>To hide feedback for all purchases, don't leave feedback?
I thought the point was that access to seller feedback is public too - even if one doesn't leave feedback if the seller says "thanks" then you're marked publicly as a buyer of that product.
As was clearly pointed out, seller feedback -- over which you have no control -- is also public. And from your CEO's statement: "We do have plans to give buyers on Etsy the ability to hide feedback for certain purchases. We certainly appreciate privacy, and we spend a lot of time on these issues."
Now, I barely use etsy but my gf is a heavy user. I admire your company, but if this is true -- that any purchase I or my gf make can receive public feedback from the seller -- that's really not very cool. Plus your ceo has a "plan" to allow people to disable it. It's hard to believe that your current answer to "I bought a custom dildo and the seller said I was a good buyer" is "tough shit -- email our customer service to hide your name and wait for this change to be deindexed from G/Y/B".
I hope that I've misinterpreted the above article / response, because based on my limited purchasing history at etsy, it's not at all what I would have expected.
Yes, see my comment above. We pushed a change this evening that removes seller feedback from your public profile. Since Etsy was founded you've always been able to see this information. However, upon considering the fact that we no longer have issues wrt buyers not paying due to our new checkout system, combined with the fact that it inadvertently reveals a buyer's purchase information based upon the action of a seller, we decided it made sense to remove this view from your public profile.
As far as the visibility of other feedback goes, such as the feedback you make on a seller, you can mark the feedback as 'private' when you make it to hide the item involved.
Yes, you've been always able to see this information. But did it appear in Google with your full name, or did your account show up when people uploaded their address books? No. It seems Etsy hasn't figured out that dealing with people's real-life identities is a serious matter.
