emmaki

I didn't like you anyway. You smell of musty old Norwegian woolwear that irritates your skin when you wear it, yet bobbles and shrinks on the first wash. And wet socks after a long walk in Norway's most boring small fjord. For clarity, this is a joke. I apologize for any disruption to spam posting community who may be upset by this rude interruption to their commercial interests.

It's not a selfie. You need to send a selfie. https://help.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/13127850435345-Verify-your-identity Like this:

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

I see you haven't met the EU.

Nope. That's why Fiverr is positioning itself as a useful business partner for firms that want to work with freelancers around the world. They take on the headache of whatever regulations exist and companies can just pay the invoices. That is an undeniably helpful service. It's all in the Fiverr Enterprise documentation, even if it doesn't specifically clear up the question of whether existing Fiverr sellers are required to pay a fee or not (reminder to staff: I continue to wait for an answer on this one). It's a pity my hidden post about the Forbidden Subject of string theory was firmly removed. May I ask for transparency as to why, Fiverr? I think that's a fair and on-topic question. Please refer to page 1 for the reasons why. I can't really accept "it was off-topic" or "upsetting" because the other OT posts remain which are also talking, so it must have been something else. This is why I like transparency. It gifts us, your forum users, with knowledge of what is and what is not OK. Alternatively, we may co-exist in alternative universes where the veil is incredibly thin and unfortunately everything is just ever-so-slightly different? Sadly, Perplexity AI told me this theory was incorrect and a sci-fi fantasy. AI is so disappointing sometimes. Sci-fi, of course, is "famous for using fictional stories to critically examine and comment on various aspects of society". (also Perplexity in a follow-up question). We certainly don't want any of that here. So I invite transparency into this discussion. Back on-topic after that diversion into theoretical physics and sci-fi, it's best to use giant companies to sell in the EU and let them take the weight of whatever the EU has decided to do. It's on them if you don't comply, which means their failure to ensure your compliance is their problem. OTO, if we, the users, miss their compliance notices, they'll simply disable our accounts. Problem here is that you'd really need to be a EU citizen (probably, idk) to challenge this on the grounds of, say, not being well-informed enough (but you'd probably need to prove this). Personally, I think Fiverr's doing OK here so far.

I've read in various articles over the year that many (if not all) of the people who survived have said that after they jumped, they almost instantly regretted it, but were powerless to stop the consequences. I don't remember if it helped with their depression, but it probably improved it by giving them a newfound appreciation for life, even if whatever had driven them to jump wasn't quite resolved. Unfortunately, I do remember that the consequences were usually a lot of broken everything and (I assume in the worst case) life-changing and life-long disabilities/pain. Which probably doesn't help depression at all, especially if you're the sort who has a inner voice criticizing you for being so (etc) in the first place. EDIT: In conclusion, jumping off of bridges is not a good idea. There are probably more effective methods, such as [snip! - Ed] EDIT 2: There was also a guy on reddit who didn't jump - probs not the one in the image - who said that he didn't jump because as he was standing on the edge thinking about it, this car drove by with a guy and a kid in it. The guy was all angry and yelling (helpful), while the kid just stared at him. Anyway, the guy didn't listen to Angry Dad, as the kid reminded him of his sister. In the end, he climbed back over and walked home, realizing that he didn't want to cause his little sister the pain that him jumping would. It was a very touching story. IIRC, I think he's actually fine now. He got help etc. Oh dear, this is all very off-topic.

It became mandatory here in about... 2006/7? It was not very popular at all, but the reason given was, of course, t*rrorists. If you didn't comply you couldn't have a phone and you were obviously up to no good. I think one of the screenshots I pasted above mentions that Fiverr doesn't necessarily have to have 100% coverage on all of this due to global inconsistencies with this kind of data, it just has to show it did as much as it could with the data it had access to. There's grades of "knowledge" where you can have "weak" verification or "strong" verification (and grades in between). This does remind me of the AI paper I attempted to share on Fiverr (the post was removed) which stated that AI discriminated against those who were not Western. People in developed countries, or at least incorrectly in unions for developed countries due to fr*ud (Greece...) will more naturally meet compliance with all their bits of paper than someone from a much less regulated country. It's probably why there are grades of strength for compliance - profiling has its own section that I haven't really looked at - but it's easy to see how this could penalize people from some countries over others. Even without things like US sanctions. If all of that is true, or somewhat true, then it doesn't really prevent some types of sellers from signing up, which is where the gig quality part comes in. I just need to find out how the AI part works, but I think the EU AI Act needs to be a thing before we can really look at how the DSA/EU AI act work together before we can say too much. If only Fiverr's transparency team could descend upon this thread like angels and cause our doubts and questions to waft away on a golden cloud of wide-open transparency to the sound of a magical harp and Maria Callas wailing about trust and openness.

