[Guest Post] Mercado Libre’s second Transparency Report

IPTango is pleased to publish a guest post by Francisco Burguete, discussing the second Transparency Report published by Mercado Libre.

Mercado Libre (MELI) published its second Transparency Report, which covers data from January to June 2021 and includes a new section on user information requests (see here IPTango post on MELI’s first Transparency Report).

MELI emphasized that in the second report, “the scope of information available to users, authorities and civil society organizations has been expanded[, and for] the first time, information requests from authorities that are processed in compliance with the law are shared”.

Now, the Transparency Report comprises four main sections: user information requests (section one), product security and quality (section two), protection of IP rights (section three), and privacy matters (section four).

Product security and quality (Section 02)

This section contains information about removed content because of violations of MELI’s Terms and Conditions (T&C), such as offering prohibited items on the platform (e.g., items violating IP rights):

• 267,461,670 listings were placed on MELI’s websites as of 30 June 2021 (compared to 331,607,978 listings in the first report).
• 8,815,828 listings were detected and moderated by MELI due to violation of its Listing and Prohibited Items Policies (compared to 18,570,436 in the previous reporting period).
• 53,173 listings were reported by users (compared to 112,424 in the previous report).
• Top jurisdictions concerning detected listings regarding the violation of MELI’s Listing and Prohibited Items Policies:

Jurisdictions	Detected Listings (1st report, as of 31 December 2020)	Detected Listings (2nd report, as of 30 June 2021)
Brazil	13,283,854	4,013,453
Mexico	2,282,461	2,311,539
Colombia	1,371,060	1,240,494
Argentina	792,168	253,219
Chile	609,413	581,119
Uruguay	98,915	150,475
Peru	96,569	174,077
Rest of Latin America	35,996	91,452

• Only 4.5% of detected listings were reactivated (compared to 3.12% of reactivated ads).

It should be noted that the second report contains the top main content infringing categories broken down per country. Meanwhile, the categories were classified only per product in the first report.

Protection of IP rights (Section 03)

In this section, MELI presents its Brand Protection Program (BPP), which “enable IPR holders to report infringing listings [via a Notice & Take Down -N&TD- procedure]”. MELI emphasized that they have developed “self-mapping tools, based on artificial intelligence, to “learn” from the notices received and proactively remove listings” that infringe IPRs.

• 969,413 N&TDs were submitted (compared to 2,107,264 in the previous reporting period).
• 56,432 counter-notices were submitted (compared to 104,661 in the first report).
• The number of Proactive Detections and Confirmed Complaints:

Date	Proactive Detections	Confirmed Complaints
2021-1	1,322,070	159,409
2021-2	907,771	170,128
2021-3	1,558,342	206,285
2021-4	733,493	132,261
2021-5	760,860	117,082
2021-6	668,668	125,850

The English version of the second Transparency Report can be reviewed here. The Spanish version is available here.

In the past, IPTango interviewed Juan Cichero (Head of Brand Protection at MELI), who conversed about BPP, the N&TD procedure, and more. Read here the interview.

Credit: Image by athree23 from Pixabay.