Some of you guys may remember this story from back in 2013. The other day while browsing the r/AmazonMerch subreddit I noticed someone referenced this old school story. I remembered it, thought it was interesting, and wanted to share it with you.
So I'm sure all of us at one point or another have had some frustrations with Amazon Merch blocking our uploads for an innocent shirt, based on one particular keyword taken out of content. As a fellow Merch Creator I realize this can be incredibly frustrating, but wanted to share this story to give you some insight into why things are the way they are.
One thing we have to keep in mind is that while you and I know that over 50% of items sold on Amazon are not actually being sold by Amazon the company, to your average consumer, they often assume they are buying from Amazon the corporation.
Well back in 2013 a tee shirt company that was selling thousands of variations of different shirts came up with an algorithm and a script which would automatically make tee shirt variations of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" shirt. You guys know these shirts keep calm and craft on, keep calm and skate on, etc, etc, etc.
Their script was setup to automatically pull words and make shirts, well apparently whomever built this script didn't think about using negative keywords and blocking certain offensive words from being used so the result was some very offensive and violent shirts.
Obviously some customers saw this and became angry, some journalists started taking screenshots and writing articles and Amazon ultimately is the one who winds up with the reputational harm for allowing something like this to be sold.
It's kind of an interesting story and I think sheds some light which makes it a bit more clear why Amazon sometimes blocks some of your and my shirts.