Mercado Libre published its first Transparency Report

On 19 May 2021, Mercado Libre (MELI) published its first Transparency Report. MELI stated that the report’s purpose is “to make our policies and actions transparent to safeguard the security and privacy of over 74 million users in our entire regional ecosystem”.

The Transparency Report consists of three main sections: product security and quality, protection of IP rights, and privacy matters.

Read below some highlights of the report!

Section: Product security and quality

This section contains stats about removed content due to violations of MELI’s Terms and Conditions (T&C), which inter alia, prohibit certain items are sold on the platform (e.g., medicines, counterfeit items and other goods violating IP rights):

• 331,607,978 listings were placed on the 18 MELI's websites as of 31 December 2020.
• 18,570,436 listings were detected and moderated by MELI due to violation of its Listing and Prohibited Items Policies.
• 112,424 listings were reported by users.
• 65,180 listings were removed due to COVID-19 related matters.
• Top 10 product categories regarding removed listings due to violation of MELI’s Listing and Prohibited Items Policies:

Product Category	Removed Listings
Courses	7,036,318
Medicine, health and/or beauty substances and products	1,386,243
E-books	1,337,862
Digital accounts & contents	1,278,420
Adult products	844,061
Personal databases	611,122
Decoders, antennas & signals	433,865
Personal documents	230,757
Tobacco & alike	215,817
Products & financial services	126,428

• Top jurisdictions concerning detected listings due to violation of MELI’s Listing and Prohibited Items Policies:

Jurisdictions	Detected Listings
Brazil	13,283,854
Mexico	2,282,461
Colombia	1,371,060
Argentina	792,168
Chile	609,413
Uruguay	98,915
Peru	96,569
Rest of Latin America	35,996

• In the report is highlighted that MELI uses machine learning technologies to detect infringing listings. In this sense, only 3.12% of the detected listings went back to the platform (reactivated ads).

Section: Protection of IP rights

This section contains stats regarding MELI’s Brand Protection Program (BPP), which “enable IPR holders to report infringing listings [via a Notice & Take Down -N&TD- procedure] in any of the 18 countries where Mercado Libre operates”.

• 2,107,264 N&TDs were submitted.
• 104,661 counter-notices were submitted.
• The number of confirmed and not confirmed N&TDs:

Date	Confirmed N&TD	Not confirmed N&TD
2020-7	580,164	57,589
2020-8	396,225	46,558
2020-9	285,462	48,326
2020-10	333,046	26,757
2020-11	198,232	24,184
2020-12	92,568	23,035

Review the full Transparency Report here in English and here in Spanish.

Read here the interview IPTango held with Juan Cichero (Head of Brand Protection at MELI). Juan conversed about BPP, including the machine learning technologies used to detect infringing listings and the N&TD procedure.

Credit: Image is courtesy of Mercado Libre.