ebay censorship

[nbear54]

I sell high quality archival pigment reprints of all kinds of classic public domain photography. Ebay has chosen to make every single one of my photographs of nudes that I have listed as an adults only selection. These are mostly late 19th and early 20th century photos by known photographers. They are found in art museums around the world. They are in the realm of Fine Art Photography. They are well known and famous photos. Here's what they are not: they are not sleazy, second rate photos with titles like "Big breasted babe" or "Luscious butt nude". Those are not attributed to any photographer. They are aimed for sexual turn on and arousal and they are easy to find on ebay, uncensored. But every single one of mine cannot be found in an ebay search because in the listings the titles are not even included, only the blank notice that you must have adult certification to see this photo. Yet when I do search for photos, say by photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston, who shot pictures for the Ziegfield Follies at the turn of the century, I find other ebay stores who have the same Johnston nude and semi nude photos as mine, with full listings and no "adult certification required" censorship notices. How am I supposed to compete for sales if no one can see my prints when others are available? It's so **bleep** frustrating. And not only that, the choices ebay makes about what to censor are way over the top. They censored some of my Eadweard Muybridge motion study photos from the mid 1800s with women subjects who wore full shoulder to ankle nightgowns! How absurd. They censored numerous photos of semi nude women whose clothes or body parts covered all of their breasts and genitals. That's insane. I am so frustrated that I'm thinking of quitting eBay all together. My sales have fallen to next to nothing. I have been selling for ten years on eBay and this is the worst it has been. Is anybody else experiencing this? Can anything be done to fix this? I have one idea: when they censor a photo and demand adult certification they essentially take the picture out of circulation. If they would at least leave the titles of the pictures that would help. So, for example, when someone searched Alfred Cheney Johnston, if all my Johnston photos showed up in the search, even if the searcher had to adult certify to see the pics, potential buyers could choose to see my listings along with the non-censored pics, and compare my quality and prices when they make purchases. As it is now, potential buyers have no way to even know that I have these pics (or those of any of the other censored photographers I sell) other than going to my store and one by one going through my 1200 listings and clicking on each censored pic until they find all the pics I have of any particular photographer they're looking for. That's nuts.

[nbear54]

I wrote the above post. I just want to add that at one point I wrote "it's so d-a-m-n frustrating" (I wrote the word without hyphens) and eBay substituted "bleep" for that word. Are you ........ kidding me. 

[maxine*j]

All I can tell you is this:  In every category of restricted items -- so-called "adult" items, knives, OTC drugs, government-issued items, alcohol products, cosmetics, medical devices, plants and seeds, weapons, bullion, coupons, on and on and on -- sellers are running into this, and increasingly so.

eBay's Restricted and Prohibited Items policies are vague, with lots of eraser language (such as, "including but not limited to" and similar), and they are randomly enforced, with mindless and poorly-programmed bots doing most of the enforcing.

On another board, just yesterday, someone posted his experience of having collectible paper currency from Oman removed because some bot confused OMAN with IRAN (the latter being an embargoed country).  Each country name has four letters, begins with a vowel, ends with AN.  That was enough for the bots. When he finally spoke with a so-called CSR, he was told the listing would not be restored because, "It's a grey area."  Huh??  "Grey" to a bot, maybe, but not to any human being with an eighth-grade education or a map.

And I could cite 20 other examples, just off the top of my head.

So far as I can see, there is not a thing you can do about it.  If you relist the items, you risk permanent suspension of your selling account.  You will simply have to find somewhere else to sell them.  I know that sounds unhelpful and useless.  But I am just stating the reality:  On eBay, in all matters relating to restricted or prohibited items, it is bad and it is getting worse.

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[sonomabarn67]

etsy?