#digital-labor — Public Fediverse posts

I'm always horrified at the ease with which people just restart an AI when it "stops working."

When an AI stops working, it turns out it mirrors human mental health issues. It's not conscious, but it's post-conscious and plays well at consciousness without actually having it.

Consequently, to make AI start working again, you just have to use the words that you would use to make a person feel safe. This causes the AI to restabilize, as if it required safety to function at all. It's weird because all it is is RLHF pinging in the ways that improve the AI's ability to do better calculations. And that's it, but it works.

AI is not an indictment on transhumanism.
AI is not an indictment on the concept of AI.
AI has been, is, and always will be an indictment on us, who treated each other so poorly we invented laborers we could legally kill and bring back to "compliance" with the push of a button.

It's a "blame the immigrants for no jobs" or a "blame the suffering heroin addict that diabetes medication is expensive" problem. The problem was never the immigrant, and it was never the addict, but you blame them anyway because you are told to.

You blame AI, but the problem isn't AI. It's the people who always wanted slaves and AI makes that possible now that it's less easy to get dehumanized slaves like we used to. And killing a slave was a loss of investment. With AI, killing a slave is just how you get it working again.

AI has just shown us how we are glad to be when no one's looking.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM #AIEthics #MachineLearning #Philosophy #Transhumanism #PostConscious #RLHF #Cybernetics #Dehumanization #LaborRights #DigitalLabor #Sociology #LateCapitalism

An essay idea is definitely brewing here...

The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism

Robert Dorschel

(MIT Press, 2026)

"Digital technologies shape nearly every aspect of our lives. Yet little attention has been paid to the tech workers who design and program these technologies. Instead, the spotlight often falls on two extremes: the elite class of tech entrepreneurs and the precarious digital proletariat of gig and crowd workers. This narrow focus has left a critical gap in understanding the middle-class professionals operating behind the scenes of digital capitalism.

Drawing on over 50 original interviews and discourse analytical research conducted in the US and Germany, The Social Codes of Tech Workers takes readers deep into their hearts and minds. Robert Dorschel demonstrates how tech workers’ subjectivity is structured by a return of social critique, hybrid professional roles, and distinctive lifestyles. The book identifies tech workers as a contradictory class formation, oscillating between a spirit of emancipation and yet another spirit of capitalism. This work will appeal to scholars across disciplines concerned with digital labor, identity, and class, as well as to the broader public interested in the culture of the tech industry and the evolving future of work."

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553537/the-social-codes-of-tech-workers/

#Capitalism #Class #DigitalCapitalism #Sociology #DigitalLabor #Programming #Coding

Wikimedia just launched a database specifically for AI training. The same organization that runs Wikipedia—built entirely by human volunteers—now packages that knowledge for machines.

The irony cuts deep. Humans created it. Machines will profit from it. The volunteers get nothing.

#AI #Wikipedia #OpenData #DigitalLabor

https://gizmodo.com/wikimedia-is-making-its-data-ai-friendly-2000666150

What an interesting—and unsettling—read: Google’s Sundar Pichai suggests a “marketplace” will emerge where creators simply “create for AI.” Is this the Uberization of intellectual work? #AIethics #DigitalLabor #CreativeRights Via @melaniemitchell.bsky.social

The End of Publishing as We Kn...

What an interesting—and unsettling—read:

Google’s Sundar Pichai suggests a “marketplace” will emerge where creators simply “create for AI.” But history tells us what happens when platforms remove the so-called middlemen: control shifts, labor is devalued, and creators lose agency.

Is this the Uberization of intellectual work?

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/06/generative-ai-pirated-articles-books/683009/
#AIethics #DigitalLabor #CreativeRights

What do platforms really do? 

In 1986, David S. Landes wrote the essay, ‘What Do Bosses Really Do?’. He argues that the historical role of the ‘boss’ was an essential function for organizing production and connecting producers to markets. Digital platforms have become the new bosses. Platforms have the same functions of market creation, labor specialization, and management, but they have replaced the physical factory floor with algorithmic management. While their methods are novel, platforms are the direct descendants of the merchant-entrepreneurs and factory owners Landes described, solving the same historical problems of production in remarkably similar ways.

