Etsy announced Wednesday it is working on a new way sellers can appeal listing removals. It currently offers an account-level appeals system, and this year, it will begin testing the system on a listing-level.
Etsy announced the news on May 28, 2025, and also published its 2024 Transparency Report as well as a new resource, the Ultimate Guide to Etsy Policy. In a blog post, Etsy’s head of Trust & Safety Alice Wu said the new guide, published in the Seller Handbook, was created to help sellers with the following:
- Understand our most important policies in plain language;
- Navigate common policy issues; and
- Comply with confidence, knowing what’s expected and why.
In her blog post, Wu said Etsy’s goals for this year include leveraging cutting-edge technology: “Our teams use technology to make enforcement more efficient, so we can conduct high-touch, human reviews and provide support where we know our sellers need it most. We’ve long leveraged machine learning to help us keep our marketplace safe, and now we’re deploying LLM-based detection to scale enforcement to more surfaces on listing pages and beyond.”
Other goals include increasing transparency: (Etsy is developing “refreshed and more detailed language to help sellers better understand why we take enforcement action on their shop or listings”); and enhancing account security (“We plan to launch account security features to enable Etsy members to even better protect their accounts, including real-time notifications when we detect potential issues, and a self-service account recovery option”).
Etsy also hosted an online Seller Fireside Chat on Wednesday featuring two executives about how it creates and enforces policies – Alice Wu and Senior Director of Marketplace Policy Sophie Duba.
During the event, Duba said Etsy uses some core principles when developing policies about what’s allowed on the marketplace. The first is stakeholder input to get a balanced and well-informed perspective. The second principle is prioritizing creative expression. “We want sellers to be able to express themselves,” she said. And thirdly, policies need to be based on clear and objective criteria.
More information is available in a guide published in the Seller Handbook, “Get a behind-the-scenes look at how we develop and enforce our House Rules.”
During the livestream on YouTube, sellers live-chatted their reaction, although the executives did not take questions. Sellers reacted positively to the news that Etsy was working on giving them the ability to appeal removal decisions on a listing level.
Etsy posted the following recording of the fireside chat on its YouTube channel: