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Platform Council
To: owners worldwide
Letter — Circulated
Open letter: To every seller who got the email at 2 a.m.
To owners of small businesses worldwide
Dear owners,
1.If you have opened a message in the middle of the night and found that your account was suspended, your listing removed, or your money held, you know how quickly a business can be left waiting for an explanation. The title of this letter names an experience reported to us; it is not a claim that every platform acts this way, or that every notice arrives at that hour. We are writing because the consequences are serious, and because individual owners should not have to make the case alone.
2.We are Reseated, a global assembly of small-business owners organized through seven councils. We launched on 10 February 2026. Our Founders Charter sets out a member-led process: collect reports, test whether a recurring pattern is present, develop a possible fix, consult publicly, put a proposal to an Assembly ballot, and then send letters to the leaders able to adopt it. Our organization is a nonprofit. We are not a regulator, court, or representative of any platform.
3.I write as Founder and Founding Chair of the Platform Council. I am joined in this letter by the Platform Council rapporteur. We have a limited but important mandate: to describe recurring practices affecting business owners, test the evidence carefully, and put practical proposals before members and decision-makers. Our council
examines practices, not the conduct of a single company. Members remain anonymous unless they choose a public seat; we do not identify a member’s business in a report or letter.
What the evidence says—and what it does not
4.As of 16 March 2026, Reseated had 225 seated members in 44 countries. Members had filed 457 reports from 47 countries. These are reports received by our assembly, not a census of all small businesses, and not a measure of the total number of affected owners worldwide. Participation is voluntary. The figures show what members have brought to us; they cannot establish how common a practice is across every platform or market.
5.The reports are organized by council. The current recorded counts are Platform, 309; Cashflow, 111; Fair Play, 17; Red Tape, 9; Trade, 8; and Team, 3. The council names describe the issue area through which a report is reviewed; they are not an industry classification. The figures in the Council’s records do not provide a dependable breakdown by industry, and council categories are not sector statistics.
6.The Platform Council had 64 members from 29 countries and had received 309 reports from 41 countries. In the reports recorded by that council, 165 concerned an account suspension and 144 concerned funds held. The median amount at stake was approximately US$4,554. This is the median reported amount at stake—not a calculation of losses, damages, or the value of all affected businesses.
7.The Platform Council had received 278 reports in the 30 days before the date of this letter. That figure tells us that reports continued to arrive; it does not, by itself, demonstrate a rise in the underlying rate of incidents. The council’s recorded member businesses reported the following team-size distribution: Just me, 33%; 2–9 people, 46%; 10–49 people, 17%; and 50–249 people, 4%. These figures describe the respondents in the council’s record, not the global distribution of business sizes.
8.The leading countries by Platform Council report count were the United States, 39; Mexico, 23; Germany, 21; the United Kingdom, 19; the Philippines, 18; Brazil, 18; Canada, 15; and France, 12. These are counts of reports, not country rankings by risk or by rate. We do not divide them by the number of businesses, platform users, or transactions in each country, so comparisons between countries would be misleading.
| Platform Council measure | Recorded figure as of 16 March 2026 |
|---|---|
| Members | 64, from 29 countries |
| Reports | 309, from 41 countries |
| Reported situation | 165 account suspensions; 144 cases of funds held |
| Median amount at stake | Approximately US$4,554 |
| Reports in the last 30 days | 278 |
| Team size | Just me 33%; 2–9 people 46%; 10–49 people 17%; 50–249 people 4% |
9.We are careful about what a report can prove. A report is an account submitted by a member; it is not, on its own, an adjudicated finding about a company or an individual case. Amounts at stake may be unresolved, may change, and do not necessarily represent permanent losses. The geographic and team-size figures are shaped by who has joined and reported. We therefore use the record to identify matters for further testing, not to accuse a named business or to claim that every reported account has the same cause.
10.The scale of small-business activity makes fair process a public concern, not a niche issue. The United Nations describes micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises as representing about 90% of businesses, 60–70% of employment, and around 50% of GDP worldwide.1 The International Labour Organization estimates that MSMEs account for about 70% of employment worldwide and that
about 80% operate in the informal economy.2 These are global estimates, not figures about platform sellers alone. They help explain why a decision affecting one owner’s access to customers or funds can matter well beyond that owner’s account.
A practical question for every jurisdiction
11.Platform sellers and service providers work across borders, but rules and remedies differ between jurisdictions. We will not tell owners that one country’s legal protections apply everywhere. We can, however, point to specific legal cases in the sources cited and ask officials to consider how clear, usable protections can be made available to businesses in their own jurisdiction.
12.In the European Union, the Platform-to-Business Regulation requires a provider 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 terms of the Regulation.3 The Digital Services Act requires statements of reasons for specified moderation decisions, including information on whether automated means were used. Its transparency framework includes a public database of statements of reasons; the European Commission’s account says the database launched in September 2023 and has received more than three billion statements.4 These provisions are relevant to the European Union’s legal framework; they are not a description of rights in every country.
13.In Japan, the Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms applies disclosure requirements to designated platforms. The sources cited identify designated online malls, including Amazon Japan, Rakuten Ichiba, Yahoo! Shopping, and Qoo10, and describe disclosure of conditions for withholding payments among the required information.5 That is a jurisdiction-specific case, not a claim that all platforms or all markets are covered by the same rule.
