Equity and offensive designs removal

English Marketplace
#1

Bonjour :slight_smile:

Opera Instantané_2022-12-15_230423_www.redbubble.com
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“Beach please” is a classic, and mine got removed for breaching the Community Standards. I can understand that someone would want the pun off the marketplace.

But then, why aren’t they ALL scraped off?
(I searched for the 2 words and found several)

It can’t be because the design is too simplistic, as these are available:
image_2022-12-26_103757740 image_2022-12-26_104121769

It can’t be because of the cocktail glass:
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It seems less offensive than these ones:
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Could we get an add-on to the Community Standards article with examples of what is OK and what is not?
And keywords that must not be used, such as “mojito” I guess?
I still find baby clothing with “Licornasse” (French for unicorn-slut) written on it.

I also had this design, specifically for children of bikers, which got removed from all children clothing…

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Finally, given the change in what teenagers want to wear, could we separate “teenage” clothing from “baby / children”?
They want to have “unicorn slut” written on them… and buy it from the local supermarket…

Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

#2

Ahoy @idjy and a happy new year!

I dont know why your design “Beach please” got rejected. I would recommend to write an email to the colleagues at legal@spreadshirt.net. Maybe there where some critical keywords in the description or in the tags as the design itself seems harmless.

I also checked the mentioned term “Licornasse” and cant confirm that it means Unicorn-Slut. All Translators translate it to “Unicorn”. And also searching for licornasse on google or amazon gives you harmless and cute unicorn content. I also searched for the meaning of Licornasse but found nothing.
BUT: Since French is not our native language, we may still be wrong. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you could send us a link that underlines your perspective.

Best
Rico

#3

Thank, I’ll write to them :slight_smile:

I am French.
Licornasse is a made-up word of licorne + connasse. It’s the equivalent of German “Prinzicke” which is why you only find REALLY cute unicorn designs with the word :wink:

#4

Legal team explained that they are trying to remove anything sounding like “bitch” and that all the “beach please” designs would go in the next weeks.

#5

Lol, feels like Netflix bought Spreadshirt. “Beach please” seems to be not woke enough to meet the high quality standards of Spreadshirt :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#6

Do not hesitate to contact Legal about designs that keywords have tagged as “18+” if these are for children.
This one was released.
It was flagged because of “whiskey” :slight_smile:
Thank you Team <3

#7

Wow, that is double facepalm worthy… So someone is offended by something non-offensive and Spreadshirt makes the non-offensive text not usable. The world has gone mad.

#8

I may sound a bit old-fashioned, but I think Spreadshirt’s approach is a good one. It’s time to clean up the marketplace of all these vulgar designs. I can already see some of you crying « wokism » and an attack on « freedom of expression »… so be it! If you don’t like it, there are other platforms to sell sexist creations. But rape culture has no place at Spreadshirt!

#9

So “beach please” is rape culture? Really? It might be dumb, yet, it’s only a wordplay. Nothing more, nothing less.

1 Like
#10

This has nothing to do with “rape culture”, so don’t try and make others believe it has.

I see two positive words - ‘Beach’ and ‘Please’ - so how can two positives become negative?
Banning these words would be just as silly as banning ‘Ice cream please’ or ‘Sunshine please’.

If we go the route of banning positive and non-offensive words just because someone thinks they are negative then there are a lot more words to ban, because a lot of words sound like or are written pretty much the same way. This really gives me the ‘1984’ creeps.

1 Like
#11

Spreadshirt does not locate these designs by their look but by their keywords. So if one mixes “bitch” and “sex” among the keywords of a design, one knows exactly what they are aiming at.

#12

But keywords don’t change the meaning of a design, so they are irrelevant in deciding if a design is inappropriate or not. If you don’t want certain keywords used, then ban those keywords, but leave the design if it’s non-offensive. And as far as I understand there seems to be “a problem” with ‘Beach please’ and not with keywords.

It doesn’t matter what you’re aiming at. If a design is clearly offensive then I understand banning it, but no matter the keywords, ‘Beach please’ is still not offensive.

#13

Having discussed with Legal about it, and as a female, I understand why you would not want to have “bitch” on any material you sell. It’s also a marketing choice.

Some people will not get that it can be empowering to wear a T-shirt reading “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a sinner…”, some have never heard of Alanis Morissette, and some a hearing the song in their head right now :wink:

Teenagers want to wear things that will make they parents cringe.
“Look Mum, it’s a bee-hatch… It’s not offensive!”

Again, some people will hide the fact that they want to show “bitch” by adding a seashell or a mermaid.
At least, my design trageted women over 30 who need a vacation and a mojito and would say both bitch and beach please :slight_smile:

This is why I like one thing from Redbubble: the ADULT CONTENT option.
image
This allows for cursing but will not show to people without consent.

In the meantime, I’ll send this to Legal so they can have proper talk about allowing “bitch please” as a combo (or at least “beach please”): Urban Dictionary: Bitch Please

#14

As a male, I too can understand the choice to not sell offensive prints with ‘bitch’ on it, but on the other hand it’s all about the context of the words. So in some cases ‘bitch’ can be offensive, in other cases not so much. Just as you described.

But if a designer makes the effort to use a pun instead of a possibly offensive word, then I don’t see any reason to ban a design. And since ‘Beach please’ contains two positive words that - to most people - express wanting to go to the beach, then there would be no reason to ban it.

#15

This is exacly what I am writing now.
And offering to act as a French Native to proof the French words :slight_smile:

#16

I have flagged some racist designs when I came across them, so I’m fine with clearly offensive designs not being permitted. But I design custom made typographical designs and I use puns sometimes, so I care very much about having as much creative freedom in using text as possible. That’s why I think it’s very important to distinguish between truly offensive designs and truly non-offensive designs.

2 Likes
#17

Ahoy to all,

With several thousand uploads every day, it is impossible to look at the tags for each design individually. There are tags that cannot be entered into our system and then there are always so-called platform scans - due to reports or concrete legal steps - that search for critical tags. This is then an automated process and it is also impossible to check this manually.
Of course, designs are also removed that would not be critical in themselves. But here we have to weigh up - the protection of a large group of designers and of course also our protection against warnings and the preservation of individual less critical designs.
It’s just not as simple as one might think. It’s simply impossible to take individual designs into account when you’re dealing with several thousand designs that are critical.
As for the accounts that use wrong tags for possibly copied designs, it is not possible to look at the designs individually and verify whether the tags fit. The only option here is to report accounts that slip through the check grid.
It makes sense to give as much information as possible about the account and not just report the one design.

So, I hope I could at least explain a little bit understandably why the situation is not perfect.

Kind regards
Rico

1 Like
#18

And yet we have a “Beach Please” in the actual design contest! Congratulations on that one! Totally love the consistency that is shown here by our beloved friends.

1 Like
#19

image

This is currently ranking top 3.
I’m fairly sure the reason it cannot be mistaken for “bitch please” is because the artist makes baby & children designs, and because it represents ocean creatures, people having fun on the sand, palmtrees with coconuts, and has whatsoever no symbolism of “I’m better than you and flaunting it”.
(I hope I did sarcasm well)

@Rico_Spreadshirt @Frank_Spreadgroup
Just for the record, I searched the marketplace again and got these:

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Does that mean I can resubmit my design or shall I report them all?
Thanks for the input and the fair treatment <3

3 Likes
#20

I’ve noticed Spreadshirt not only gives suggestions for tags, but even puts tags in the tags text box by itself. There have been times where I needed to manualy delete those tags because they were irrelevant. So it seems that Spreadshirt is actively contributing to a known problem.