, the seller. ... Regardless, makers must be creating their items with their own hands (or tools). My best guess is either their bots suspect that OP is outsourcing the work and didn't properly disclose it OR there's some unwritten policy that a 3D printed part that requires no additional assembly doesn't count as handmade. I can definitely sympathize with them wanting Etsy to at least spell out what policy they supposedly violated. https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/?ref=list#selling https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/?ref=list#selling https://www.etsy.com/legal/handmade https://www.etsy.com/legal/handmade https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited
  - martin_a 3y ago
    > that OP is outsourcing the work and didn't properly disclose it Well, I could send them a photo of the 3D printer right behind me and me waving hands and displaying the OpenSCAD model code in the background... ;-)