Letter to Jack Dorsey, Chief Executive Officer, Block, transmitting the Platform Fairness Standard

RC/PL/2026/6
Date: 20 August 2026
Kind: Letter
Status: Circulated

Subject: Transmittal of the Platform Fairness Standard and invitation to the reserved CEO seat

Dear Mr Dorsey,

1. I write on behalf of the Platform Council of Reseated to transmit the Platform Fairness Standard, adopted by the Founders Assembly on 13 August 2026 as RC/PL/2026/1. I invite you, as Chief Executive Officer of Block, to consider the Standard and to take the reserved CEO seat for Block in the Platform Council’s CEO-seat process.

2. Reseated is a global assembly of small-business owners, organized in seven councils. Its Founders Assembly was launched on 10 February 2026. The organization is a nonprofit. I serve as its Advisory Council Chair. Our mandate is to identify practices that create recurring, material problems for small businesses; establish whether the evidence shows a pattern; develop proposed standards through public consultation; and ask the people able to adopt those standards to consider them. We do not speak for every business, and we do not presume that a report about a practice establishes the conduct of any particular company.

3. The Platform Council concerns practices affecting the ability of small businesses to operate through digital platforms. Its work is about practices, not an allegation against a single company. Block operates platforms used by small businesses in many countries. That fact makes the Standard relevant for your consideration; it is not a finding about Block’s practices, its compliance, or any particular event.

The Standard

1. The adopted Standard asks platforms to provide four basic safeguards before an account suspension, listing removal, payout hold or fee change: written notice; a specific reason; review by a person; and, for a payout hold, a time limit. It calls for the same protections in every country where a platform operates.

2. The purpose is practical. A business should be able to understand what action is being taken, why it is being taken, how a person can review it, and—when money is withheld—how long the hold may last. The request is not that every decision must favor the business user. It is that a consequential decision should be intelligible, reviewable and bounded by a clear process.

3. The Standard is attached in its adopted form. The Assembly approved it with 86.4 per cent voting yes, on turnout of 58 per cent. It followed a draft, a public consultation and a revised draft. The consultation ran from 2 June to 2 July and received 487 comments. The Assembly’s adoption does not itself impose a legal duty on Block. It is a request for voluntary consideration and adoption.

Evidence and the pattern test

1. Reseated’s process begins with reports from members. Reports are assessed through five tests: volume, frequency, consistency, spread and corroboration. A council may proceed to draft a fix only after the pattern test is met. The draft then goes to public consultation, followed by an Assembly ballot. Where a standard is adopted, the Secretariat writes to the chief executives who can consider adopting it. The stages and the status of each CEO seat are recorded separately.

2. As of 20 August 2026, the Platform Council had 410 members in 48 countries and had received 1,764 reports from 50 countries. The median amount reported as at stake was approximately US$4,107. These are member-reported figures, not independently audited estimates of the incidence of platform decisions across the market. They indicate the scope of the evidence submitted to the Council; they do not establish that every report is accurate or that every case has the same cause.

3. The country-level data show a geographically dispersed set of reports. The following are the highest-reporting countries in the snapshot available on the date of this letter. The regional groupings are used only to organize these listed countries. Subtotals are sums of the listed countries, not totals for their regions.

1. This table is not a complete regional breakdown. It should not be read as showing that the listed countries account for all reports in a region, or as a ranking of regional risk. The underlying snapshot also records reports from other countries. The point relevant to the Standard is narrower: reports were submitted from many countries, and the leading country-level counts are not confined to one national setting.

2. Within the Platform Council’s data, 990 reports were categorized as involving an account suspension and 774 as involving funds held. The Council has treated these as reported situations, not as verified findings against named platforms. The Council’s review found recurring concerns around the absence or insufficiency of notice, explanations, access to human review and clarity about the duration of withheld funds. The pattern test for PL-001 was certified as met on 12 May 2026. The Council’s finding is about the consistency of the reported problem pattern, not about the conduct of Block.

3. The scale of the small-business constituency gives this work wider significance. The United Nations describes micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises as comprising approximately 90 per cent of businesses, 60–70 per cent of employment and about half of GDP worldwide.¹ The International Labour Organization estimates that MSMEs account for around 70 per cent of employment worldwide, and that about 80 per cent operate in the informal economy.² These global estimates do not measure platform-related harms. They help explain why clear, workable procedures for small-business users matter across national markets.

