EU seller data and GDPR - opening the black box

[vhskid]

Has anyone from the EU tried to request a copy of their seller data based on the GDPR directive?

Before and / or after the new levels system launched?

 

 

Edited March 30 by vhskid

[emmaki]

Yeah they sent an excel file with a bunch of boring stuff in it. Just ask CS.

[vhskid]

2 hours ago, emmaki said:

Yeah they sent an excel file with a bunch of boring stuff in it. Just ask CS.

I'm expecting them to deflect and send incomplete data or some vague summary as other companies do. 

Sending another one, a more thorough request sometimes does the trick, but specific legal wording addressing specific parts of data is required. 

Knowing Fiverr it would be a dozen back-and-forth before getting some results and / or a long waiting time. 

I don't have time and energy for this hide-and-seek but maybe someone with relevant legal experience will forge the path to getting some insights into gig scores / metrics data. 

 

 

Edited March 31 by vhskid

[emmaki]

Not really. Just send them a message requesting the personal data they have on you with this link and (if it's anything like what happened to me), they'll transfer you to a shift manager who will send you this message: 

And you'll get an email with an Excel file that includes stuff in it. It's literally just the personal data they have on you (this is not a link to my infomation, obviously - it's just the privacy policy). I don't have the file anymore and obviously I can't redownload it so that's all I have.

 

I'm not sure that your success score etc counts as personal data. It would probably fall under trade secrets. This article lays it all out nicely: 

Quote

A data controller can refuse access to some or all of your data where:

• Providing your personal data has an impact on the rights of others
• Your personal data is listed with the personal data of others (In these cases, the data controller may remove the personal data of others to provide you with your data)
• Your personal data is in a document that has trade secrets, confidential information or intellectual
• The request is considered ‘manifestly unfounded or excessive’ (for example, if you made a request in the recent past and were told that the data controller had no personal data relating to you)

Either way, they were quick and efficient when I asked. You only need to include the Fiverr Help Center link to (hopefully help to) skip the template response at the beginning 🙂 It would  cost Fiverr 2% of the previous year's annual review not to follow GDPR, so they have very good reason to treat your request seriously. But they do also have the right to decline information that doesn't fall under GDPR. 

But yes, you're probably going to have a bad time trying to get any information on the success score. You can of course complain about that to the authorities, but any case will hinge on whether the SS is personal data. The issue here is that Fiverr can argue that there is no case, since you explicitly gave your permission (agreeing to Fiverr's TOS) for all this algorithmic decision-making to be done. 

I am not a lawyer, obvs. But it's not really in Fiverr's interest to mess you around with GDPR. Take a look at this list of GDPR scalps. Notice the theme? 

Edited March 31 by emmaki

[smashradio]

17 hours ago, emmaki said:

Yeah they sent an excel file with a bunch of boring stuff in it. Just ask CS.

The success score data likely isn't considered personally identifiable information since it's essentially a set of numbers calculated by a system to establish ranking and visibility, not specific data collected about you or provided by you regarding yourself.

It would be like requesting Google to disclose their proprietary algorithm because the search engine indexed your photo and personal website. The internal values used to calculate that sort of thing isn't "personal data", even if it's applied to the data sets they have on you.

If all it took was a GDPR request to unveil trade secrets, I don't think companies would dare operate within the EU.

Edited March 31 by smashradio

[emmaki]

5 minutes ago, smashradio said:

The success score data likely isn't considered personally identifiable information since it's essentially a set of numbers calculated by a system to establish ranking and visibility, not specific data collected about you or provided by you regarding yourself.

It would be like requesting Google to disclose their proprietary algorithm because the search engine indexed your photo and personal website. The internal values used to calculate that sort of thing isn't "personal data", even if it's applied to the data sets they have on you.

If all it took was a GDPR request to unveil trade secrets, I don't think companies would dare operate within the EU.

UK GDPR does have a section on algorithms (linky) which is interesting in light of the increasingly AI automation of Fiverr. I'm not sure it is the same in Europe (though the EU AI Act is working up to that).

Still though, while that link does read a bit like a "gotcha!" I'm sure Fiverr's legal team has found a convenient loophole (or Fiverr). Or you know, there's the whole T&S team to wave about as the human element before booting people off. Mind you, most of the mass bootings seem to happen in Certain Parts of the World, so GDPR has no reach there. 

So now we have a thorny question: does this mean that EU/UK sellers enjoy a little more protection than their counterparts from less developed parts of the world simply due to nanny-stating busybodies cashing in on business greed? 

That's gotta hurt the ESG a little. 😞 

Sadly, I can't be bothered to conduct an unscientific research on profiles of the departed to come to a firm and mostly unsubstantiated conclusion, so I'm gonna go with "yes".