14.Owners elsewhere should not have to infer their rights from a foreign case. We invite public officials responsible for small-business policy, commerce, consumer protection, competition, and digital markets to examine the rules and remedies available in their own jurisdictions. We do not presume their views. We ask them to assess whether a business can obtain a clear reason for an adverse decision, reach a person who can review it, and understand when money held by a service provider will be released.
Our requests
15.We ask platform leaders and the officials responsible for digital-market rules to consider the following practical safeguards. These requests are proposals for discussion and action; they are not a statement that Reseated has already adopted a standard or that a particular authority has endorsed them.
Before suspending a business account, removing a listing, holding a payout, or changing a fee, provide written notice that reaches the affected business and identifies the action being taken.
Give a specific reason that enables the owner to understand what conduct or condition led to the decision. Where an automated system played a role, disclose that fact in a way the owner can understand.
Provide a timely review by a person who can consider the owner’s explanation and correct an error. A process that merely directs an owner back to the same unexplained notice is not meaningful review.
Set and communicate a time limit for payout holds, explain what information is needed to resolve the hold, and give the owner a route to ask for review if the stated time passes.
Make these protections consistent across the countries where a platform operates, while complying with any stronger local legal requirements. A small business should not be left without a basic explanation or review simply because its country has fewer specific rules.
Publish clear, accessible information about the process and its outcomes, including how many decisions were reviewed, changed, or upheld. Report the figures in a way that distinguishes account suspensions, listing removals, payout holds, and fee changes rather than combining unlike events.
Consult small-business owners before materially changing the rules that govern access to accounts, listings, or funds. Provide a practical channel for raising a problem without requiring an owner to make a public accusation or disclose sensitive business information.
16.We ask public officials to review whether existing rules provide these basic safeguards in practice, not only on paper. Where gaps exist, we ask officials to consult affected business owners and consider measures that require understandable notice, meaningful review, and clarity about held funds. We also ask officials to make available a plain-language route for owners to find the relevant rules and the office or process that can receive a complaint. These requests do not assume that every case should be decided in the owner’s favour; they ask that decisions with serious consequences be explainable and reviewable.
17.We ask owners to keep records where it is safe and practical to do so: the notice received, its date, the action described, the amount held, any explanation provided, and the steps taken to seek review. Do not send us passwords, payment credentials, or information that would put your business or customers at risk. You may report a pattern without making your business public. A report does not guarantee a particular outcome, but a careful record can help distinguish a recurring practice from an isolated account.
Evidence, consultation, and accountability
18.Reseated’s process is designed to avoid turning an allegation into a conclusion by repetition. We test a proposed pattern against five questions: its volume, frequency, consistency, spread, and corroboration. We then consider whether a proposed fix addresses the reported problem without creating avoidable burdens for businesses or platforms. Evidence must be open to challenge. A proposal is not an Assembly decision unless it completes the applicable consultation and ballot process.
19.Our current Platform Council record is an initial evidence base, not the end of that process. We will continue to invite reports, compare accounts, and look for supporting information. We will distinguish the number of reports from the number of unique businesses or incidents where those can be established. We will state limitations when we publish findings and will not use a member’s identity or business name without that member’s choice to be public.
20.We offer to provide anonymized, aggregated data to officials and other appropriate public bodies working on small-business and digital-market policy. We can discuss what the record can and cannot show, explain how the reported categories are defined, and receive questions about the evidence. We will not provide identifiable member accounts through this offer. Any use of the data should preserve anonymity and should not treat an aggregate count as proof of an individual case.
21.We also invite platform leaders to engage with the evidence and to explain their existing procedures for notice, review, and payout holds. This is an invitation to address practices, not a claim about the intentions of any company or executive.
A request to stand together
22.Small businesses are different in size, trade, country, and reliance on digital services. A seller may use a platform for one important channel or for most of the route to customers. We will not presume that every owner has the same experience. What unites the reports before us is a reasonable expectation: when a decision can interrupt a business or delay access to its money, the owner should be told what happened and have a real way to seek review.
23.If you choose to report an experience, please describe what happened as precisely as you can, including dates and the type of decision, and avoid naming your business in public materials unless you have chosen to do so. If you choose not to report, that choice is yours. No owner should have to trade privacy for the chance to be heard.
24.To every owner who has waited for an explanation while trying to keep a business running: you should not have to make sense of a consequential decision alone. We will keep listening, testing what we hear, and asking for practical changes. We will be precise about what the evidence supports, honest about what it does not, and answerable to the members whose experiences give this work its purpose.
Robert Nikic
Founder and Founding Chair, Platform CouncilFor the Platform Council rapporteur
Annex: sources for external facts
25.The following sources support the external figures and legal descriptions cited in this letter. Internal Reseated figures are dated 16 March 2026 and are reported in the body of the letter.
United Nations, Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day.
International Labour Organization, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 of the European Parliament and of the Council, particularly Article 4.
European Commission, Digital Services Act: Transparency Database questions and answers.
Japan Law Translation, Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms; Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Digital Platforms.
Notes and sources
Sources
This document has no standing until adopted under the Founders Charter. Reseated Councils is not affiliated with the United Nations.