Chances are you’ve used eBay. Originally launched as an online auction site (not specifically for Pez dispensers, as the story goes), the fact that people could buy directly from other users led to its popularity booming. While eBay was sort of an online, bid-what-you-want-to-pay garage sale between individuals, the site has become more of a marketplace and mall, with businesses like Best Buy and companies like Hasbro having stores on there. Even auctions, which used to be the only way to purchase on there, has become far secondary to purchasing items immediately.
But whether it’s a multinational corporation or a neighbor down the street selling on the site, or buying, as Weird Al would say, 🎶a used pink bathrobe, a rare mint snowglobe🎶:
eBay features a wide variety of products, both new and used. Especially if someone is looking for collectibles or hard-to-find merchandise, eBay is probably one of the first sites to check out.
eBay and the Way to Pay and Get Paid
eBay itself doesn’t sell much on its site. Instead, it takes a cut from each sale, and they also generate income from charging for extra listings and upgrades. For most categories, their commission is 10.2%. Watches are the most expensive at 12.85% followed by most media at 12.3%.
Online payment processor PayPal became the de-facto way for users to pay for their items, which eBay once owned. After their split, eBay continued to make PayPal its primary method, but that agreement was for five years. In 2018, eBay began implementing its own payment services on a limited basis, and most sellers were scheduled to be shifted to Managed Payments in 2020. Much of this shift was delayed by the pandemic, but all sellers will be on Managed Payments by the end of 2021.
While many buyers and sellers are unhappy about the switch, it does result in lower fees in almost all (if not all) cases.
But on the downside, money is no longer received instantaneously, as eBay typically takes 1-2 business days before depositing the money. Another complaint is that eBay requires sellers to have a bank account, and one that matches the name of the user on the eBay account. Because of laws that have passed in recent years, all or part of a social security number (or similar identification like a tax ID number) is required.
eBay’s New Rules
But for a lot of people, there aren’t a lot of other great alternatives to buy and sell. Most other selling platforms tend to have a specialty (like Poshmark for clothing) or have fewer users (OfferUp) and/or features (Mercari).
Which is one of the reasons eBay’s latest announcement is causing quite a stir. As of July 15th, the Adult Only category will no longer be available for new listings.
Sellers began getting notices that items would be removed from this section starting June 15th, but it seems like the company delayed this restriction for another month.
With this removal, the company updated their list of prohibited items to include most 18+ entertainment. While there are exceptions for non-nudity Playboy magazines, tasteful artwork, and the like, there are some new rules of interest to anime and manga fans:
Now, as every discussion about censorship and ratings has pointed out, what the limit is for sexual content is debatable. And while manga publishers tend to give an age recommendation for their works, books in general don’t have a independent board like the MPAA (movies) or ESRB (video games) to give a rating. So while both of those types of media are banned and make up a small portion of their markets overall, books are going to be subject to more subjectivity.
So eBay is banning anime, manga, hentai, and yaoi (although the latter two are a bit repetitive — not to mention the absence of yuri) that are “sexually explicit” — and that’s causing a lot of anger and will likely lead to much confusion. It’s true most terms and conditions are left intentionally vague so that agents can still strike down people trying to get around the rules. For instance, schools issue detentions for disrespect, but they never list every specific example of what that could entail. But how explicit is explicit for eBay? Are SuBLime manga now ineligible to be sold on eBay? All of Seven Seas’ Ghost Ship titles? Blu-ray sets of To Love Ru? Is listing either version of Maria the Virgin Witch going to be flagged by eBay? Prison School? Love Hina? What about josei titles that is published under the Shojo Beat line but still rated MA like Happy Marriage?! What’s the line?
But unlike the titles Amazon removed, I’m sure most of these will probably escape unnoticed. Unless a seller uploads some poor choice of sample images or screenshots, eBay will have no idea what kind of content that particular anime or manga has. I mean, look at the first listings for “No Game No Life” when sorted by the default best match — clearly we have a triple threat of minors, sexually charged imagery, and bootlegs.
So most listings will probably go unnoticed even if it’s breaking the terms and conditions. Even if the back cover has some racy stuff, there’s no need to show it in a listing. But it’s possible that someone(s) with a vengeance against a particular anime/manga or even a certain seller could go around flagging listings and say, “Hey, this series has a sex scene!” or, “This is rated 18+, it’s against the rules!” to cause sellers to get a strike or ban. After all, “nudity and displays of sexual activitys” [sic] could range from a protagonist musing about their life in the bathtub to a PG-13 scene of a couple taking their relationship to the next level to BDSM to full-on porn — it’s a huge range, and either an unlucky automatic filter or an unknowing or hypersensitive CS agent could think it’s better to remove a listing than leave it up.
eBay by default had adult only items hidden.
So why all of a sudden this change? It’s likely because of the switch to Managed Payments, as now eBay is subject to more direct scrutiny from governments and credit card companies. No one wants to be the one accused of allowing sexual content of minors and the like, and it’s just easier to ban them than try to define what’s allowed and illegal.
However, this goes directly against eBay’s final words on its page about adult content, which is still up as of this writing:
And, as Vice points out:
“It’s striking that eBay feels the need to police sexual content when a number of questionable products — such as Nazi SS uniforms and anti-vax t-shirts — remain on the site.”
So even though you think this may only apply to adult videos, this is still a dramatic change in policy. The fact that eBay specially adds in yaoi is a bit surprising, as that surely means several people researched it enough and caused eBay to raise warning flags about those works. Hentai as well versus the more generic “anime and manga”, but I guess the fact a huge corporation like eBay knows what yaoi is is progress? At the very least, it speaks to the popularity of boys’ love manga.
I do wonder if using “yaoi” in the title will make listings more likely (or even automatically?) to be flagged though. I wouldn’t be surprised if more publishers started taking the TOKYOPOP approach and label all romances under one imprint to avoid any extra flags being raised. Or maybe less, straightforward titles even if it’s less accurate to the Japanese titles.
Because I doubt eBay is going to be the last company to come up with such restrictions. Most anime and manga work with Right Stuf, and it’s well-known enough by most fans so that they won’t be without an option to get their hands on more mature works. But still, plenty of people stumble across Japanese media through the big platforms, and no company wants to have to worry about whether these sites will rain down the judgment hammer and decide releases are too risqué to be sold on there. Shifting a category to the lesser-seen Adult Only section is one thing; not being able to sell on eBay is another.
It’s a bit unfortunate eBay doesn’t have many alternatives for private individuals outside of social media though. Sure, you can sell individual releases on Amazon or submit a new listing, but lots or incomplete series? Going to be hard for anyone to find them. For companies, it’s a good reminder that they should have their own store to avoid such bans. (Well, they could always be dropped by their hosting company or payment processor for similar “we don’t allow adult content” type rules, but that’s rare.)
But while Japanese media likely made up only a small portion of the Adult Only category, it will be interesting to see how aggressive eBay is with these new restrictions. Again, I doubt most listings of anime and manga (and the other restricted media) will be pulled because of these restrictions, but I think everyone would agree they’d rather avoid the headache of playing the “is it legal or not” game.