[smashradio]

On 3/31/2024 at 4:38 PM, emmaki said:

UK GDPR does have a section on algorithms (linky) which is interesting in light of the increasingly AI automation of Fiverr. I'm not sure it is the same in Europe (though the EU AI Act is working up to that).

Still though, while that link does read a bit like a "gotcha!" I'm sure Fiverr's legal team has found a convenient loophole (or Fiverr). Or you know, there's the whole T&S team to wave about as the human element before booting people off. Mind you, most of the mass bootings seem to happen in Certain Parts of the World, so GDPR has no reach there. 

So now we have a thorny question: does this mean that EU/UK sellers enjoy a little more protection than their counterparts from less developed parts of the world simply due to nanny-stating busybodies cashing in on business greed? 

That's gotta hurt the ESG a little. 😞 

Sadly, I can't be bothered to conduct an unscientific research on profiles of the departed to come to a firm and mostly unsubstantiated conclusion, so I'm gonna go with "yes".

I'm willing to bet that you're right.

Option A) Fiverr treats sellers differently based on their country, because Fiverr, and because corporate greed has no end.

Option B) Fiverr is looking out for their sellers in an honest and transparent way, as only GPT could.

But I'm not sure how they would apply those... ehem... differences. If they did it willingly and treated people differently based on their country of residence, that would be ethically questionable, but probably legal.

Like you, I'm not going to conduct any unscientific research into this, because I prefer to generalize (If I was a company, my ESG rating would be crappy!) so I tend to go with option A every time – corporate greed will prevail. And the more people you can fire and the more data you swallow, the better. Right?

And when you say "less developed parts of the world" – I do wish to point out that the US has some seriously crappy privacy laws compared to the EU. Which is the reason why so many american websites block EU visitors. They just don't want to deal with things like GDPR. And I wouldn't call the US "less developed". 

So that would mean Fiverr probably affords EU sellers more protection than our american counterparts. Food for thought. 

Edited April 2 by smashradio

[emmaki]

2 minutes ago, smashradio said:

I'm not going to conduct any unscientific research

Since we're doing ludicrously biased and highly unscientific research based on wot I reckon, I'd be willing to bet that the little Seller Plus Premium bait 'n' switch is another example of corporate greed, with some sellers mysteriously not getting the email. Did Fiverr:

A) Nerfariously plan to force certain groups of sellers to pay more or dump SPP with a 100% price increase?
B) Incompetently decide that it was time to jack up the price to make the flagging Q1 numbers look a bit sexier?
C) Cry in horror as their email provider failed to send the email to everyone, realizing that sellers would unfairly judge them?
D) Cackle madly as they gaze into their reflection in a burning mirror, knowing that the best was yet to come? 

It's definitely D. I did the research in my sparkling Mind Palace, which is never wrong. The mirror is burning because its frame is - was - made of crisp dollar bills. Every day, a cleaner comes in and wipes the soot off the mirror with the fresh tears of upset, disabled orphan children who are tied up in chains in the Fiverr basement. Sometimes, if they've been very good little orphan children, they'll be allowed to appear in the glossy ESG catalog to impress investors. 

If they're bad? I won't go there, but I was shocked. Those tragic little orphan children are tough cookies, but their tears are needed for the Daily Cleansing Ritual.

[vhskid]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:22 PM, smashradio said:

The success score data likely isn't considered personally identifiable information since it's essentially a set of numbers calculated by a system to establish ranking and visibility, not specific data collected about you or provided by you regarding yourself.

It would be like requesting Google to disclose their proprietary algorithm because the search engine indexed your photo and personal website. The internal values used to calculate that sort of thing isn't "personal data", even if it's applied to the data sets they have on you.

If all it took was a GDPR request to unveil trade secrets, I don't think companies would dare operate within the EU.

 

AI analyzes our behavior, interactions, and communication style, then assigns data markers rating every little thing. 

The algorithm puts us in the data brackets and compares, then matches with (also analyzed) buyers in their search results. 

All these data patterns and segmentation are used for behavioral profiling.

If there are enough Success Score data markers tied to the seller's profile, then this data stack could be specific enough to be considered as a digital fingerprint. 

The data from one profile probably wouldn't be enough for cracking the algorithm and reverse engineering, but I imagine that Fiverr would argue under the angle of the occurrence of trade secrets violation. 

We shouldn't know how exactly the algorithm works, but we should have access to the list of (at least those) negatively flagged interactions / messages. 

It would be fair and transparent (even if available only behind the SP paywall), but won't happen because things would get ugly, starting from paralyzing Customer Support by appeal / clarification requests.

 

 

Edited April 2 by vhskid

[mandyzines]

1 hour ago, vhskid said:

behavioral profiling

I've been 'racially' profiled by it on here, too, I found through my keyword stats last summer. Creepily, it wasn't necessarily the wrong 'label' but absolutely nowhere did I mention the word that was bringing me orders. I was pretty bitter about it but not at the same time. Fiverr defined my 'race' for me.