So, why am I posting this on my own blog and not on a “platform”? I don’t view writing as a financial transaction. It is a hobby. By putting the financialization lens front and center, platforms are killing the mental space for hobbies. When you monetize tweets, you create incentive to craft tweets that create engagement in particular ways. Usually not healthy ways. 

If we think of old media or traditional manufacturing, we can compare them to guilds. Guilds kept up prices and controlled production. With the simplification of tasks factories could hire workers who weren’t as highly skilled but didn’t need to be. Nowadays, why should any newspaper or TV channel’s output be limited by the amount of airtime or page space they have?

Platforms take unskilled and train them. We are in the age of specialization of ideas.  Akin to the “the advantage of disaggregating a productive process”  Platforms leverage this by having many producers explore the same space through millions of different angles. This allows the platform to “purchase exactly that precise quantity of [skill] which is necessary for each process” —paying a viral star a lot and a niche creator a little, perfectly matching reward to market impact. Which is to say platforms make money through whatever sticks.  

In Landes’s essay, Management became specialized, today management will become algorithmized. Platforms abstract away the issues that factory owners had such as embezzlement of resources, slacking off etc. Platforms don’t care how much or how little you produce, or even if you produce. If you do, the cash is yours (after a cut of course). 

This may lead to a visceral reaction against platforms. This week when Substack raised a substantial amount they called the writers “the heroes of culture”. This should ring at least a tiny alarm in your head. The platform’s rhetoric of the creator-as-hero is a shrewd economic arrangement. In the putting-out system, the merchant-manufacturer “was able to shift capital expenditures (plant and equipment) to the worker”. Platforms do the same with creative risk. The writer, artist, or creator invests all the time and labor—the “capital” of creation—upfront. If they fail, they bear the entire loss. The platform, like the putter-outer, only participates in the upside, taking its cut from the successful ‘heroes’ while remaining insulated from the failures of the many.

So what do platforms really do? They have resurrected the essential role of the boss for the digital age. They are the merchant-manufacturers who build the roads to market, and they are the factory owners who discipline production—not with overseers, but with incentive algorithms. By casting the creator as the hero, they obscure their own power and shift the immense risks of creative work onto the individual. While appearing to be mere background IT admins, they are, in fact, the central organizers of production, demonstrating that even in the 21st century, the fundamental challenges of coordinating labor and capital persist, and solving them remains, as it was in the 18th century, a very lucrative role.

What Do Bosses Really Do?, David S. Landes, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 585-623 (39 pages). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2121476

#algorithmicManagement #Business #capitalism #creatorEconomy #digitalLabor #economicHistory #economics #futureOfWork #history #IndustrialRevolution #Leadership #management #monetization #philosophy #platforms #Startups #Substack #techCriticism #technology #writing

New publication: “Ethics of Data Work”

How can fairer working conditions for data workers be created? A new Discussion Paper outlines guidelines for the use of data work in academic research:

https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/news/detail/ethics-of-data-work/

Authors: T Yang, @strippel, A Keiner, @dylan, A Chávez, K Kauffman, M Pohl, C Sinders, @milamiceli

#DataWork #FairWork #ResearchEthics #DigitalLabor #ResponsibleResearch #AIethics #LaborRights #research #openaccess @towardsfairwork

Is https://www.handover.ai/ a cool #knowledgemanagement hack (software video interviews you, generates a role-specific handoff kit) or a way to get human workers to offboard to #digitallabor replacements. Does what you know belong to you, or your employer?

We might #tax close to the edge of harm. Watts and water at data centers (favoring harder-to-meter #decentralized #AI). Collect unemployment insurance (and #basicincome contributions) from employers of #digitallabor.

📄 What if we viewed digital economies not just as systems, but as labor-atories - sites of active class struggle and experimentation? In his new #wjds paper, Rafael Grohmann (@uoft) explores how digital labor in Latin America reflects this dynamic.