A thought: location inconsistencies could also refer to not using your registered (mobile) phone number among other things. I am not sure about globally, but for example in the EU, you need to register your SIM card by attaching your ID to it). I have no doubt that these are available in "official online databases" for relevant parties who need to meet high-level regulatory standards. I noticed when I was looking through the how to become a seller articles yesterday that Fiverr kept highlighting the need to be truthful. This initially seemed a bit naggy, but now I'm thinking that Fiverr may be using that info to compare to whatever its hooked up with along with internal policies. If you look at a lot of YT videos, the "gurus" often fill in e.g. educational certification with "srteryr" or other gibberish - and it's not rare for new sellers who don't want to do that to be stuck just under the completion %. That's the gurus who aren't actively showing you how to dodge around all of this, but those videos are quite old now. But I'll bet my left cheek (you can pick which) that there's a db of edu certs out there. Tragically, it seems that nobody who needs to read this will read this, buried as it is under reams of incredibly dull text.

I found this. and this! on the new freelancer verification processes: and more I am now really bored and am going to stop reading this.

I'm still waiting on answers as to what exactly Fiverr intends to do with out LinkedIn data (probably required by EU law - right now it just points to other policy policies that point back to Fiverr) and whether sellers pay a fee for Fiverr Enterprise or not (probably required by a law, somewhere). The last question is vexing because it's a simple Y/N question and I think the answer is no so I don't understand why nobody will answer these questions! This is why Fiverr is a PLOP, not a VLOP. 😓

There is a DSA Transparency Database run by the EC! Article 17. However, Fiverr's not on it. Might be because it's a PLOP (one of the FAQs here lists VLOPs. A certain "shrimping enthusiast" website is on there as a VLOP). But if Fiverr wanted to be transparent, it could certainly provide users with the level of information you can see in those reports. For example, users still get a very generic "you violated TOS, bye" email when they could get the specific TOS quote and an explanation of the offense. Fiverr also has a new contact point for the authorities in member states. So users who live in the EU can contact their local DSA authority and they will investigate. Failure to comply with DSA obligations can mean compensation etc. I am not sure if this would apply to things like the Success Score though. I was also able to resolve my confusion over February 2025. It's from this video, where Fiverr states that they will "complete the verification process.." (skip to ~0.50). So I do believe that in the first product release of next year, our names, emails, etc. will be exposed on our profiles within the EU - not much point doing that until everyone is accounted for, right? I still haven't been able to identify exactly what "certain EU customers", but if someone from staff reading this wants to hop in and bedazzle us with their EU-compliant transparency, that would be great. No? Well, this is why we all roll our eyes when you breathe the word "transparency" at us. Of course, we can look at the woeful state of the marketplace(s) at the moment. Is the DSA a reason that Fiverr made a whole bunch of people Pro for no obvious reason other than "ta-da! New, but really old and confusingly rebranded marketplace!" in 2023? Might it be that Pro will (eventually) be a premium marketplace and the only one that "certain" (pro buyer) EU customers can see? Pro does have a higher minimum quality standard, although the account approval process suggests maybe not. I'm not a huge fan of this theory, but the split-up nature of Fiverr's marketplace doesn't really make sense currently. It makes more sense when you realize an external body is pressuring them to make changes. Assuming the verification process for freelancers is still happening globally, I would expect to see many more posts about accounts being disabled etc. It also makes some sense to me based on my conversation with CS yesterday about location inconsistencies where they really indicated "misleading" people as the big issue. So, maybe sellers who are using other people's ID or addresses (or whatever) are being caught via other ways post-verification. I see no reason that the EU would force a platform to disclose those methods due to the big highlight of transparency for consumers. But I may be wrong. Please excuse me for being reluctant to read all 100 pages of an incredibly boring document. So, next time Fiverr tells you how transparent it is, just remind them that they only became "transparent" when EU legislation forced it. Fiverr's lack of resolve to become even more transparent suggests that they've met the bare minimum standards as a PLOP. Unfortunately, this thread here appears to be the most detailed information resource about freelance platforms and the DSA (in English). How horrifying, considering Google now thinks UGC is brilliant and my non-expert opinion is now going to be given more credibility than it deserves. A recent example from Google SGE: Yeah, it looks that way. My brain is just melting with all this legalese...

