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#digitallabor

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Weizenbaum-Institut

📄 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.

➡️ doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/5.1.6

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

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Michaël | HouseStationLive.com

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
Miguel Afonso Caetano

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."

ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/ind

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

ojs.weizenbaum-institut.deView of Labor-atories of Digital Economies
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Weizenbaum-Institut

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:

➡️ doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/4.3.5

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

Casilli :mastodon:

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
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Weizenbaum-Institut

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):

➡ 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

Casilli :mastodon:

We are pleased to announce that DiPLab’s Aishik Saha (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), has just published a remarkable article in the journal TripleC – Communication, Capitalism & Critique, entitled “Theorising Digital Dispossession: An Enquiry into the Datafication of Accumulation by Dispossession”. Here it is in #openaccess: triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/ #colonialism #dispossession #platforms #digitallabor #foodtech #disinformation

Casilli :mastodon:

🚨Did you register for our #DiPLab webinar "Collective Mobilization & Digital Labor between South America and Europe"? Ft. Laura Gontijo, Jonas Valente, Baptiste Delmas, Matheus Viana Bras, Ludmila Abilio. Today at 9AM Brasil/12PM UK/1PM Central European Time. diplab.eu/webinar-collective-m #webinar #platforms #labor #digitallabor #workersrights #europe #latinamerica

Continued thread
Casilli :mastodon:

🇫🇷Feb 29, 2024 Paris - I'll be delivering the ENS Paris Saclay's talk titled "D'où vient l'IA? Economie politique d'une technologie globale" (Where does AI come from? Political economy of a global technology). ens-paris-saclay.fr/agenda/con #globalization #ai #digitallabor #globalsouth

ens-paris-saclay.frConférence du diplôme sur "D'où vient l'IA? Economie politique d'une technologie globale" | ENS-PARIS-SACLAYNous vous invitons à assister à la conférence de Antonio Casilli, professeur de sociologie à Télécom Paris sur le thème « D’où vient l’IA? Économie politique d’une technologie globale » le jeudi 29 février 2024 de 18h30 à 20h en présentiel amphi Alain Aspect.
Miguel Afonso Caetano

#SocialMedia #ArabWorld #TrollFarms #Disinformation #DigitalLabor: "This article investigates the production culture and routines of “troll farms” in three Arab countries—Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq—from a production studies approach. A production studies approach enables us to focus on the working conditions of paid trolls. We employed qualitative methods to look inside the “black box” of Arab troll farms. From February to April 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight disinformation workers at both managerial and staff levels. We propose to understand disinformation work as a specific type of digital labor, characterized by very intense shifts and emotionally burdensome daily tasks, absence of legal job contracts, and highly surveilled work environments. The article contributes to understand disinformation practices outside and beyond the West; it situates disinformation activities within the broader context of digital media industries; it provides a detailed analysis of the features that distinguish troll farms in the Arab world from those that emerged in other regions of the Global South; and it reconnects the research on disinformation to digital labor studies."

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/

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