Slate Daily Feed ICYMI | Shopping on Etsy Sucks Now
Dec 10, 2025
Kate Lindsay hosts Amanda Mull, a Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter, who dives into the decline of Etsy and the challenges of online shopping. Once a haven for handmade goods, Etsy now competes with mass-market platforms, inundated by AI-generated listings and the pressure for free shipping. Amanda discusses how online shopping has become chaotic and how dark patterns trick consumers into impulsive purchases. She suggests turning to craft fairs and secondhand platforms for a more authentic shopping experience.
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Frictionless Shopping Drives Impulse Buys
- The internet's frictionless buying makes impulsive decisions far easier than in-person shopping.
- Amanda Mull argues that removed friction channels choices toward platform profit, not consumer benefit.
Scale Turned Etsy Into A Generic Marketplace
- Marketplace scale pressures platforms to let many third-party sellers list broadly.
- Mull explains Etsy shifted toward scale, adopting the same marketplace dynamics as Amazon and eBay.
Free Shipping Warped Seller Economics
- Free shipping became an expectation because big retailers absorbed delivery costs to build trust.
- That expectation now forces small sellers to compete on shipping terms they can't afford.