#algorithmicwagediscrimination — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #algorithmicwagediscrimination, aggregated by home.social.
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·
Pluralistic: "Flexible labor" is a euphemism for "derisking capital" (10 Nov 2025)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/10/zero-sum-zero-hours/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·
Pluralistic: Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine (25 Sep 2025)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·
Pluralistic: Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine (25 Sep 2025)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·
Pluralistic: Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine (25 Sep 2025)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·
Pluralistic: Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine (25 Sep 2025)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/
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@nojhan où j'apprend l'expression « Discrimination Salariale Algorithmique » (#AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination), ça fait froid dans le dos
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CW: Long thread/20
Think of labor law: as #VeenaDubal writes, gig-work companies practice #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, turning your paycheck into a slot machine that pays out more when you are more selective about which jobs you take, and which then docks your pay by tiny increments as you become less discriminating about answering the app's call:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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CW: Long thread/23
Without these constraints, corporate twiddlers can engage in all kinds of ripoffs, like #WageTheft and #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
Twiddling is key to the #DarthVaderMBA ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further"), in which features are confiscated from moment to moment, without warning or recourse:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure
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CW: Long thread/20
The best way to steal from drivers is with #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination. That's when Uber offers occassional, selective drivers higher rates than it gives to drivers who are fully locked to its platform and take every ride the app offers. The less selective a driver becomes, the lower the premium the app offers goes, but if a driver starts refusing rides, the wage offer climbs again.
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CW: Long thread/13
Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means.
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CW: Long thread/4
A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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CW: Long thread/14
* move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:
https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6
On a new, good internet, companies can't practice #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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CW: Long thread/20
Like Lyft, Uber practices #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, #VeenaDubal's term describing the illegal practice of offering workers different payouts for the same work. Uber's algorithm seeks out "pickers" who are choosy about which rides they take, and converts them to "ants" (who take every ride offered) by paying them more for the same job, until they drop all their other gigs, whereupon the algorithm cuts their pay back to the rates paid to ants:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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When we talk about the abuses of #GigWork, there's some obvious targets, like #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, where two workers are paid different rates for the same job, in order to trick occasional gig-workers to give up their other sources of income and become dependent on the app:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork
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#Algorithms #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination #Surveillance #GigEconomy: "What are you seeing on the ground as workers grapple with the uses of artificial intelligence and push for change?
Zephyr Teachout: I think the black box point is really important and it’s a black box at a societal level, at an industry level and at a worker level. The obfuscation is part of the exercise of power itself. When I look at this moment, I see a few different things. One is that there’s some workplaces that have always been totally surveilled, home care workers, if not total, pretty close to total even before this or the capacities for close to total care. But there are really significant moments in the rise of surveillance and really significant changes in the nature of the technology.
Zephyr Teachout: One part of the surveillance workplace is what is being surveyed and the other part is the way in which that surveillance translates into wage differential, differential treatment, different bonuses."
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#GigEconomy #Algorithms #Precarity #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination: "If these workers for gig platform companies were classified as employees rather than independent contractors then they would be able to demand a wage floor, overtime compensation, and the right to organize a union. But given the low minimum wage and statutory carveouts for “waiting time,” Uber and Lyft as employers would still be able to use personalized pay to incentivize and control worker behavior.
Indeed, the core motivations of these companies to use algorithmic wage discrimination—labor control and wage uncertainty—could apply to many other forms of employment. Gig nurses, for example, could be offered different payments than their colleagues for the same work, at the same place, based on what the hiring platform knows about how much these nurses were willing to accept for previous assignments, or what they know about their debt and other financial obligations."
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CW: Long thread/20
All of this sets the stage for a phenomenon called #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, in which two workers doing the same job under the same conditions will see radically different payouts for that work. These payouts are continuously tweaked in the background by an algorithm that tries to predict the minimum sum a worker will accept to remain available *without* payment, to ensure sufficient workers to pick up jobs as they arise.
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