#algorithmic management

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too)

You can get into a lot of trouble by assuming that rich people know what they're doing. For example, might assume that ad-tech works – bypassing peoples' critical faculties, reaching inside their minds and brainwashing them with Big Data insights, because if that's not what's happening, then why would rich people pour billions into those ads?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

You might assume that private equity looters make their investors rich, because otherwise, why would rich people hand over trillions for them to play with?

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/11/19/private-equity-vampire-capital/

The truth is, rich people are suckers like the rest of us. If anything, succeeding once or twice makes you an even bigger mark, with a sense of your own infallibility that inflates to fill the bubble your yes-men seal you inside of.

Rich people fall for scams just like you and me. Anyone can be a mark. I was:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

But though rich people can fall for scams the same way you and I do, the way those scams play out is very different when the marks are wealthy. As Keynes had it, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." When the marks are rich (or worse, super-rich), they can be played for much longer before they go bust, creating the appearance of solidity.

Noted Keynesian John Kenneth Galbraith had his own thoughts on this. Galbraith coined the term "bezzle" to describe "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In that magic interval, everyone feels better off: the mark thinks he's up, and the con artist knows he's up.

Rich marks have looong bezzles. Empirically incorrect ideas grounded in the most outrageous superstition and junk science can take over whole sections of your life, simply because a rich person – or rich people – are convinced that they're good for you.

Take "scientific management." In the early 20th century, the con artist Frederick Taylor convinced rich industrialists that he could increase their workers' productivity through a kind of caliper-and-stopwatch driven choreographry:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Taylor and his army of labcoated sadists perched at the elbows of factory workers (whom Taylor referred to as "stupid," "mentally sluggish," and as "an ox") and scripted their motions to a fare-the-well, transforming their work into a kind of kabuki of obedience. They weren't more efficient, but they looked smart, like obedient robots, and this made their bosses happy. The bosses shelled out fortunes for Taylor's services, even though the workers who followed his prescriptions were less efficient and generated fewer profits. Bosses were so dazzled by the spectacle of a factory floor of crisply moving people interfacing with crisply working machines that they failed to understand that they were losing money on the whole business.

To the extent they noticed that their revenues were declining after implementing Taylorism, they assumed that this was because they needed more scientific management. Taylor had a sweet con: the worse his advice performed, the more reasons their were to pay him for more advice.

Taylorism is a perfect con to run on the wealthy and powerful. It feeds into their prejudice and mistrust of their workers, and into their misplaced confidence in their own ability to understand their workers' jobs better than their workers do. There's always a long dollar to be made playing the "scientific management" con.

Today, there's an app for that. "Bossware" is a class of technology that monitors and disciplines workers, and it was supercharged by the pandemic and the rise of work-from-home. Combine bossware with work-from-home and your boss gets to control your life even when in your own place – "work from home" becomes "live at work":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Gig workers are at the white-hot center of bossware. Gig work promises "be your own boss," but bossware puts a Taylorist caliper wielder into your phone, monitoring and disciplining you as you drive your wn car around delivering parcels or picking up passengers.

In automation terms, a worker hitched to an app this way is a "reverse centaur." Automation theorists call a human augmented by a machine a "centaur" – a human head supported by a machine's tireless and strong body. A "reverse centaur" is a machine augmented by a human – like the Amazon delivery driver whose app goads them to make inhuman delivery quotas while punishing them for looking in the "wrong" direction or even singing along with the radio:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips

Bossware pre-dates the current AI bubble, but AI mania has supercharged it. AI pumpers insist that AI can do things it positively cannot do – rolling out an "autonomous robot" that turns out to be a guy in a robot suit, say – and rich people are groomed to buy the services of "AI-powered" bossware:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

For an AI scammer like Elon Musk or Sam Altman, the fact that an AI can't do your job is irrelevant. From a business perspective, the only thing that matters is whether a salesperson can convince your boss that an AI can do your job – whether or not that's true:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

The fact that AI can't do your job, but that your boss can be convinced to fire you and replace you with the AI that can't do your job, is the central fact of the 21st century labor market. AI has created a world of "algorithmic management" where humans are demoted to reverse centaurs, monitored and bossed about by an app.

The techbro's overwhelming conceit is that nothing is a crime, so long as you do it with an app. Just as fintech is designed to be a bank that's exempt from banking regulations, the gig economy is meant to be a workplace that's exempt from labor law. But this wheeze is transparent, and easily pierced by enforcers, so long as those enforcers want to do their jobs. One such enforcer is Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner with a keen interest in antitrust's relationship to labor protection.

Bedoya understands that antitrust has a checkered history when it comes to labor. As he's written, the history of antitrust is a series of incidents in which Congress revised the law to make it clear that forming a union was not the same thing as forming a cartel, only to be ignored by boss-friendly judges:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Bedoya is no mere historian. He's an FTC Commissioner, one of the most powerful regulators in the world, and he's profoundly interested in using that power to help workers, especially gig workers, whose misery starts with systemic, wide-scale misclassification as contractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/02/upward-redistribution/

In a new speech to NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, Bedoya argues that the FTC's existing authority allows it to crack down on algorithmic management – that is, algorithmic management is illegal, even if you break the law with an app:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-remarks-unfairness-in-workplace-surveillance-and-automated-management.pdf

Bedoya starts with a delightful analogy to The Hawtch-Hawtch, a mythical town from a Dr Seuss poem. The Hawtch-Hawtch economy is based on beekeeping, and the Hawtchers develop an overwhelming obsession with their bee's laziness, and determine to wring more work (and more honey) out of him. So they appoint a "bee-watcher." But the bee doesn't produce any more honey, which leads the Hawtchers to suspect their bee-watcher might be sleeping on the job, so they hire a bee-watcher-watcher. When that doesn't work, they hire a bee-watcher-watcher-watcher, and so on and on.