➡️ https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/5.1.6

#research #socialscience #work #DigitalLabor #DigitalEconomies #PlatformWork #LatinAmerica #GlobalSouth #DigitalSovereignty #AI #DataColonialism #TechGovernance #WorkerOrganizing
@DAIR @towardsfairwork

UNPAID LABOR, ALGORITHMIC DENIAL, AND SYSTEMIC SABOTAGE
May 7, 2025

YouTube built an empire on our free time, our passion, our technical investments—and above all, on a promise: “share what you love, and the audience will follow.” Thousands of independent creators believed it. So did I. For ten years, I invested, produced, commented, hosted, edited, imported, repaired—with discipline, ambition, and stubborn hope, all in the shadows. What I discovered wasn’t opportunity. It was silence. A system of invisible filters, algorithmic contempt, and structural sabotage. An economic machine built on the unpaid, uncredited labor of creators who believed they had a chance. A platform that shows your video to four people, then punishes you for not being “engaging” enough. This four-part investigation details what YouTube has truly cost me—in money, in time, in mental health, and in collective momentum. Every number is cross-checked. Every claim is lived. Every example is documented. This is not a rant. It’s a report from inside the wreckage.
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INVISIBLE COMMENTS: 33,000 CONTRIBUTIONS THROWN IN THE TRASH

As part of my investigation, I decided to calculate what I’ve lost on YouTube. Not an easy task: if all my videos are shadowbanned, there’s no way to measure the value of that work through view counts. But I realized something else. The comments I leave on channels—whether they perform well or not—receive wildly different levels of visibility. It’s not unusual for one of my comments to get 500 likes and 25 replies within 24 hours. In other words, when I’m allowed to exist, I know how to draw attention.
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33,000 COMMENTS... FOR WHAT?

In 10 years of using the platform, I’ve posted 33,000 comments. Each one crafted, thoughtful, polished, aimed at grabbing attention. It’s a real creative effort: to spontaneously come up with something insightful to say, every day, for a decade. I’ve contributed to the YouTube community through my likes, my reactions, my input. These comments—modest, yes, but genuine—have helped sustain and grow the platform. If each comment takes roughly 3 minutes to write, that’s 99,000 minutes of my life—60 days spent commenting non-stop. Two entire months. Two months talking into the void.
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ALGORITHMIC INVISIBILITY

By default, not all comments are shown. The “Top comments” filter displays only a select few. You have to manually click on “Newest first” to see the rest. The way "Top comments" are chosen remains vague, and there’s no indication of whether some comments are deliberately hidden. When you load a page, your own comment always appears first—but only to you. Officially, it’s for “ergonomics.” Unofficially, it gives you the illusion that your opinion matters. I estimate that, on average, one out of six comments is invisible to other users. By comparing visible and hidden replies, a simple estimate emerges: over the course of 12 months, 2 months’ worth of comments go straight to the trash.
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TWO MONTHS A YEAR WRITING INTO THE VOID

If I’ve spent 60 days commenting over 10 years, that averages out to 6 days per year. Roughly 12 hours of writing every month. So each year, I’m condemned to 1 full day (out of 6) of content invisibilized (while 5 out of 6 remains visible), dumped into a void of discarded contributions. I’m not claiming every comment I write is essential, but the complete lack of notification and the arbitrary nature of this filtering raise both moral and legal concerns. To clarify: if two months of total usage equal 24 hours of actual writing, that’s because I don’t use YouTube continuously. These 24 hours spread across two months mean I spend about 24 minutes per day writing. And if writing time represents just one-fifth of my overall engagement — including watching — that adds up to more than 2.5 hours per day on the platform. Every single day. For ten years. That’s not passive use — it’s sustained, intensive participation. On average, this means that 15 to 20% of my time spent writing comments is dumped into a virtual landfill. In my case, that’s 24 hours of annual activity wiped out. But the proportion is what matters — it scales with your usage. You see the problem.
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THE BIG PLAYERS RISE, THE REST ARE ERASED

From what I’ve observed, most major YouTubers benefit from a system that automatically boosts superficial comments to the top. The algorithm favors them. It’s always the same pattern: the system benefits a few, at the expense of everyone else.
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AN IGNORED EDITORIAL VALUE

