Hi everyone,
I am looking for guidance from UK-based merchants or experts regarding the sale of adult products, specifically sex dolls, on Shopify.
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Can I use explicit images to advertise sex dolls? For example, many sex doll Shopify sites market them using very explicit images showing genitalia in sexualized poses to entice buyers to purchase them. They are fully nude and have thousands of images literally across the site.
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I’m based in the UK, do I need to follow the Online Safety Act 2023 UK and use age verification on the site? I can see that none of the sites on Shopify that sell adult dolls have any age verification when showing explicit images, etc.
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Can I use the shop payment system to sell adult sex dolls? I’m confused, as I can read it’s not allowed in the terms and conditions, but then I can see that sex doll product pages show the “Buy now with Shop” button on the page. I can even see the Shop logo being used as one of the ways to pay for it.
Thank you for any advice or help you can provide.
Here are 2 good examples of this -
Simone Sex Doll - (Nude/explicit images - Looks very childlike and using “Buy with Shop”)
Lushdoll - Christine- (Nude/explicit images - Used Buy with shop)
Do these types of images and product pages and payments allowed with Shopify policy and allowed for a UK seller in the UK?
Hi @JonnyUK this is a legal question talk to a real life lawyer about this to review the terms of service.
No one here is a lawyer nothing said here can stop your business from being deplatformed don’t muck about.
Lawyer, get one.
Then contact shopify support DIRECTLY
https://help.shopify.com/
These are the peer to peer forums not private support.
Opinion,
Hosting adult content is common , it’s the payment gateway you’ll likely have issues with and need to do your research on and have redundancy.
Seeing some shop X doesn’t mean the rules wont or can’t be used against you or them.
Thanks for that information, I will try getting a professional to try and help me. The links I have shown above for these merchants both seem to be using shopify payments, “Buy with Shop”. So does this mean that shopify payments does allow adult sex dolls with explict images since these sellers are doing it?
It’s not about them it’s about your business.
Review the payments TOS, find the one for the relevant regions.
e.g.
…contact shopify support DIRECTLY
https://help.shopify.com/
..stripe payments support etcetcetc
Those are the ONLY people whos words matter in /written-text when trying to reframe a question like this.
I apologize as I should have made it extremely clear to not even reply to this thread until after doing any of the above.
Hoping some random on an internet gives you the okay is NOT the way to go about this.
Don’t reply , go do.
I tend to agree. Just because someone else is allowed (you don’t really even know if they’re “allowed” or just haven’t been flagged) doesn’t mean you are. Always err on the side of caution if it involves your business, livelihood, and/or reputation. Shopify specifically wrote “discretion” in their terms for a reason.
All this doesn’t even touch on the potential legal ramifications. A simple 18+ checkbox is often not enough in some areas. You should talk to a lawyer before you go on some journey that may or may not get you sued to oblivion, not a public forum.
Thanks for the info guys. I’m still confused about this, and I guess it’s largely a trial-and-error issue. You either do it and take the risk, or just don’t use Shopify.
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Contacted a solicitor in the UK already and they cannot confirm if its allowed on Shopify or not based on their Terms and Conditions. It’s just not clear if explicit images to advertise sex dolls to entice customers are allowed to be used on their site. I should contact Shopify directly to confirm. The only thing that was confirmed is that in the UK, you need age verification if the images are explicit and considered ■■■■■■■■■■■■ and can be accessed by a child.
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I contacted shopify and used their live chat and all the agents say is to check the Terms and Conditions and the AUP. I have done this a bunch or times and no one at shopify will actually just confirm it even if I show example images, etc. I emailed them and same issue with check terms and conditions, etc.
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I reached out here on the community forum and was suggested that I should seek a professional or a lawyer, which I do agree with and have done. I thought, well if other merchants are doing it, it must be somewhere stated that its allowed, but users here are saying that is not valid, which I understand its your own risk.
So I think it’s best to say that no one is going to actually confirm or not, and it will just be a risk if they take action or not, if I were ever to decide to open a site. It might be better not to go down the Shopify route since no one can actually confirm anything.
Yes we’re all confused about a lot of things that happen in Shopiy 
Every business is hard. You have to spend a lot of time and energy in it just to get started. So are you willing to put time, money, and reputation on something which might get brought down later due to some legal issues in some countries/region. Talk to lawyer before you start
Now that you’ve arrived to this very healthy conclusion.
Know there’s nothing wrong with NOT putting all your eggs in one basket whether it’s shopify or some other SASS or self hosted, etc.
Meaning nothign wrong with using shopify as your rapid prototyper and to offload hosting etc.
But have a 2nd system ready to go and learned in case the winds of capricious-terms-interpration blow the wrong down from shopify.
Such a business needs to be veeeeery agnostic in how it’s built so swapping platforms or payment-gateways is a standard operating procedure and not catastrophic risk.
I’d recommend researching some higher risk industries to know where the ladder rungs are relatively; , aka “high risk merchant accounts” .
Like C D B , which shopifypaymetns(via stripe) disallow outright .