A seat reserved for Kruti Patel Goyal

RC/PL/2026/2

20 August 2026

Letter

Subject: Transmission of the Platform Fairness Standard

Dear Ms Patel Goyal,

On behalf of the Platform Council of Reseated, I am writing to transmit the Platform Fairness Standard, adopted by the Founders Assembly on 13 August 2026 as RC/PL/2026/1. The Assembly adopted the Standard by 86.4 per cent voting in favour, with 58 per cent turnout. I invite Etsy to review it and to consider signing the Standard.

Reseated is a global assembly of small-business owners, organized through seven councils. Its work is to identify recurring operational problems reported by members, test whether the evidence establishes a shared pattern, develop a proposed response, consult publicly, and submit the resulting text to an Assembly ballot. Where an adopted standard asks for action by a company, Reseated sends it to the chief executive who can consider adoption. The Standard is voluntary: this letter does not assert that Etsy has violated a law or that every provision applies to every service in every country.

The adopted Standard

The Platform Fairness Standard asks platforms, before taking a specified action affecting a business user, to provide written notice, a specific reason, review by a person, and a time limit on any payout hold. It asks that these protections apply in every country where the platform operates, rather than being available only in selected markets.

The specified actions are account suspension, listing removal, payout hold, and fee change. The Standard addresses the process surrounding those decisions. It does not require a platform to retain an account or listing in every circumstance, prevent it from changing fees, or eliminate legitimate measures to address safety, fraud, legal compliance, or other operational concerns. Its central request is that a business user facing one of these actions can understand what is happening, why it is happening, how to seek review, and how long held funds may remain unavailable.

The Assembly’s adoption followed a documented process. The Platform Council opened its call for evidence in February, reviewed the reports against the five-part pattern test of Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread, and Corroboration, and certified that PL-001 met all five tests in May. A draft was published in May. Public consultation ran from 2 June to 2 July and received 487 comments. The Council revised the draft after considering that consultation; the Assembly then voted on the resulting text. The adopted resolution, rather than any earlier draft, is the text transmitted with this letter.

Evidence across countries

The evidence before the Platform Council was international in reach. As of 20 August, Reseated had 1,366 seated members in 49 countries and had received 4,065 reports from 50 countries across its councils. The Platform Council had 410 members in 48 countries and 1,764 reports from 50 countries. These are reports submitted to Reseated, not a census of all businesses or a measure of the prevalence of a practice across the economy. They are sufficient, however, to describe a recurring problem within the evidence submitted and to test whether members in different places are reporting a recognizably similar sequence of events.

The country figures below provide a geographically distributed view of the Platform Council’s reports. They are selected country counts, not regional totals; the evidence available for this letter does not support a complete count for each world region.

Across the reported situations, 990 were recorded as account suspensions and 774 as funds held. The median amount reported to be at stake was approximately US$4,107. These figures describe the Platform Council’s submitted evidence and should not be read as Etsy-specific figures, platform-wide rates, or verified financial losses. No report or figure in this letter is attributed to Etsy.

The consistent pattern identified by members is procedural. A business may discover that its account, listing, or access to funds has changed, while lacking a clear written explanation, an identified route to human review, or a definite time limit for resolving a payout hold. The consequences can be immediate for a small business that depends on a digital platform to reach customers or to receive money. The individual reports differ in their circumstances; the Standard responds to the common procedural concern, not to a claim that every case has the same cause or outcome.

Members remain anonymous unless they choose a public seat. Their reports are not presented here as allegations against a named company. Reseated’s purpose in transmitting this evidence is to invite a practical response to a pattern that crosses borders and business types, while preserving the limits of what the data can establish.

Relationship to existing legal frameworks

The Standard is designed to be consistent with protections already reflected in relevant legal frameworks, while expressing a single voluntary baseline for member businesses operating across markets. In the European Union, the Platform-to-Business Regulation requires a provider, when restricting or suspending a business user, to provide a statement of reasons. It also requires at least 30 days’ notice before terminating the whole service, subject to the Regulation’s stated exceptions.^[1] The Digital Services Act requires statements of reasons for certain restrictions imposed by providers of intermediary services, including relevant information about the decision and whether automated means were used.^[2]

The Standard’s call for a reasoned notice and meaningful review is compatible with the direction of those EU requirements. It is not a substitute for them, and it does not change the scope, exceptions, or legal tests in either instrument. Nor does this letter imply that every part of the Standard is legally required in every jurisdiction. The adopted text asks for the same basic procedural safeguards across markets as a company commitment, including where applicable law may provide different or narrower protections.

