How We Evaluate User Reports and Enforce Policies
Whatnot connects buyers and sellers in real-time across over 100 categories — from collectibles like trading cards to comics, fashion, sneakers, and more. As a peer-to-peer marketplace founded by collectors, we understand the importance of creating a trusted and friendly space for people to share their passions and connect with one another. We’re dedicated to safety at each stage of the buying and selling experience, from seller verification and training to our unmatched buyer protection for deliveries. We want buyers to shop confidently knowing in the rare circumstances where something goes wrong with their purchase, they’re covered.
The Whatnot Trust & Safety team plays a critical role in identifying issues and enforcing policies to help keep our community safe. Today, we’ll dig a bit deeper into how we evaluate, investigate, and take action on cases involving fraud, behavioral or logistical issues.
It takes a village
Whatnot Trust & Safety is made up of seven functions: investigations, analytics, policy, fraud, authentication, engineering, and product. These teams work together to thoroughly investigate every issue — both through user reports and our own monitoring tools — and gather the necessary information from buyers and sellers to resolve the issue, as fraud can occur on either side. We work to get a resolution as quickly as possible while being fair to parties involved in our investigations. In some severe cases, to limit the risk of additional harm, we may temporarily remove access to Whatnot features, including the ability to go live, while we conduct the investigations.
The actions we take are based on the severity of the issue and the intention behind it, and we use clear guidelines to enforce based on the evidence we gather and the user’s history.
Outside of our own AI tooling and in-house moderation teams, many issues are brought to our attention through user reports that are submitted during a livestream, through the profile page, or from the direct message box to our support team. We encourage all our users to flag issues, as we evaluate every valid report that comes our way.
As soon as an investigation is closed, we let the reporter know. We’re continuing to invest in bringing more transparency around investigations with users who file reports — more to come there!
The types of issues our teams monitor and investigate fall into two main categories: Behavioral issues (like harassment, violent or explicit content), and Logistics issues (like delayed shipping, wrong or missing items).
Tackling bad behavior
Behavioral issues happen before a purchase and can come from a buyer or seller. Examples include harassment, threats of harm, and disruptive behavior in auctions. These reports are automatically prioritized based on severity and type of reporter, and we have response time goals for different violation types. After validating the issue by reviewing the chat log or the livestream recording, we take the appropriate action, ranging from a warning to suspension or ban.
Here’s an example of how we resolved a behavioral issue:
In one instance, 70 in-app user reports came in simultaneously about a seller verbally expressing hate against other users during a livestream. Whatnot’s data orchestration tool noticed a sudden spike in reports and triggered an alert for our investigation team to review immediately.
Per Whatnot’s guidelines, the user’s livestream access was revoked for the duration of the investigation to prevent further impact. The Investigation team then reviewed related footage and collected evidence that proved foul play. Given the seller’s history and prior warning, the seller was suspended and their platform benefits such as Early Payout function, were taken away.
Solving logistics issues
Logistics issues can happen after a purchase and usually come from sellers or one of our shipping partners. Examples include shipping delays, missing or wrong items, and counterfeit products. We use data analysis to identify most logistics issues and evaluate a seller’s overall track record to determine action. Action could include a warning, suspension, or ban.
Here’s an example of how we resolved a logistics issue:
Whatnot’s Rules Engine continuously monitors sellers’ fulfillment activities — ranging from cancellations, and refunds to shipping label creation, drop off, and more. In one instance, a new seller was flagged to have missed their shipping timeline for some of their orders in the last 30 days.
The seller’s live access was temporarily revoked to limit further impact on buyers. They were required to take an online quiz that educates sellers on Whatnot’s shipping and fulfillment guidelines. Only after the seller passed the quiz successfully was their suspension lifted, and future instances of shipping delays were successfully prevented.
What happens after a user is actioned?
A user could be actioned in any of the following ways:
Warning: We reach out and educate the user that they violated one of our policies or their logistics issue rate is over threshold
Losing Early Payout: The seller privilege of early payout (payout after the label is printed, not after a package is marked delivered) is suspended for up to 30 days
Increased commission: Seller commission is increased for up to 30 days
Suspension: Seller or buyer loses access to the platform for up to 30 days
Ban: Seller or buyer is permanently banned from Whatnot. Accounts that are permanently banned have a note showing that they have been removed for violating the Whatnot Community Guidelines.
We notify users about the action taken, and sellers can also track their own logistics stats and issue rates on their dashboard to see where they can improve. Users can appeal by responding to the email with an explanation, and if a user is actioned for a behavioral issue, they cannot adjust their sentence, but a seller can reduce their sentence with remedial steps like taking a shipping policy quiz.
To learn more about the types of issues we consider violations, and what types of enforcement to expect from the Trust & Safety team, please visit the Whatnot Help Center (specifically the community guidelines, shipping FAQs, and missing hit card policy).
We’ll continue to share updates on how we keep the Whatnot community safe. And as always, we’d love to hear from you about what you’re interested in learning from the Trust & Safety team at Whatnot. Please reach out to us at trustblog@whatnot.com with any topics you’d like to hear from us next!
Related articles
