Originally published at: Ebay bans sex | Boing Boing
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eBay gas gone the way of the Craigslist. How ironic.
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[Archer “Phrasing!” Gif]
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Is eBay still a thing?
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They’re banning profanity?? Fuck that shit!
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Ebay bans ‘sex’
Good fucking luck with all that, jack.
(Yet another reason I’m glad I don’t patronize Ebay.)
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from here
Why does eBay have this policy?
We want to make adult items available to those who wish to purchase them and can do so legally, while preventing those who do not wish to view or purchase these items from easily accessing them.
Sounds like the policy doesn’t match ebay’s intent.
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Everyone I know and know of who sold as an actual business on eBay found it a total nightmare and gave up on the company.
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Indeed; I’ve also heard some horror stories.
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It certainly gives sellers of books, media, etc., more tools for anti-competitive behavior. Ebay will need to hire more folks to handle all the inappropriate material reports filed by people selling the exact same thing.
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What the actual fuck?!
Perhaps most alarmingly, in its guidelines for items the site will allow sellers to relist in its Books or Music sections, today’s notice states, “You may relist items that do not contain sexual content, profanity or other adult material.”
Does this mean we can’t buy any movies or discs of Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy on ebay anymore? What the fuck kinda tipper gore shit is this? It’s appalling that this country has yet to get over our addlepated puritan origins.
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I’ve often heard that the only thing that matters to corporations is making money, ever. And most of the time this appears to be true, with even corporate endorsement of just causes being just a thin PR veil with no actual consequential policy decisions to back it up. Yet if this is true, why on Earth are we seeing this anti-sex trend among corporations? How is this not guaranteed to lose them money, and lots of it (just look what happened to Tumblr)? Even most of the prudes who outwardly support this sort of ban buy some of this stuff, they just don’t admit it.
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I guess it’s back to only listing reflecto-porn items for me.
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I used to buy a ton of crap on EBay – filing out various RPG collections and what not – and then I stopped using Ebay for about a year. And because of my inactivity they deleted my account but will not let me recreate a new account under the old email because that account is in use. I’ve tried a half dozen times over the last five years and – while I wish I had access to my old data – I’d be happy just to be able to use my email again. Weird.
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My theory–only a theory–is that they’re spooked by the “anti-Big-Tech” rhetoric going around and think it’s likely that the Trumpublicans and their Religious Rot followers will be back in four years. So they want to cover their corpulent corporate asses in advance by providing one less item about which they might be challenged. Edited to add: said T & RR’s will still be able to get their private porn supply, of course.
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It’s possible that ebay is cracking down on the amatuer porn industry, as one does,
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“genitalia… sexual content, profanity or other adult material”
That’s… pretty broad. That goes way beyond “porn” and bans, what, nude art photography and even paintings, music or movies with rude words, maybe even novels or (non-adult) films with sex scenes? Or at least, someone could get banned for those things and the new rules could be pointed at to justify it, anyways.
It’s sounding like they wrote an overly-broad prohibition with the intent that they’d apply it arbitrarily, which… never turns out well.
I can’t tell if that was intentional on their part or accidental (but they don’t mind having made that accident).
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