[emmaki]

6 hours ago, mandyzines said:

Fiverr defined my 'race' for me.

That's.... disturbing. And rather raises the question of why Fiverr is "defining races" when their community standards (the objectionable page) says.... 

If Fiverr's algorithms are charactizing people by the color of their skin (which isn't the same as race, no, but it is pretty much the main component of r-cism), isn't it breaking Fiverr's TOS? At the very best, I could say that this is preventing people who have *issues* with people based on their skin color from seeing people they don't like (saving the seller and CS a lot of hassle from a knuckle-dragger). At worst, I remember ChatGPT and most other gen-AI bots are trained in such a way that they will, say, tell you negative things about one race, but refuse to about all the others because that's not nice. 

So my question here would be would Fiverr be polishing its ESG credentials by giving more opportunities to... via...? 

[mandyzines]

13 hours ago, emmaki said:

That's.... disturbing. And rather raises the question of why Fiverr is "defining races" when their community standards (the objectionable page) says.... 

If Fiverr's algorithms are charactizing people by the color of their skin (which isn't the same as race, no, but it is pretty much the main component of r-cism), isn't it breaking Fiverr's TOS? At the very best, I could say that this is preventing people who have *issues* with people based on their skin color from seeing people they don't like (saving the seller and CS a lot of hassle from a knuckle-dragger). At worst, I remember ChatGPT and most other gen-AI bots are trained in such a way that they will, say, tell you negative things about one race, but refuse to about all the others because that's not nice. 

So my question here would be would Fiverr be polishing its ESG credentials by giving more opportunities to... via...? 

I wish that I would have grabbed a screenshot of it, but it held until I did a complete revamping of that gig in December of last year. Maybe it's still tied to my profile; I don't know. Ooh. Maybe Neo does.

It's a strange world that we live in. Growing up, I was told racial profiling was bad but now it's somehow virtuous and probably ties into DEI+, ESG, and reporting to especially investors. That clearly (and likely purposefully) bleeds out into society in other ways, like people typing a specific 'race' or other identity into the search field when looking for freelancers. How all of this isn't 'racist' by this system's own school of thought is mind-bending.

To be noted, I do not even speak a language or have an accent that aligns with the 'race' that I was profiled as being by Fiverr. People who purchased voice overs after having found me with that specific label got a barely detectable Midwestern American accent and I'm fairly certain they were happy with it.

I personally don't go that far down the group identity and self-compartmentalization rabbit hole, nor do I like to be forced to do it, and on forms I've been known to be a Korean Scientologist who lives at the local police station. I think anything that can produce viable offspring together are of the same 'race' and the people who birthed it being a social construct did it for the purpose of division and oppression.

Some of my relatives were categorized as "coloreds" when they arrived in the US but somehow the admiration of Mussolini by the powers that be magically changed their label--imposed "racial fluidity." And that's just a portion of my lineage, even though it's by far the largest.

If I were to play into this whole system then I am "diversity" personified. But, no, the system wants you to be this one thing that belongs in a group with other defined one things based on confusing qualifications. Is it what you identify as being? Is it what other people see you as (thanks, receptionist at the last doctor's office I went to) and primarily based on your skin color? is it a blood quantum...thing? (Should one part of myself hate another part of me for things that it didn't do? I see this destructive internal conflict all of the time where I live!)

Or, now, is it what AI defines you as being?

 

Edited April 3 by mandyzines

[emmaki]

Yeah, when I grew up (I'm in my 40s now), I was taught not to see people's color because we're all the same inside. OK, there's a lot of huge generalizations in that teaching, but I still think it's the best approach. We might come from different cultures, hold different values etc etc etc, but we're all still human. I really dislike the way things have gone with identity politics in that respect - I know that my beliefs, which were given to me in the 1980s - aren't r*cist, but apparently they are to some people. It's the same with ideas of equality and social justice. At the end of the day, there are the mega-wealthy people that run the world and everything else, and all of this plays into their hands. I'm not playing that game. 

It's all very damaging anyway. There's an irony in that many "white" people go crazy tanning themselves into leather bags while many "black" people in the developing world use damaging whitening creams. There's a lot of commercialization that goes into that. Again, like I said, everything, eventually, plays into the hands of them. It's not just skin color either: religion, politics, ethnicity (where people can share the same color, but be a slightly different "tribe" and a million other things. Somehow, even the woke warriors of today have formed their own tribe against the world while telling everyone not to be so darn tribal. 

The reality is that we are all humans and we all - for the most part - share the same vision of what a happy life looks like. The tragedy of this world is that few people seem to ever really get it. Mostly the people who don't deserve it, at least looking from the outside!