I did some more research on this. It erm, aligns almost exactly with all that nonsense we just went through with the levels overhaul and success score. Fiverr didn't release any of that for our specific benefit; the EU forced its hand. So next time we shriek like banshees at Fiverr about the success score, we should also save some energy to hate on the EU as well. Unfortunately for Brits, I don't think Brexit means Brexit in this specific case. Here's the full doc - light reading at 106 pages of wonderful legalese. If you speak a European language, you can no read this super-boring document in your own language's boring legal talk! Bad luck, everyone else. Just use Google Translate. Also, it appears I was wrong about 2025. It's Feburary 2024. (although maybe there's a year of grace to get affairs in order?) Yes, that's right, the SS score and all that other nonsense just pipsqueaked past the post. However, it's late, and I'm tired. Not to mention my brain now is messed up from trying to read a legal text. It's going to be a lot of fun when Fiverr announces that everyone's got to share their private details to a fragment of the marketplace, I know that much. That IS happening, because Fiverr IS collecting that data from new users and it says as much in their help center. Anyway, can we all put the transparency thing to bed now. God Fiverr, all you had to do was say "the EU told us to do this" and we'd all have got cranky at the EU instead. It's easy to opt out of the EU on KDP. Just don't sell your books in Germany/France/Italy/Spain and other EU marketplaces. The UK should be OK, but we might have our own version of DSA (as we do with DAC7, for example, although I think it's called something else in the UK). Just spend half an hour searching for the Azon live chat and you'll get a reasonably fast answer from someone using ChatGPT. But that you for reminding me that I have to post an invoice to the Amazon on Monday (for my book sales) because the EU wills it so Amazon wants it, even though Amazon is going to toss it in the trash. Fun fact, God, I love red tape (I can't email it in 2024 because it's a "security threat" according to Amazon CS. No, your guess is as good as mine). But seriously, if my understanding it right, all these platforms have until 2025 to get things fixed properly so maybe wait a little. They're the ones who get the fines if you mess up.

Am I doing all the heavy lifting on this post then? I suppose it's not like I have any work, is it? LOLOLOL. Anyway, this article is quite good (boring though) at explaining everything you'd want to know about the DSA. Including wider implications for the use of AI (that bit was v. interesting). The same website also had this more focused article. CS might get better (incidentally, one plus point of this for Fiverr is that businesses will probably prefer to use Fiverr to just deal with all this BS instead of doing it themselves - the 5.5% service fee is probably not so bad compared to hiring a specialist company. For example, any company outside the EU who want to sell to the EU now needs to have a special person to deal with this specific bit of red tape) But we don't care about that. Look! CS might have to get better! Also, the "grab-a-granny" multiple account sellers might have some issues soon if granny is very under the weather: But wait, there's more from this site Wow, that's... interesting! Now a lot of Fiverr's new moves make a lot of sense, don't they? Upmarket? Yeah. The fines are huge like most EU fines for VLOPs and even little PLOPs like Fiverr. Now, here's more I liked this one too Lots more - this is a huge act that seems like it will force Fiverr to change a lot of its business model. Good. But as far as I can see, and I can't be bothered to read the actual act today, it looks like we're all going to have to share details that are pretty much violating the TOS as it is now. Fiverr has until February 17th, 2025 to figure out this headache. Glad it's not me....

I think yes, this will be enforced by that date, which neatly coincides with the whole "product release" schedule. Because my middle name is "Columbo" (a lie, as people may soon find out) I deduce that these product releases are just the glossy PR way of saying "shidaddle! we gotta make major changes, let's make it sound asset-friendly!" It's a shame this legislation doesn't also drive traffic to our websites as well, isn't it? The EU: never quite getting it right. First bendy bananas, now this. I am disappoint. Here's ChatGPT 4 (the creaky old one) with more about what the DSA is:

I need to look into the DSA a bit more (zzz) but it sounds to me like the EU is insisting that this is a "thing". You're absolutely right this makes it a lot easier for people to carry off-platform. I'm sure their legal team is working hard on this! The first product launch of 2025 is going to be interesting, to say the least. I wonder if part of the reason for these product launches is regulators being a PITA about everything and ruining Fiverr's business model. <cracks a wan smile> Justice can be poetic, sometimes. EDIT: Nah, everyone's gonna have to share their deets.

