Another golden goose quitting Fiverr. Is this a trend?

[rabihumakhan]

Does Fiverr care about those seasoned sellers? 

Does Fiverr even notice what's been happening to the platform? 

As a rule thumb, it should be clearer to Fiverr that whoever pays them wants them to help them/work for them and not the other way around. However, sellers pay them at least 20 percent of whatever they earn, they still aren't heard and a lot of the policies, including the system, work against them. 

[smashradio]

12 minutes ago, texvox said:

As a pro in my field with a robust and growing business outside of Fiverr, I agree that the platform does still have a lot to offer to freelancers and is still a good piece of the pie to include in your business. Over the last few years however, even as my business here has been booming it's become increasingly clear that it's not reliable enough and demands a bit too much of sellers to be a huge piece of that pie.

I also do not plan to leave Fiverr any time soon, but I would be lying if I said I felt as rosy about the platform today as I did 1, 2 or 3 years ago. 

3 years ago I felt like Fiverr was a great partner to have in my corner to help me grow my business.

2 years ago I felt like it was a better place to be than many other platforms I've tried, but far from perfect.

1 year ago I started to feel like it was a good tool to use with some noticeable flaws, but not a platform to throw all of my chips in with.

Lately I've been feeling more like I am lucky to still be seeing the success that I am, and the "writing is on the wall" regarding future potential over the next few years if recent trends in product rollouts and policy changes continues in the same direction.

Fiverr's fatal flaw, in my opinion, is that it does not treat its freelancers like freelancers, and does not see itself as a tool to help freelancers. Instead Fiverr seems to assume that it is an employer and treats us more like employees, sucking the free out of freelance in the process. As Fiverr has raised baseline expectations for all sellers it's become clearer that they expect Fiverr to be your primary workspace and your chief focus as a businessperson. But the reality is Fiverr is far too general a freelancing platform to be the be-all-end-all foundation for the average freelancer to build their business upon. I know that for myself as a voice actor Fiverr leaves a lot to be desired in the area of licensing in particular, and I have had to find clever ways to work around the hurdles of Fiverr's very basic license offerings to try and run my business here in a way that doesn't detract from my primary business off-site. 

I couldn't agree more. I've had the exact same experience and timeline as you've described.

Fiverr treats us like "assets". That's all we are to them. A critical flaw, in my view, is that Fiverr isn't raising the bar in terms of quality, but rather in terms of who can best survive intense pressure.

I've watched multiple sellers go from being highly successful, even some poster boys/girls of Fiverr,, to openly discussing the mental and physical health issues caused by Fiverr and its gamification strategies.

This includes mental health problems like hallucinations, anxiety, and fatigue, as well as physical issues like autoimmune disorders, hypertension, and exacerbated symptoms of existing conditions.

When the same illness prevents someone from being at their absolute best and most competitive, even for a few days, that's enough to permanently derail their career on Fiverr, regardless of the years they've spent striving to stay on top.

The truth is, if a Western company treated their "employees" this way, it would make headlines. It has — just look at Amazon, or gig economy giants like Uber and JustEat.

But since we're just part of the gig economy, Fiverr manages to get away with treating us like garbage.

Bonus points on their ESG if they host a mental health webinar and tell us our mental health matters. It doesn't.

 

[fastcopywriter]

On 4/30/2024 at 3:34 PM, smashradio said:

A sticking point for many is their 20% commission.

It's the same old story, people focusing on what they lose instead of what they make. 

 

 

On 4/30/2024 at 3:34 PM, smashradio said:

Because their current strategy of doubling down on undisclosed AI-generated garbage,

AI is not so bad, I have used it whenever I have writer's block or need a different perspective. I rarely use 100% of what AI gives me, sometimes I use nothing. 

I love generating AI images for my gigs. I don't know if they're helping or hurting, but at least I no longer have to pay people to do that for me. 

