How digital platforms use underpaid microworkers

Tech­no­lo­gy is not going to era­di­cate work for humans. Quite the oppo­site, in fact – there is a strong risk that it will “pro­le­ta­ria­nise” it, by making that work invi­sible and limi­ting it to small, repe­ti­tive, under­qua­li­fied tasks. This is the argu­ment put for­ward by digi­tal socio­lo­gy resear­cher Anto­nio Casilli.

Who are France’s microworkers ?

They are wor­kers who log on from home to plat­forms like Amazon’s Mecha­ni­cal Turk to com­plete so-cal­led “human intel­li­gence” tasks paid on a per job basis. They never know who they are wor­king for, or to what end, because most of the time com­pa­nies publish their jobs ano­ny­mous­ly. The tasks, which are often used to sup­ple­ment arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, are repe­ti­tive and require few qua­li­fi­ca­tions – circle toma­toes in a pho­to to assist nutri­tion appli­ca­tions, trans­cribe receipts, cali­brate vir­tual assis­tants by asses­sing the qua­li­ty of speech syn­the­sis, copy and paste, say words aloud, indi­cate the colour of a cha­rac­ter, and so on – all for a few cents.

Accor­ding to the “Micro­work in France” stu­dy that I conduc­ted with my research group DiPLab (short for Digi­tal Plat­form Labour), there were approxi­ma­te­ly 260,000 people micro­wor­king at least occa­sio­nal­ly in France in 2019¹. The majo­ri­ty are women (56%) who are 25–44 years old (63%), and near­ly half of people sur­veyed said they resort to this kind of work out of finan­cial need. Hence, micro­work is often a source of extra income, even though the ave­rage month­ly pay was only €21. Even more sur­pri­sin­gly, these “cli­ck­wor­kers” have more qua­li­fi­ca­tions than the ave­rage French per­son – 43.5% have done mini­mum two years of post-secon­da­ry stu­dies. Yet, des­pite their signi­fi­cant num­bers, these wor­kers remain com­ple­te­ly invisible.

Why are they more invi­sible than other wor­kers in the digi­tal space, like food deli­ve­ry or ride­share drivers ?

First­ly, it’s because of the very nature of their job. In rea­li­ty, micro­work is just remote wor­king pushed to the extreme. It’s a remote acti­vi­ty, but for bosses and with col­leagues who are often com­ple­te­ly ano­ny­mous. On the other hand, Uber and Deli­ve­roo dri­vers have been see­king out col­lec­tive solu­tions and for­ming unions to make their voices heard. This is even more the case since they are vast­ly more visible than before when they roam the deser­ted streets of cities under Covid lock­down. But, unlike these wor­kers, micro­wor­kers have zero pre­sence in the public sphere. And the super-strict confi­den­tia­li­ty agree­ments that they may have to sign make it har­der for them to seek recog­ni­tion for their work.

More and more coun­tries, such as Spain, the UK and France, are requi­ring plat­forms (par­ti­cu­lar­ly Uber) to reco­gnise the employ­ment sta­tus of their wor­kers. Yet the many hands that train our AI in the form of micro­work are still igno­red. I think efforts to regu­late the indus­try come in large part from wor­kers’ visi­bi­li­ty, and from the phy­si­cal proxi­mi­ty bet­ween deli­ve­rers and clients. It’s quite a para­dox, as there are signi­fi­cant­ly more micro­wor­kers, both in France and inter­na­tio­nal­ly, at least accor­ding to our esti­mates and those of our col­leagues at Oxford Inter­net Ins­ti­tute². 

What we do know is that phy­si­cal effort is not the only way that deli­ve­rers pro­duce value. They, too, per­form invi­sible tasks, pro­du­cing data for the plat­form and the­re­by fee­ding the algo­rithms and AI that serve in part to improve algo­rith­mic solu­tions. This data must then be pro­ces­sed and, contra­ry to what you might think, it can­not be pro­ces­sed without the sup­port of a large human work­force – which does not need to be loca­ted in the coun­try of pro­duc­tion. While France has 260,000 micro­wor­kers, these plat­forms have more than 100 mil­lion people signed up inter­na­tio­nal­ly. The vast majo­ri­ty of these “crowd­wor­kers” are found in deve­lo­ping coun­tries, in Indian, Sou­theast Asian, Afri­can and Latin Ame­ri­can “click farms”. 

This huge level of out­sour­cing is rede­fi­ning the geo­gra­phy of the future, but it also influences the recog­ni­tion of this work. There are pure­ly poli­ti­cal stakes with regards to the issue of the invi­si­bi­li­ty – not only are these wor­kers not visible in the public sphere, but the overw­hel­ming majo­ri­ty also can­not vote in their (deve­lo­ped) coun­try of resi­dence, unlike deli­ve­ry and ride­share dri­vers. Conse­quent­ly, their recog­ni­tion is not a poli­ti­cal priority.

Are you in favour of a “digi­tal social income”?

The auto­ma­tion and “plat­for­mi­sa­tion” of the eco­no­my is cau­sing human work to explode, not die out ! We are all micro­wor­kers in our own way – when you com­plete a CAPTCHA or add a hash­tag on Ins­ta­gram, you’re hel­ping to train a com­pu­ter vision sys­tem or pro­vi­ding a cate­go­ry for your post, ins­tead of the plat­form doing it.

This is why there has been dis­cus­sion in France since 2012 about the fis­cal recog­ni­tion of this “free work” done by app users³. Of course, it’s not the users who should pay these taxes, but the com­pa­nies that own the plat­forms. Some 93% of French people use Google, and the com­pa­ny should pay taxes in pro­por­tion to the amount of data pro­du­ced by French citi­zens. This fis­cal reve­nue could then be used to fund redis­tri­bu­tion poli­cies, inclu­ding a “digi­tal social income”.

The aim of this income would be to divide up the value gene­ra­ted by cli­ck­wor­kers, micro­wor­kers and ordi­na­ry users, in an uncon­di­tio­nal way with all social ser­vices consi­de­red equal. The aim is not to com­pen­sate people indi­vi­dual­ly accor­ding to the amount of time spent on plat­forms. The conse­quences of that would be disas­trous, with super­po­wer plat­forms paying pea­nuts for our clicks while we slave away over micro­jobs ! The aim is sim­ply to redis­tri­bute the value pro­du­ced, which until now has been hoar­ded by plat­forms, to prevent the “pro­le­ta­ri­sa­tion” of human work.

Interview by Juliette Parmentier