David's Trains stands up to Shopify to protect your data from AI

Summary of Article

• David's Trains is standing up to Shopify to protect your private information from AI data mining. We feel morally responsible to do so. We have uninstalled or otherwise blocked everything possible to protect you.
• We cannot simply move away from Shopify after spending years customizing our database. David does nearly all the programming himself.
• We sell direct and never on marketplaces. We cancel and refund any marketplace order.
• Most other online model train stores, including trainz, Brady's and others, use Shopify. We urge you to ask them how they are protecting your data.

At David’s Trains, we are drawing a clear line on customer privacy. Our central software, Shopify, exposes your sales information to various AI platforms as well as a centralized AI-powered Shopify database, called Shopify Catalog. Meanwhile, Shopify quietly changed their terms to block outside AI from using Shopify data, reducing their accountability. Rest assured, David’s Trains has opted out of these “tools” to the greatest extent possible to avoid your information being used in this manner despite overt threats from Shopify that we will be “left behind” by them if we don’t play ball.

We were initially early adopters of AI within Shopify until we saw how poorly implemented it was and that it consumer privacy protection was equivalent to what it was in the 1990s. Davis’s Trains has a legal, ethical and moral imperative to protect your data in our system. We take this very seriously. David’s Trains has disabled many Shopify network-based features and is reviewing every customer-facing Shopify tool we use. That may cost us money (it’s definitely costing us time) but we are doing it anyway because customer trust matters more to us than Shopify’s bottom line.

You may wonder why we don’t simply change to a different provider. We have put in about 2000 hours into making the back-end of this business work, including Shopify. Almost all of that time was David working at all hours of the day and night. We do not use programmers or paid apps or freelancers. David does materially all of the work on the technology side of this business. We are so far invested we cannot simply jump ship, even if Shopify becomes the next Amazon Marketplace.

Many online model train sellers use Shopify. Brady’s Train Outlet, Trainz, TrainWorld, MrMuffin’sTrains, Model Train Market, Jr Junction, White Rose Hobbies, Reed’s Hobby Shop, Traintiques, and the Trains.com Store all use Shopify. If you do business with any of them, we urge you to ask them how they protect your information considering the information in this email.

David’s Trains sells direct in all situations. David’s Trains sells more traditionally in-person at shows and by phone, text, or email. Online sales happen through our website only: davidstrains.com. We do not fulfill orders placed through Shop or any outside marketplace-style channel. Any such order is canceled and refunded. On several occasions, Shopify has placed our products on Shop without notice or consent. We now check this daily to immediately correct the situation if it occurs.

We got into this business to connect our five generations of passionate, knowledgeable train lovers with others to expand this hobby and encourage multi-generational legacies of fun and learning outside of YouTube and video games.

We are passionate about trains, but more than that, we are passionate about our customers, who in reality, are our friends. We believe the future of this hobby should belong to collectors, families, small businesses, and direct customer relationships, not another technology platform inserting itself between buyer and seller trying to make 15% or more like eBay does currently.