I understand it’s a difficult balance, and I appreciate Etsy’s efforts to keep the platform safe. That said, many of my listings require customers to provide an image, so attachments are a common and necessary part of my order process.
The current system, where even active, ongoing conversations are being filtered into spam, can feel a bit overreaching, especially when Etsy already restricts attachments in the first message and has a strong spam filter in place.
Restricting certain file types (like allowing only JPG/PNG and flagging PDFs or other extensions) could be a more reasonable solution.
Alternatively, having a more obvious alert, like an email notification when a message is moved to spam, or showing you have an unread spam message like you do a regular one, would go a long way in helping sellers catch it quickly.
This current setup doesn’t feel like it fully considers the seller or customer experience. I’ve even had customers come to me after being ignored by other shops—likely because their messages were moved to spam without the seller realizing. There’s definitely room for improvement here, and I hope Etsy continues refining the system with both security and usability in mind.