[mandyzines]

10 minutes ago, fastcopywriter said:

It's the same old story, people focusing on what they lose instead of what they make. 

 

 

AI is not so bad, I have used it whenever I have writer's block or need a different perspective. I rarely use 100% of what AI gives me, sometimes I use nothing. 

I love generating AI images for my gigs. I don't know if they're helping or hurting, but at least I no longer have to pay people to do that for me. 

It's a bit more than pictures and writing. Do you realize how many ways you are governed by AI and have no recourse on here if there's even a blip in the Matrix and everything you worked for goes poof?

Edited May 23 by mandyzines

[fastcopywriter]

26 minutes ago, mandyzines said:

It's a bit more than pictures and writing. Do you realize how many ways you are governed by AI and have no recourse on here if there's even a blip in the Matrix and everything you worked for goes poof?

I am not governed by AI. AI does not replace my brain, my judgement, my ideas, etc.  AI is a tool, like Google Translate, you still have to know the language you're translating too. You have to know whether to use the formal or the informal, whether X word is offensive in X culture. 

I'm very optimistic about AI. 

[mandyzines]

3 minutes ago, fastcopywriter said:

I am not governed by AI. AI does not replace my brain, my judgement, my ideas, etc.  AI is a tool, like Google Translate, you still have to know the language you're translating too. You have to know whether to use the formal or the informal, whether X word is offensive in X culture. 

I'm very optimistic about AI. 

Thank you. That answered my question. 

[desmond_aubery]

1 hour ago, fastcopywriter said:

I am not governed by AI. AI does not replace my brain, my judgement, my ideas, etc.  AI is a tool, like Google Translate, you still have to know the language you're translating too. You have to know whether to use the formal or the informal, whether X word is offensive in X culture. 

I'm very optimistic about AI. 

A sidebar:
AI is trained on human input/output. What happens when human input/output is so influenced by AI that AI begins to train on AI-influenced 'human' input/output? Recycle this over time - what happens?

[smashradio]

17 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

It's the same old story, people focusing on what they lose instead of what they make. 

 

 

AI is not so bad, I have used it whenever I have writer's block or need a different perspective. I rarely use 100% of what AI gives me, sometimes I use nothing. 

I love generating AI images for my gigs. I don't know if they're helping or hurting, but at least I no longer have to pay people to do that for me. 

I never said AI is bad. It's the way Fiverr uses it I don't like. I'm not "anti AI". I'm anti copypasting meaningless garbage. With that said, I truly think AI will make people dumber. Science agrees with me. 

[fastcopywriter]

20 hours ago, desmond_aubery said:

AI is trained on human input/output. What happens when human input/output is so influenced by AI that AI begins to train on AI-influenced 'human' input/output? Recycle this over time - what happens

Whether AI exists or not, there will always be people that believe red cars attract more traffic accidents and swimming immediately after eating can kill you.  Ironically, I asked ChatGPT your question, and it gave me a very long answer. I can't post it here, but I think you should check it out.   

[fastcopywriter]

4 hours ago, smashradio said:

With that said, I truly think AI will make people dumber.

How? By giving us answers without making us do the work?  Or will it become another distraction like TikTok? I know I often fear opening TikTok because I might end up spending 1.5 hours on it. 

 

[smashradio]

11 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

How? By giving us answers without making us do the work?  Or will it become another distraction like TikTok? I know I often fear opening TikTok because I might end up spending 1.5 hours on it. 

 

I linked to an article about it in my post above. 

It has to do with multiple reasons. Our critical thinking skills can become worse and we tend to rely on AI even when it proves incorrect information. It can cause humans to lose our cignitive abilities and knowledge, resulting in a h omogenization of thought processes, create echo chambers, and diminished collective intelligence due to loss of thought diversity. 

This article touches on similar subjects: https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-024-00444-7

As one Norwegian professor put it: 

"The second, and perhaps more alarming find, is that solving tasks with ChatGPT weakens cognitive abilities such as memory, partly because the automation of task solving removes the possibility of critical thinking."

