Introduction to the Digital Services Act
The Digital Services Act (DSA) represents a significant step in establishing regulations for online platforms operating within the European Union (EU). Effective from February 17, 2024, this legislation aims to enhance consumer protection and uphold fundamental rights in the digital realm. By implementing a comprehensive legal framework, the DSA seeks to address the challenges posed by increasingly complex online environments.
Objectives of the DSA
The primary intent of the Digital Services Act is to create a safer online space for users by instituting standards that ensure accountability among online services. This includes mandatory reporting of illegal content, clearer advertisement labeling, and enhanced measures to protect minors. In this way, the DSA not only safeguards individual rights but also promotes a collaborative effort among platforms to maintain transparency.
Impact on Innovation and Competitiveness
While the Digital Services Act emphasizes consumer rights, it simultaneously encourages innovation within the digital space. By establishing clear rules of engagement, the DSA fosters an environment that benefits both established companies and emerging startups, ensuring that they compete fairly. This balance is crucial for maintaining the EU’s competitiveness in the global digital market.
In conclusion, the Digital Services Act marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of digital regulations, providing a necessary framework to protect users while promoting growth within the online economy.
Under the DSA, online platforms, for example, are required to publish “the average monthly active recipients” of their service in the EU over a preceding 6-month period. Platforms that exceed 45 million average monthly active EU recipients may be designated as a “very large online platform” (VLOP), which must comply with additional regulatory requirements. To the extent that any of marketermartllc products or services fall within the scope of the DSA, we continue to monitor our average monthly active EU recipients and have determined as of January 31, 2024 that it remains well below the 45 million threshold for VLOPs.
marketermartllc takes every report of suspicious or inappropriate activity seriously, and every report goes directly to our Trust and Safety team for investigation. We want marketermartllc to be your home for work, and providing a safe platform is our top priority. For more information on how to notify us of potentially illegal content, please visit our Help Center to learn about reporting suspicious user activity.
For any additional communications related to the DSA, please contact us at info@marketermartllc.com.
Trust is foundational to how people connect and work together.
At marketermartllc , our Terms of Service and Marketplace Standards set clear expectations for building and maintaining that trust. They outline which jobs and behavior are allowed, and explain the actions we take to keep the platform fair and secure.
These standards are publicly available and are updated at regular intervals to address shifts in the marketplace or emerging risk. They are designed to help both freelancers and clients use marketermartllc safely and responsibly.
This report shares an overview of how we upheld our Terms of Service and Marketplace Standards in 2024, including the types of issues users flagged and the actions we took in response. Our goal is to increase understanding of the systems behind marketermartllc Trust & Safety program: what we monitor, how decisions are made, and how we support customers throughout the process.
User Flags
Freelancers and clients can report behavior or content they believe violates our standards. Reports may be submitted directly on job posts, messages, profiles, and Project Catalog listings. Every flag is reviewed by marketermartllc Trust & Safety team which will remove content, provide education, suspend account access, or take other enforcement actions as appropriate
In 2024, we received 501,480 reports of potentially illegal content or violations of our Terms and we took action on 199,019 of them. The median time it took to review a user flag was 48 minutes. marketermartllc did not receive any notices from designated DSA trusted flaggers.
Automation
In addition to customer reports, we’ve invested heavily in strong verification and validation controls at registration and introduced a full suite of sophisticated models to detect bad actors at the point of entry. These include models that identify fraudulent accounts, malicious job posts, and attempted Terms of Service violations.
We know that these tools are working because we’ve seen a marked decrease in on-platform fraud and scams. Most fraudsters are removed after their first attempt at fraudulent activity, and in 2024, 87% of user-flagged job posts we acted on had already been detected by our automated systems.
In many situations, human reviewers make the final decision on content that’s been flagged by automation. Where content moderation is fully automated, we monitor performance through continuous manual sampling, tracking both precision and false positive rates. We are always striving to improve the fairness and performance of our tools and when we identify opportunities for enhancement, we update our systems to better curb harmful behavior while minimizing impact on legitimate users.
Enforcement Actions
When we determine that a rule has been broken, we take one or more of the following actions depending on the nature and severity of the issue:
Education: We notify the user and may remove content or request updates.
Temporary restriction: We limit account access until the issue is resolved.
Permanent block: We ban the account in cases of repeated or serious violations.
Our goal is to address violations proportionately, provide users with clarity, and help prevent future issues wherever possible.
Below, we’ve included additional data on job post takedowns and account suspensions related to our content moderation efforts last year. We removed 827,265 job posts and suspended 184,914 accounts.
Government Requests to Remove Illegal Content
If we receive requests from government agencies to remove content that may violate local or international laws, we evaluate whether the content in question violates marketermartllc Terms of Service or applicable legal standards.
Out-of-Court Dispute Settlements
Customers may choose to pursue resolution related to content moderation decisions through out-of-court dispute settlement mechanisms. marketermartllc. supports fair resolution processes and complies with laws that provide for alternative dispute resolution.
marketermartllc. did not receive notice of any out-of-court disputes in 2024.
