emmaki

...and hurt feelings can soon hurt profits if the AI scamming continues too much longer, especially in the Pro marketplace where buyers should at least have a reasonable expectation that sellers who use AI for their work will disclose it or post in the appropriate categories. Before anyone starts: I'm talking about the final work. I don't think buyers particularly care if e.g. writers use AI to speed up research and get a handle on the topic, so long as the final output is actually written by a human and carefully fact checked etc. Ditto other verticals. AI in production = great. AI masquerading as complete product made by man = scam.

I fear that study would not past muster by the ESG board.

It's certainly not very committed to policing the marketplace and forcing sellers to be transparent about their use of AI when many buyers don't want AI. Is Fiverr not requiring disclosure helping a) businesses and people or b) scammers? EDIT: There are people on this forum who have paid hundreds of dollar for articles written by AI when they paid for human writing. This is the reality of Fiverr's marketplace at the moment. Do you think those buyers come back? Do you think they trust Fiverr? Do you think they care about nonsense like "AI empowerment" when they've effectively been scammed?

Ugh. I don't want to watch it (and give Fiverr "engagement" that proves "interest"), but I do want to know what she said so I can say mean things about it. I'm very productive like that 🙂 Of course some people might find them useful, and I don't have an issue with that. It's really the whole "forcing AI down everyone's throat" combined with the almost complete lack of regulation (and therefore "integrity") on the marketplace that gets my goat.

@donnovan86 did you attend the storytelling one? These webinars are not good enough for anyone with an interest in the subject. The first one I watched (which I think was one of the first last year?) showed how a Pro seller used ChatGPT to create article outlines. IIRC the prompting went something like this: Ask ChatGPT to write an outline for an article about [keyword] Tell it to write each section separately "edit it" Job done! Very, very, very unimpressive stuff. No advice given on tone, style, voice, semantic SEO etc. She probably did mention the hallucination, but for a webinar that promised expert blah-de-blah into a waffle. it was a complete waste of time. Point being that anyone who is interested in learning how to use AI tools isn't watching Fiverr's webinars - they're going to places where actual experts at manipulating MJ, GPT, or whatever are sharing some of what they do (since most people are precious about their prompts, given that making them public is all but a guarantee it lands up in some sellers "10,000 Amazing GPT Prompts Pack" for $5. And the seller them comes to the forum and asks for advice on how to prompt in broken English while simultaneously telling the world in GPT speak that they're an EXPART. (true story, that). presumably this webinar is for sellers like that. But due to their limited abilities to speak English, how is it going to help them - and do they even want help? FIVERR! ENOUGH AI ALREADY!

Yes, I know I'm old. Get off my lawn!

Clippy AI - cunningly disguised under names like "Neo" is currently in charge of Fiverr. I know this, because my SM sent me an SOS begging for my help since Clippy AI had gone on a crazy rampage - I could hear his shrill, slightly robotic voice in the background screaming "SUCCESS SCORED! SUCCESS SCORED!" Sadly, before she could tell me what was happening, she yelped in fear as the line cut out. I fear she may have been success scored, whatever that means. In the meantime, we need to discuss this concerning new development at 5HQ.

...and asking people who've never used it to provide feedback. If they read what users were saying on their own forum, they'd know that quite a lot of people don't use it because it's spammy. And like you say, it's not really a feature anyone cares about. IIRC the big deal with this is that Fiverr does some spammy internet marketing tactics with coupons to say "ORDER AGAIN OR LOSE YOUR 40% DISCOUNT!" 💤😴💤 Perhaps this is an effort to show that $39 a month for SPP is worth it because look! You, too, can get email requesting feedback to improve a feature you don't use so you start using it which makes it better! I don't know if spam-u-like is in SP/PP and I don't really care, I just wanted to shoehorn yet another rant about greedy price increases in here I'm just going to start calling Fiverr Clippy AI now.

Yeah, they don't really care about disgruntled sellers jumping up and down like an enraged Rumpelstiltskin over their horrible decisionmaking. There are plenty of people with AI and voice cloning waiting to make money from Fiverr without lifting a finger, and Fiverr will be more than happy to lie in that bed.

Anyone else get this? I opted to respond to the email with the feedback of "I don't use it because it's spammy" And now I'm thinking my feedback might be ignored because I didn't click the massive button instead. Oh well.

That just means the AI thinks you're rubbish. No humans need to check to see if you're rubbish or the AI was wrong.

