Fiverr & Digital Services Act (EU)

[richardl2]

It happens quite often in the US that once the unintended consequences of a law are known, the law is adjusted to accommodate reasonable changes or alternatives. One alternative could be that the platform has the personal info for the sellers in case of a problem with the seller's product, etc. The injured party could then get the info from the platform and sue, or whatever other action might be needed.

[emmaki]

I see you haven't met the EU.

[richardl2]

No, not in person.

[emmaki]

Well, it kind of wants to be like the fed in the USA. Whether that's a good thing or not really depends on how you feel about the wonderful folks in D.C. (the color doesn't really matter).

Oh, it's a little less democratic as well. We only get to vote in MEP (Members of Euro Parliament). Most of them aren't very good, but there are some shouty ones who say inconvenient things about human rights etc. that mostly get ignored because they're only an MEP and they're saying shouty inconvenient things that get in the way of making money for companies who make money out of human wrongs. Happily, this is one of the weakest powers in the whole setup. The EU Council is full of people that governments send over (that's "democratic" because the government sent them and the gov't was elected) and erm, yep, that's it. The rest is all rather undemocratic and really a bit of an overreach for what was originally just meant to be a NAFTA-style trade org.

Britain just left because it has a lot of very very rich people who didn't like the sound of DAC7 (= closing tax evasion loopholes) so they made up a lot of stuff about "immigrants" to rile people up and it worked like a dream (it helps if you own the media). As far as I can tell, my homeland is now held together by some twigs and a bit of sellotape, slowly roasting gammon steaks with irony.

Edited May 26 by emmaki

[richardl2]

That all makes sense. You are in an EU country, or UK?

[emmaki]

I am British but I live in Greece (which really shouldn't be in the EU, but they - with the help of JP Morgan IIRC - fiddled the books to join. Greece is also in dire straits. I think it's fair to say this country is also held together by naked corruption, twigs and sellotape).

 

[richardl2]

Yes, that sounds familiar, but, Greece is better off economically than a lot of other countries. You are very interesting, smart, and knowledgeable, but I'm afraid I'll have to leave the discussion for a while. I have too many other things going on. See ya later.

[emmaki]

I think we'd be doing a little better if we didn't owe Germany billions of euro (never mind the interest) that we can't pay back! The Greece that most people think of is and visit is not the "real Greece", but you could say the same of any tourist destination.

I shall go back to my masochistic reading of the DSA.

[emmaki]

If you don't like Fiverr's more spammy emails, good news (privacy policy):

I am not sure if this also applies to the on-platform ads. Would a member of staff like to clarify? In the spirit of transparency, of course.

BTW, this is just a fragment of the wider policy.

Fiverr has a "Solutions Marketplace" that appears to have a few affiliate links on it. I've mentioned it before. It's... a really lazy page that has some coupons for random stuff that doesn't really seem to match.

Sadly, the Privacy Policy still does not tell us what happens if we connect our profile to LinkedIn. Given that Fiverr is meant to provide timely responses to this, that's a bit of a faux pas as far as the EU is concerned. Isn't it, Fiverr's DSA task force who is carefully monitoring all things DSA on the platform? I mean, you go into loads of detail here about what you're doing with seller information:

Y'all should read it. There's also a fun bit that says when you report someone, Fiverr may share your details with them so they (the reported) can "protect their rights" I assume this means "the person you reported" but I could be wrong. It could also just be shared with some DSA reg body.

I would appreciate it if Fiverr could make a lovely video with pictures and subtitles (in multiple languages for ultimate accessibility) explaining this in simple words so everyone understands. This would be a great way to showcase Fiverr's commitment to transparency AND going the extra mile to help convince tedious people who read documents that you actually care about transparency beyond what the mean-looking man at the EU told you to do.
 

[catwriter]

1 hour ago, emmaki said:

There's also a fun bit that says when you report someone, Fiverr may share your details with them so they (the reported) can "protect their rights" I assume this means "the person you reported" but I could be wrong. It could also just be shared with some DSA reg body.

Well, I do hope that it doesn't mean that Fiverr will share our personal information with someone we've just reported for spamming. Or harassment.  Oh, and what happens when we report someone's gig for a ToS violation? Or when we report a forum post because it violates the rules? Does the person we reported get our personal info in those cases?

[emmaki]

It might just be to the DSC (Digital Services Coordinator), which has branches in most EU countries for citizens/residents to moan to if Fiverr's internal complaints (which must be human not automated - it's separate to CS, look up "DSC contact points Fiverr"). They have an office in Croatia, by the way - it's kinda "close enough" linguistically, isn't it? Anyway check that site out if your Croatian is better than mine.

The fun thing about these things is that they do the out-of-court dispute settlements. They're affordable and fast and specialist to the DSA as far as I can tell. If you win the settlement, the company pays you money. If you lose, you pay them money. I didn't look into the specifics beyond that.

So as I see it, Fiverr would have to hold onto "X reported Y" in case Y got super-mad and took it to court. I would assume that the EU has privacy stuff in place to prevent it getting in the hands of Y? That is just an educated guess. That is definitely a question I would appreciate Fiverr's Transparency Expert visiting this thread to answer.

And also, it would be great if Fiverr could clear up anything I got wrong, because this post is now quite high on the SERPs so Perplexity is quoting me back at me. I find this annoying and amusing. In fact, this post now has more information than all the Fiverr transparency pages put together, and not all of it may be correct.