This topic seems to be flip-flopping between "can't view topic" and "normal". Is the forum just glitchy today? EDIT Well, IDK, this got through so I'll finish what I was trying to say before all that happened. I was just going to add to the last post that this really explained why the QR code thing was so successful and why newbies were so trusting of what I thought was a fairly obv scam bc I've never heard of Fiverr using QR before. This is a serious issue, and while I know that Fiverr inserts help docs and videos that presumably go through a bunch of stuff, realistically, I doubt many people give it full attention and somehow I also doubt it mentions the QR code scam. So... IDK. Anyway, I haven't found any other surprises in the document, but it's an interesting read. We're all going to have to decide whether we're a private freelancer, sole trader, or multi-person business by Feb 2025 - and we'll need to provide a whole bunch of details which will be very, very visible to certain customers, for better or worse. I'm sure Fiverr's not thrilled about it either. I suppose my last question is really if this will help to get rid of the bad actors, but the private freelancer tier and self-reporting makes it look easy enough to game to me. IDK.

May I ask what was wrong with my post about the DSA and why it was removed? It literally takes information from the help center and talks about it. EDIT: nvm its back

Ruh-roh!

Uh, guys... That's interesting, don't you think? New question to add to my "questions that never get answered" pack: 1) Who are these "certain EU customers"? EDIT: another question: 2) How does this pesky EU reg square up with the whole "no external contact" thing? 3) How will Fiverr handle potential cases of off-platform harassment from "certain EU customers"? Are these details visible to everyone, or just literal "customers"? I already know from personal experience how Fiverr handles harrassment, and it's a bit of a curate's egg. However, random internet people doing weird things is very different from "random internet people turning up at my house/calling me all hours of the day". Might think of some more later. I'm still going through the docs.

See video in link. I've just noticed this in the help center. What do we think? It looks like the signup process is set to get even more strict (between now and Feb '25) and that there may be some more vague account terminations as they prepare the site for whatever is coming to make Fiverr compliant with the DSA. This also seems to be related to the relatively new terminology of 'business freelancer' I've noticed popping up and around lately. https://help.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010451297-How-to-start-selling-on-Fiverr This snippet is from the HC page linked just under the video in the first link. Now, you may be thinking "I'm not in the EU, who cares?". Well, you should, because the video makes it pretty clear that all new signups are going to need to divulge info, and that this will allow them access to the EU marketplace (on Fiverr). I think saying "no" will mean "you can't play". Of course, there is still plenty of scope for fibs ("self reporting") from the usual suspect on account number 10. Here's the link because I'm a nice person who shares links: https://help.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/22582440968849-Account-verification - it has more details. In any case, I think that later on this year we'll all be asked to supply the details mentioned in that if we haven't already. This seems like a far better way of doing things than asking people to connect to their LinkedIn and then not being able to answer any simple questions like "why" and "how does it work" and "what's the privacy policy on that again because yours doesn't actually say anything", but that is the mystery wrapped inside the riddle that is the enigma of Fiverr's inner workings for you. Still, I guess when the EU is breathing down your neck like an excited and overweight man on one of those phone lines, you tend to put some effort into a respectable effort in introducing and explaining a new feature. What a pity Fiverr can't do the same for us. Transparency? Buried in a help center.

Freelancing is definitely not the easy choice, especially if you want a stable income and all that goes with that, but as someone else wrote here a few days ago (sorry, I forgot who), Fiverr tends to take the "free" out of freelancer and place a lot of demands on us. Not directly, of course, but certainly indirectly through things like gamification. One false step and it's game over, if not forever, at least until you wait out the weeks or months until you're deemed good enough to participate again. It's not a great way to treat people who are your "best sellers". But if you're taking 20% from everyone no matter what, it hardly matters if an individual stumbles and falls. There are plenty to take their place. That's a major conflict of interest: Fiverr's financial incentives simply don't align with the best interest of its freelancers. Sure, it's just a platform; it is not their responsibility to "care" for us as we are but freelancers. But that's where all the gamification and metrics come in. Fiverr expects people to work a full time job to perfection without missing a beat. You cannot do that AND tend to your business away from Fiverr. All of these gig economy platforms are the same. You can see the tension with others like Uber and how their workforces are revolting against the machine. Fiverr understands that this is a threat to its business model - basically running its "assets" into the ground with a fig leaf of support just to say they have it - it says so in its more boring variants of investor reports. Unfortunately, not much is going to change until legal requirements force these platforms to be more considerate of their users. And that progress is kind of slow. It doesn't help that Fiverr freely allows people with no discernible skills or talents to become sellers, creating a marketplace that really doesn't align with where it wants to go. But still, 20%. Why not support these kind of freelancers by letting them sell AI stuff without disclosing them and then tell the buyer they shoulda asked first? Again, I am scratching my head about the decisions from the top lately. How can you go upmarket while your platform is riddled with hacks and scams? That's more "dirty needle-filled back alley where Eddie Two-Chins sells his off-brand merch" than "Prada store".