Relationship to existing frameworks

1. The Standard is designed as a consistent baseline, not as a substitute for applicable law. It is aligned with protections already expressed in legal frameworks relevant to platform business users. In the European Union, the Platform-to-Business Regulation requires a statement of reasons in certain cases where a platform restricts or suspends a business user, and requires at least 30 days’ notice before termination of the whole service, subject to the Regulation’s terms and exceptions.³

2. The Digital Services Act requires providers within its scope to give statements of reasons for certain restrictions, including information about whether automated means were used to take the decision.⁴ The Standard’s request for a specific written reason and review by a person is directed at making the process useful to a small business. It does not assert that the DSA requires a human review in every case, nor does it enlarge the scope of either EU instrument.

3. Japan’s Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms requires designated platforms to disclose matters including conditions for withholding payments, as applicable to those platforms and under the Act’s terms.⁵ The relevant designation and statutory requirements are matters for the law and the competent authorities. The Standard’s call for a clear and time-limited payout hold is consistent with the broader aim of making payment conditions understandable, while remaining a voluntary baseline for platforms beyond the Act’s coverage.

4. These references are not a legal opinion on Block, a claim about which provisions apply to any particular Block service, or an assessment of the company’s compliance. The Council has made no such assessment. Our request is that Block consider a single, clear safeguard set across the countries in which its platforms operate, including where local law provides a more limited or different set of protections. The Standard is not intended to reduce any protection required by law.

Requests to Block

1. On behalf of the Platform Council, I respectfully ask you to:

   1. Review the adopted Platform Fairness Standard, RC/PL/2026/1, with the teams responsible for business-user policy, account decisions, listings, payments and fees.

   2. Consider adopting its safeguards: advance written notice before a covered action; a specific reason; access to review by a person; a stated time limit for a payout hold; and consistent application across countries.

   3. Tell the Secretariat whether Block will sign the Standard, decline to sign it, or wishes to discuss a proposed implementation or clarification.

   4. If you do not consider the Standard appropriate as drafted, identify the provision or implementation issue and the reason for your view. A substantive explanation will help the Assembly understand where the proposed baseline needs refinement.

   5. Nominate an appropriate point of contact, if you wish, for a practical discussion with the Platform Council. Such a discussion would not imply endorsement, and the Council would not describe it as an agreement unless both parties expressly agree to that description.

The reserved seat and public record

1. The Platform Council reserves a CEO seat for Block. The seat is offered to you in your capacity as Chief Executive Officer, so that the person with authority to consider adoption can respond directly. The seat is not a membership requirement, a claim that you have accepted the invitation, or a judgment about Block. It does not displace the anonymous participation of small-business members.

2. To sign, you may return a written acceptance of the Standard, signed by you or by an authorized representative acting for Block, and identify the person signing and their role. The Secretariat will confirm receipt and record the seat as “Signed” only once a signed acceptance is received. If you would like to discuss the text before signing, the seat may remain open while that discussion takes place. A request for discussion is not a signature.

3. The seat register uses neutral stages: Proposed, Letter sent, Delivered, Replied, Signed and Empty chair. These labels record process, not motive. As at the date of this letter, the Block seat is reserved and the invitation is being circulated; delivery, reply and signature have not yet been recorded. The status will be updated if and when the relevant step occurs. If no response is received, the record will state that no response has been recorded as of the date of the update. It will not speculate about the reason.

4. Any reply you provide will be published in full by the Secretariat, with the seat record updated to reflect the reply. We will not present a partial excerpt as your position or attribute views to you that are not in the reply. If a response contains personal data or material that cannot lawfully be published, the Secretariat will contact you before publication to discuss the issue; absent a mutually agreed publication version, it will state that a reply was received and explain that the full text is not published. The register will not imply a signature where none has been given.

5. We can share anonymized and aggregated Platform Council data to support your review, including the country-level reporting available to us and the categories used in the pattern review. We will not disclose a member’s identity or name a member’s business. Members are anonymous unless they choose to occupy a public seat. Any data shared for this purpose will be described with its limitations and will not be presented as an audit of Block or of the platform sector as a whole.

6. We would welcome a response by letter or through the Secretariat. We welcome disagreement as well as acceptance. The purpose of this process is to put a clearly framed, evidence-based proposal before the people able to adopt it and to keep an accurate public record of what follows.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. United Nations — Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day
2. International Labour Organization — Micro, small and medium enterprises
3. Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, Article 4
4. European Commission — DSA Transparency Database: questions and answers
5. Japan Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Specified Digital Platforms
6. Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry — Digital Platforms