He goes on to speculate about the frenetic need to embrace AI technologies being a psychological response to the fear of being left behind.

At the intro of his Khrono article, he jokingly writes about a talk he held on this very subject:  

"At the beginning, I jokingly said that if the predictions about ChatGPT were to come true — that it would be used both by students to write and by teachers to correct — the future of Norwegian subjects would consist of texts that no one had written and no one had read."

Professor David Raffo, who lectures in Business Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University, noticed changes in student behavior due to AI tools. Students had more trouble interacting with others and taking constructive feedback.

My point here is that I think the rush to rely on AI for everything that we used to do ourselves, most certainly has the potential to screw with out cognitive and critical thinking abilities over time. 

Edited May 24 by smashradio

[visualstudios]

7 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Our critical thinking skills can become worse and we tend to rely on AI even when it proves incorrect information. It can cause humans to lose our cignitive abilities and knowledge, resulting in a h omogenization of thought processes, create echo chambers, and diminished collective intelligence due to loss of thought diversity. 

This article touches on similar subjects: https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-024-00444-7

As one Norwegian professor put it: 

"The second, and perhaps more alarming find, is that solving tasks with ChatGPT weakens cognitive abilities such as memory, partly because the automation of task solving removes the possibility of critical thinking."

Makes sense, but then again... Plato was saying the same thing about writing destroying our memory capacity millennia ago. Progress is progress, who knows what will happen. Maybe it will indeed change our abilities, but maybe we won't need the same type of abilities in that future. Just like I don't need to memorize a ton of things now that they are written down.

[smashradio]

6 hours ago, visualstudios said:

Makes sense, but then again... Plato was saying the same thing about writing destroying our memory capacity millennia ago. Progress is progress, who knows what will happen. Maybe it will indeed change our abilities, but maybe we won't need the same type of abilities in that future. Just like I don't need to memorize a ton of things now that they are written down.

I'm not saying it isn't progress, or that all progress is bad. Maybe we won't need them. Until a solar flare hits us and we're all running around like headless chickens wondering how to repair the grid now that we can't just send a robot or ask MindGPT. 

[emmaki]

But didn't Plato write a lot? 🤔

I would post the relevant section of Plato's thought on this, but the best translation I found contains a word beginning with "b" that means "illegitimate offspring", so I won't. 

WIth that said, there are some interesting parallels with Plato's thoughts on the mind-numbing effects of using/becoming dependent on writing and today's discussions on AI, and I recall an interesting discussion I saw a few years ago about how the written word meant that a lot of cultural knowledge had been lost through the decades. For example, when Western colonizers forced their tongue on the native populations (along with their ideas), a lot of cultural heritage in the form of knowledge was lost - you can see some parallels today with the new form of "colonization" which is essentially the soft-power conquering of the world through Western ideas/research. 

I did actually post something earlier today that covered something very close to this topic, specifically with AI, but it did not pass muster. But the end thesis was essentially that AI was full of Western ideas and values and that this would have an impact on people who were from parts to the world that didn't naturally share those values; i.e. speeding up global homogenization into the visage of the West.

As for whether writing/thinking is better, I tend to agree with Socrates, who only seems to have disliked writing because he feared that his ideas might be misconstrued or changed by others - the famous online "lack of tone" for starters. With AI, you have something a bit more powerful that can take your thinking and, well, construe or misconstrue it for you; the problem really only comes when you don't use the tool well, whether that be quill or keyboard. 

<pregnant pause>

It won't affect anyone's ability to think, recall, or remember. I once knew an old lady who could recite all 10,000+ lines of the erotokritos, which is basically Crete's equivalent to the viking sagas. The problem we do face now is that all of us have, to a greater or lesser extent, locked up our knowledge on databases. Once the big storm hits, we'll be suffering. But even before that, we'll suffer; how many of today and tomorrow's graduates are using AI to fill in the blanks of their knowledge so they can get to the job of their dreams? How will that filter down years and decades from now? 

