Evil eBay Policy Changed

Recently I blogged about the fact that it is not morally obligatory to boycott when there is not a well-founded chance that the boycott would bring about the desired change in the behavior of the boycott’s target. For example, there is no realistic chance of getting secular booksellers (online and off) to purge its inventory of anything and everything that is out of keeping with Catholic moral and doctrinal theology.

The attempt to even begin such a boycott against secular booksellers at present would only do damage, as chronicalled in my previous post on the subject.

But not all boycotts are doomed to failure.

After it emerged that eBay did have some offensiveness exceptions in its policy regarding what can be listed on its site, it became a real possibility that pressuring eBay would result in an expansion of its policy to include a prohibition on allowing individuals to sell consecrated Hosts by their service.

And now that’s happened!

I got rumblings of this a few days ago, but now I’ve had multiple individuals e-mail me messages they received from eBay announcing a change in the policy. Here’s the one that such as <Rule 15b>Eric Giunta</Rule 15b> sent:

Hello Eric,

Thank you for your email regarding the sale of the Holy Eucharist by one of our community members. We respect and appreciate your comments regarding this sensitive matter.

As you may know, eBay does not sell items itself. Rather, we are a global marketplace for sellers and buyers who transact directly with one another. Each day eBay’s sellers list 5 million items on the site, and those sellers decide what items they want to list. eBay did not possess, list or approve the sale of the Eucharist. The buyer and seller completed the Eucharist transaction on April 11th, before eBay even became aware of the listing.

As a marketplace, we strive to respect the diverse perspectives of our sellers. We also work hard to promote an open environment for trade. That said, eBay has policies in place to remove listings for illegal items as well as highly offensive listings that promote hate or intolerance.

We understand that the listing of the Eucharist was highly upsetting to Catholic members of the eBay community and Catholics globally. Once this completed sale was brought to our attention, we consulted with a number of our users, including members of the Catholic Church, concerning what course we should take in the future should a similar listing appear on our site. We also consulted with members of other religions about items that might also be highly sacred and inappropriate for sale. As a result of this dialogue, we have concluded that sales of the Eucharist, and similar highly sacred items, are not appropriate on eBay. We have, therefore, broadened our policies and will remove those types of listings should they appear on the site in the future.

As always, we welcome and appreciate the assistance of the community in upholding the rules of our site. Should you see another Eucharist listed on our site, we encourage you to notify us so we can take appropriate action. Further, we encourage you to directly communicate with the seller. Members are often unaware that a particular item is offensive to others. A respectful e-mail to the seller is often all that is needed for the seller to voluntarily remove the item. We believe this modification strikes the appropriate balance between respect for our community’s values and our goal of providing an open marketplace offering practically anything on earth.

Again, we sincerely appreciate your concern and thank you for communicating your views with us. Your input has helped us frame a policy that will enable us to better serve our diverse community of users around the world.

Regards,

Oscar on behalf of Bill Cobb
Community Watch Team
eBay Trust & Safety

And there was much rejoicing!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin