Blog / 2019 / It’s Working

For a company that lacks transparency in some key ways, Redbubble is being super transparent about its motives here.

To explain: on Monday, I launched #FixRedbubble after the print-on-demand company censored some of my political art. The intent of the campaign is to stop Redbubble from censoring artwork without providing creators with a full explanation. The idea was that the hashtag would shame the company into doing the right thing by gathering together all the art that it is deleting and making public just how much it is censoring creativity.

Well, yesterday, the company reinstated my political art.

As you can see, there is still no real explanation provided, and there’s even the caveat that if Sanrio sends a takedown notice specific to my art it will be deleted again. But this is a win for #FixRedbubble, and anyone with half a brain knows exactly why my art was reinstated.

Redbubble is scared of #FixRedbubble.

But if the print-on-demand shop thought that reversing its ridiculous censorship of one of my pieces was going to get me to back down, it doesn’t understand the psychology of censored artists or of people who love democracy.

Redbubble’s corporate copyright bullying may seem like a small issue—especially compared with the dire state of things in America today—but it’s all connected. Redbubble’s short-term thinking, its lack of communication/staff, its smug certainty that artists won’t be able to fight back: all of it is part of a bigger issue.

Democracy is being eroded by concentrations of money and power and also by the bullying mentality “bigger = better.”

Please share the hashtag campaign with everyone you know and ask them to share it too! You don’t need to be an artist who’s selling through a print-on-demand site to hate corporate copyright bullying.

Check out #FixRedbubble on Instagram (where the stupid alogrithmic editing of social media has the least effect) or on Facebook or Twitter.

Not selling through Redbubble but having similar issues on another print-on-demand site? Use #FixRedbubble as well as a hashtag that names your POD marketplace (#FixYourPrintOnDemandSite) and post about it! Then share your site-specific hashtag with me so that we can work together to force these marketplaces to recognize that they don’t have a business without us.