The mind is still the best place for knowledge, and long sagas of rhyming couplets are just one powerful tool that helps us to recall all manner or things. The verbal heritage of humans is one of the most precious things we have, but it is slowly being destroyed. That's not AI's fault (it certainly accelerates the process, though) - that blame lies elsewhere.

Thank you for coming to my long and boring TED talk. 
 

[fastcopywriter]

15 hours ago, smashradio said:

Our critical thinking skills can become worse and we tend to rely on AI even when it proves incorrect information.

Thanks for the article. I suppose technology in general can have detrimental effects. Calculators mean we're doing less math in our heads. There are apps that will translate a speaker's voice into your language, and viceversa, so you can travel without learning the language.  However, I still think AI can save crazy amounts of time. For example, I was having an argument about The Walking Dead, I wanted proof that Rick isn't such a good guy, and the AI gave me the proof I needed. Researching that without AI could have taken me hours. 

Take the dreaded cover letter, AI can write in seconds what might take hours, and it can write it in several ways- funny, serious, dramatic. 

 

 

[dereck_s]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:09 PM, smashradio said:

But how would you calculate that? Should a seller making $2M pay the same as a seller making $200? You know I love the idea of a paywall, but that alone won't cover the operating costs of Fiverr. 

I really wish I had your guys's problems and concerns...... I had a great little side gig on here and the new system took all the perks I've worked a decade to aquire including my ability to promote my gig and be visible on the search rankings. It was so good that for awhile I was stupid enough to think I could rely on it as stable extra income. Now I'm invisble on searches, haven't had a new customer order in over a month and my once flourishing gigs get 7 impressions a day now. 

The last bad review I had was over 2 years ago and he gave me 1 star because I asked him which file types he wanted for his logo. The next 1 star review I had was 10 years ago and for a service Fiverr doesn't even offer anymore.

Edited May 25 by dereck_s

[mandyzines]

On 5/24/2024 at 5:49 PM, dereck_s said:

I really wish I had your guys's problems and concerns...... I had a great little side gig on here and the new system took all the perks I've worked a decade to aquire including my ability to promote my gig and be visible on the search rankings. It was so good that for awhile I was stupid enough to think I could rely on it as stable extra income. Now I'm invisble on searches, haven't had a new customer order in over a month and my once flourishing gigs get 7 impressions a day now. 

The last bad review I had was over 2 years ago and he gave me 1 star because I asked him which file types he wanted for his logo. The next 1 star review I had was 10 years ago and for a service Fiverr doesn't even offer anymore.

Has your Success Manager been helpful in explaining what is going on and how to rectify it?

[desmond_aubery]

On 5/24/2024 at 7:31 AM, fastcopywriter said:

Whether AI exists or not, there will always be people that believe red cars attract more traffic accidents and swimming immediately after eating can kill you.  Ironically, I asked ChatGPT your question, and it gave me a very long answer. I can't post it here, but I think you should check it out.   

I had a very long conversation with Gemini about this very topic a while back. The reply was that the tight feedback loop could eventually reduce all output to the mean. We explored ways of introducing lateral thinking into the process to broaden, instead of narrow, the output.

[dimezstudio]

On 4/30/2024 at 9:50 PM, visualstudios said:

And the buyer does care about the 20%, specially when that means literally thousands of extra dollars paid for nothing.

I think the last statement is a bit dismissive of the value of Fiverr. Yes, the fee is a factor and it's up to each buyer or seller to decide if its worth it but to say it is for nothing is wrong. Fiverr provides a service, and distribution that benefits sellers.

If your argument is that Fiverr favors the buyers more, then it makes sense that the fee is what the buyer pays for that protection. I'm not making an argument for or against the level of the fee. But regardless the fee is not for nothing.