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Etsy cracks down on 3D printed products — new rules exclude many 3D printed items from listings
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Etsy IIRC is not meant to be a general marketplace: it's meant to be for handmade or flea-market vintage type stuff.
They then have to turn that into hard rules, and one of them is you can't just manufacture stuff and turn around and sell it: manufactured stuff has to be old enough, and I think they have a particular year.
3D printing is a lot like manufacturing, and a little like making by hand. The more people use it like manufacturing, the less Etsy will want to have it.
I'd argue it's closer to hand made than manufacturing due to most people only having the ability to crank out small batches of prints as a side hustle. I still think it's short sighted and wonder why other CNC devices aren't also being banned like CNC routers, laser cutters, laser engravers, pen plotters, etc since these all use similar designs and mechanical systems. Where do you draw the line? I can understand only wanting hand made or vintage items but if technology is advancing past that and the market isn't really there for those items, then what's the purpose of the site? What are they going to tell both buyers and sellers that they're not the type of clientele they want on their platform? That seems nuts as a business.