Japan’s Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms is another relevant case of a framework addressing the transparency of specified platforms. Among other matters, the Act requires designated platforms to disclose conditions concerning matters such as withholding payments; the obligations depend on the Act’s scope and designation rules.^[3] Reseated does not assert that Etsy is designated under that Act, or that the Act applies to a particular Etsy service. The reference is included to show that transparent conditions around platform decisions and payment processes are already a subject of regulatory attention in more than one market.

These legal cases reinforce the value of clear reasons and predictable procedures. The Standard goes further as a common commitment by asking a signatory to apply the protections in every country where it operates, to include review by a person, and to set a time limit on payout holds. It therefore offers a practical company-level baseline without suggesting that identical statutory obligations already apply everywhere.

Requests to Etsy

Reseated respectfully asks Etsy to:

1. Review the adopted Platform Fairness Standard, RC/PL/2026/1, and identify the teams responsible for considering its operational requirements.
2. Consider signing the Standard as a voluntary commitment to provide written notice and a specific reason before an account suspension, listing removal, payout hold, or fee change, with review by a person and a time limit on payout holds.
3. Consider applying those protections consistently in every country where Etsy operates platforms used by small businesses, subject to applicable law and clearly explained, narrowly stated exceptions.
4. If Etsy considers a provision unclear or difficult to implement, identify the provision and the operational concern so the Platform Council can understand the issue. A request for clarification or discussion would not be treated as agreement to sign.
5. If Etsy is not prepared to sign, provide any explanation it wishes to share. Reseated will record the response accurately and will not characterize silence, non-signature, or a request for further discussion as an admission or finding of wrongdoing.
6. Allow Reseated to share anonymized and aggregated Platform Council data relevant to the Standard, with no member’s identity or business disclosed without that member’s express permission.

We can provide the adopted text, the consultation record in an appropriate form, and additional anonymized information about the reports and the five-part pattern test. Any data sharing would be limited to material that can be shared without identifying members. We would welcome a discussion with the appropriate Etsy representatives about implementation questions, including how notice, human review, and time limits can be made clear to business users in different markets.

The reserved CEO seat and public record

The Founders Assembly has reserved an Etsy chief executive seat for consideration of the Standard. The seat is a route for the company’s chief executive to adopt the commitment; it is not a claim that a company participates in Reseated merely by receiving a letter. The seat is recorded through neutral stages: Proposed, Letter sent, Delivered, Replied, Signed, and Empty chair. Each stage reflects only an event that has been recorded. In particular, delivery is not treated as a reply, a reply is not treated as a signature, and a seat is not marked Signed unless the company has signed the Standard.

For this transmission, the seat will be recorded as Letter sent when dispatch is recorded and as Delivered when delivery is confirmed. If Etsy sends a reply, Reseated will record that a reply was received. Any reply will be published in full, subject only to appropriate handling of personal information or material that cannot lawfully be published. If Etsy signs, the record will state that the Standard was signed and will identify the date and scope of the commitment. If there is no reply or signature, the seat record will state that neutrally; it will not imply that Etsy has accepted, rejected, or endorsed any allegation.

Signing is a straightforward public act: an authorized representative may return a signed copy of the adopted Standard or provide written confirmation that clearly identifies the Standard and the company commitment. Reseated will confirm receipt and update the seat record. The text to be signed is RC/PL/2026/1. A proposed amendment or a statement of reservations can be discussed, but will not be described as an unqualified signature of the adopted text unless the Assembly has accepted the change through its process.

Reseated understands that a voluntary standard requires careful operational review. The purpose of this letter is not to presume your conclusion, but to put the adopted text and the evidence before you and to invite a clear decision. A consistent, understandable process can help a small business respond to a problem, plan around a temporary restriction, and know when held funds will be released or reviewed. Those safeguards matter across markets because small businesses often have limited capacity to navigate opaque or prolonged platform decisions.

Thank you for considering the Standard. I would be glad to arrange the sharing of anonymized evidence or a discussion with the Platform Council.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Nikic
Advisory Council Chair, Reseated Councils

United States

Sources

1. Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, including Article 4, EUR-Lex: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/1150/oj/eng
2. European Commission, Digital Services Act Transparency Database: questions and answers, including information on statements of reasons under Article 17: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/dsa-transparency-database-questions-and-answers
3. Japan Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms, English translation: https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/4533/en; Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Digital Platforms: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/mono_info_service/information_economy/digital_platforms/index.html