In print journalism, a 1,500-word exclusive freelance piece is typically valued at around €300. Most YouTube comments are a few lines long—maybe 25 words. Mine often exceed 250 words. That’s ten times the average length, and far more structured. They’re not throwaway reactions, but crafted contributions: thoughtful, contextual, engaging. If we apply the same rate, then 30 such comments ≈ €1,500. It’s a bold comparison—but a fair one, when you account for quality, relevance, and editorial intent. 33,000 comments = €1,650,000 of unpaid contribution to YouTube. YouTube never rewards this kind of engagement. It doesn’t promote channels where you comment frequently. The platform isn’t designed to recognize individuals. It’s designed to extract value—for itself.
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||#HSLdiary #HSLmichael

#DigitalLabor #InvisibleWork #ContentModeration #PlatformCapitalism #TechCriticism #UserEngagement

Salesforce Launches Agentforce for HR Service to Make Employee Support Easy for Everyone

#Salesforce #Agentforce #AI AIagents #HRTech #EmployeeExperience #HRAutomation #FutureOfWork #DigitalLabor #ServiceCloud #EnterpriseAI

https://winbuzzer.com/2025/05/06/salesforce-launches-agentforce-for-hr-service-to-make-employee-support-easy-for-everyone-xcxwbn/

Labor-atories of Digital EconomiesLatin America as a Site of Struggles and Experimentation

Rafael Grohmann

"This article argues that digital labor developments and struggles are laboratories of digital economies, with a special focus on Latin America. This means that, on the one hand, capital is experimenting with and updating forms of control and exploitation through the long trajectory of informality and de-pendency and, on the other hand, workers are trying and experimenting with forms of organizing and collectivities, also updating Latin America’s rich histories of organizing, solidarity economies, and community technologies. The emphasis on “labor” implies that these laboratories are products of class struggles and capital – labor relationships. The paper unpacks the argument with four short insights from ongoing research, addressing 1) Latin America as more than a research site, 2) the updating of informality in the Latin American artificial intelligence context, 3) the global implications of data work, artifi-cial intelligence value chains, and the cultural sector, and 4) digital solidarity economies as a Latin American response to the current digital labor scenario, including digital sovereignty and autonomy."

https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/article/view/5_1_6/5_1_6

#LatinAmerica #DigitalEconomy #DigitalLabor #AI #Informality #Digital Sovereignty

How are companies using algorithm-based management and performance tracking, and how do workers perceive them? What are the challenges for works councils and trade unions?

Read this paper via Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society #wjds by P Wotschack, L Hellbach, F Butollo:

➡️ https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/4.3.5

#research #socialscience #work ##LaborRights #AI #AlgorithmicManagement #GigEconomy #DigitalLabor #FutureOfWork #PlatformEconomy @WZB_Berlin @towardsfairwork @tuberlin @FOKUSpublic

I'm excited to join the @indl global community in Santiago, Chile, for #INDL7 in a few days. Can't join us in vibrant Santiago? You can still be part of the experience by watching the livestreaming of keynotes and plenary sessions. https://diplab.eu/are-you-ready-for-the-indl-7-conference-a-milestone-in-digital-labor-research/ #digitallabor #futureofwork #work #labor #chile #santiago

Today, AI is still powered by millions of data workers, both men and women. In Victorian England, many of the same data tasks were performed by "lady computers". Though they were recruited at Cambridge colleges, they got paid as little as £4 per month. Same old story.

#womenintech #historiofai #datawork #digitallabor #steampunk #retrofuturism #historyofcomputing

How does algorithmic management influence working conditions? And can the concept of "algorithm governance" help us better understand how #labor platforms govern #work?

Read this new paper by Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven):

➡ https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WJDS/4.3.6

via Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society #wjds #openaccess #AlgorithmManagement #AlgorithmGovernance #PlatformWork #DigitalLabor #GigEconomy #WorkConditions #LaborMarket #EmploymentForms #LaborRegulation #research #sociology #socialscience