You should always diversify; Fiverr can and will kill off your profile for no reason, including spurious ones such as "you can't have a Pro gig and a regular gig in the same category". When pointed out that other sellers are doing just that, there's nothing we can about that (which is kind of illogical, since they did something about me). No amount of business skills will save anyone from arbitrary decisionmaking by Fiverr - and that's only increasing as AI takes over the running of the platform. Anyway, it's OK. I may have no work, but I do have a success score of 10 and acres of interested buyers who either ask me do to TOS-violating stuff, want me to do steep discounts, or are just angry with other sellers for declining to work with them. Sadly, that doesn't pay the bills. It very much depends on the nature of the pushing. Fiverr is always pushing some sellers up, but it will, eventually, push them down, regardless of the skills or development of the sellers. So, best to diversify. Because when Fiverr decides to do something that doesn't support you in any way and hinders everything you try to do to improve it, you won't have anything on your terms: you'll just hear a lot of sorry we can't do anythings. Just ask voiceoverpete - dumped overnight at the height of his Fiverr success. Ignoring his naivety for a moment, he was encouraged to continue making those videos and told it wasn't a problem by staff. How's that for "best practices" - along with allowing many platform users to sell AI work without disclosure? I know for a fact that one of the top VOA on this platform is using AI (it's nobody on the forum) - because they said as much elsewhere (they cloned their voice). A $2m seller who "writes articles" and has made over $2MM on the platform.... uses AI. The only real challenge on Fiverr is, well, Fiverr. I was doing quite well until a bunch of sorry there's nothing we can do about things that they clearly could happened. And, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters to the company now is cutting costs while driving up profits at the expense of the sellers and buyers who use the platform. Yet Fiverr has absolutely nothing to say when asked questions about these practices, or its damaging use of gamification in the wholly inappropriate environment of a professional platform. Fiverr can't even answer the simple question of "does Fiverr Enterprise still charge platform sellers 20%? Is the 0% fees only for off-platform sellers?" The last question in particular doesn't seem particularly difficult to answer (I can understand the need for a veil of corporate "discretion" on the others). And yes, Fiverr's a business, it can run how it wants; it just makes all the talk of ethics a bit galling.

As I've said before, the best way to keep your success score high is to simply not work. Sitting pretty here at 10 and completely work-free. 🙂

Another victory for transparent Fiverr!

Why ya gotta wait and let the dust settle? I'm ready to be OUTRAGED for you!

The problem with Fiverr is that it is acting like a boss of the worst sort, micromanaging everything to the smallest communication and refusing to listen to any criticism (constructive or otherwise) from employees who just want to get on with their in the way they know best. It's always been a bit like that with gamification and awkward "hello, fellow kids!" attempts to look human on social media, but it just got like, a billionty times worse with AI. Now the humans behind Fiverr aren't even bothering anymore and instead foisting their lazy AI obsession onto sellers who don't want it and are worried about it stealing their jobs. Not a story unique to Fiverr today, I know. But at least a human boss in an office leaves you alone if you get everything done and its OK. I'm not even going to deal with the complication of freelancing essentially being like having lots of mini-bosses to fight on the way to the big boss which has a totally unfair 1-shot kill and cheats by changing the rules all the time.

Were you paid?

Yeah, it would be nice if they had a sliding commission scale, but I don't think it's going to happen. If you look at Fiverr Enterprise, where (I'm guessing) all the really big $ business goes, there are apparently no seller fees at all, buyer pays everything. Of course, it's been a month since I sent an email to FE team asking if this was a thing or too good to be true and nobody's gotten back to me yet. I thought it was a very simple question - silly me. Memo to any Fiverr staff reading this: the complete silence on this topic is why sellers don't believe you when you start talking about "transparency" and "listening to users" and why many of us think our comments are simply thrown into the nearest trash bin after precisely no consideration.

Yes, I think 20% is reasonable. Would I like it to be lower? Of course. But since I don't pay anything unless I get work, it's fine. Much better than playing client roulette on UW with "connects".

I think we need to ask Fiverr what Fiverr's why is. Fiverr's always asking us to open up with little shards of insight into our inner worlds. Isn't it time Fiverr did the same? I'd love to hear Fiverr's "why" for e.g. 100% price increases for sellers who were promised locked-in prices for early adoption on new products, for example. Or what was floating through the corporate brain when it was decided to allow anyone to sell AI stuff without having to disclose it. I - perhaps unfairly - believe it's nothing more than blind greed. But if Fiverr would just let me into its world and open up a little, maybe I could understand it and learn to love it again. Or maybe not. I might be bang on the money.

Where do all Fiverr's listeners disappear to outside of big announcements for shiny new things that nobody wanted?

Apparently you don't realize that the paid seller plans have been out since 2021.

Noone also wants to pay hundreds of dollars for services that some Fiverr sellers are flogging without disclosure as they are allowed to do by the platform. That's work that anyone can do themselves in 5 minutes. Add to that Fiverr promoting hundreds of sellers to Pro - the "hand picked, hand-vetted" program overnight when it expanded the Pro marketplace - and the public is absolutely right to think of Fiverr as a dubious place. Just look at the decisions that leadership is making so they can make some extra money at everybody's else's expense. It's disgusting.

Yes, go to ChatGPT and ask it the questions you're interested in. You'll get the expert answers you're looking for there, and a lot quicker than waiting for Fiverr to do the same thing for you.