For gig workers, it's bee-watchers all the way down. Call center workers are subjected to "AI" video monitoring, and "AI" voice monitoring that purports to measure their empathy. Another AI times their calls. Two more AIs analyze the "sentiment" of the calls and the success of workers in meeting arbitrary metrics. On average, a call-center worker is subjected to five forms of bossware, which stand at their shoulders, marking them down and brooking no debate.

For example, when an experienced call center operator fielded a call from a customer with a flooded house who wanted to know why no one from her boss's repair plan system had come out to address the flooding, the operator was punished by the AI for failing to try to sell the customer a repair plan. There was no way for the operator to protest that the customer had a repair plan already, and had called to complain about it.

Workers report being sickened by this kind of surveillance, literally – stressed to the point of nausea and insomnia. Ironically, one of the most pervasive sources of automation-driven sickness are the "AI wellness" apps that bosses are sold by AI hucksters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

The FTC has broad authority to block "unfair trade practices," and Bedoya builds the case that this is an unfair trade practice. Proving an unfair trade practice is a three-part test: a practice is unfair if it causes "substantial injury," can't be "reasonably avoided," and isn't outweighed by a "countervailing benefit." In his speech, Bedoya makes the case that algorithmic management satisfies all three steps and is thus illegal.

On the question of "substantial injury," Bedoya describes the workday of warehouse workers working for ecommerce sites. He describes one worker who is monitored by an AI that requires him to pick and drop an object off a moving belt every 10 seconds, for ten hours per day. The worker's performance is tracked by a leaderboard, and supervisors punish and scold workers who don't make quota, and the algorithm auto-fires if you fail to meet it.

Under those conditions, it was only a matter of time until the worker experienced injuries to two of his discs and was permanently disabled, with the company being found 100% responsible for this injury. OSHA found a "direct connection" between the algorithm and the injury. No wonder warehouses sport vending machines that sell painkillers rather than sodas. It's clear that algorithmic management leads to "substantial injury."

What about "reasonably avoidable?" Can workers avoid the harms of algorithmic management? Bedoya describes the experience of NYC rideshare drivers who attended a round-table with him. The drivers describe logging tens of thousands of successful rides for the apps they work for, on promise of "being their own boss." But then the apps start randomly suspending them, telling them they aren't eligible to book a ride for hours at a time, sending them across town to serve an underserved area and still suspending them. Drivers who stop for coffee or a pee are locked out of the apps for hours as punishment, and so drive 12-hour shifts without a single break, in hopes of pleasing the inscrutable, high-handed app.

All this, as drivers' pay is falling and their credit card debts are mounting. No one will explain to drivers how their pay is determined, though the legal scholar Veena Dubal's work on "algorithmic wage discrimination" reveals that rideshare apps temporarily increase the pay of drivers who refuse rides, only to lower it again once they're back behind the wheel:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is like the pit boss who gives a losing gambler some freebies to lure them back to the table, over and over, until they're broke. No wonder they call this a "casino mechanic." There's only two major rideshare apps, and they both use the same high-handed tactics. For Bedoya, this satisfies the second test for an "unfair practice" – it can't be reasonably avoided. If you drive rideshare, you're trapped by the harmful conduct.

The final prong of the "unfair practice" test is whether the conduct has "countervailing value" that makes up for this harm.

To address this, Bedoya goes back to the call center, where operators' performance is assessed by "Speech Emotion Recognition" algorithms, a psuedoscientific hoax that purports to be able to determine your emotions from your voice. These SERs don't work – for example, they might interpret a customer's laughter as anger. But they fail differently for different kinds of workers: workers with accents – from the American south, or the Philippines – attract more disapprobation from the AI. Half of all call center workers are monitored by SERs, and a quarter of workers have SERs scoring them "constantly."

Bossware AIs also produce transcripts of these workers' calls, but workers with accents find them "riddled with errors." These are consequential errors, since their bosses assess their performance based on the transcripts, and yet another AI produces automated work scores based on them.

In other words, algorithmic management is a procession of bee-watchers, bee-watcher-watchers, and bee-watcher-watcher-watchers, stretching to infinity. It's junk science. It's not producing better call center workers. It's producing arbitrary punishments, often against the best workers in the call center.

There is no "countervailing benefit" to offset the unavoidable substantial injury of life under algorithmic management. In other words, algorithmic management fails all three prongs of the "unfair practice" test, and it's illegal.

What should we do about it? Bedoya builds the case for the FTC acting on workers' behalf under its "unfair practice" authority, but he also points out that the lack of worker privacy is at the root of this hellscape of algorithmic management.

He's right. The last major update Congress made to US privacy law was in 1988, when they banned video-store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented. The US is long overdue for a new privacy regime, and workers under algorithmic management are part of a broad coalition that's closer than ever to making that happen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Workers should have the right to know which of their data is being collected, who it's being shared by, and how it's being used. We all should have that right. That's what the actors' strike was partly motivated by: actors who were being ordered to wear mocap suits to produce data that could be used to produce a digital double of them, "training their replacement," but the replacement was a deepfake.

With a Trump administration on the horizon, the future of the FTC is in doubt. But the coalition for a new privacy law includes many of Trumpland's most powerful blocs – like Jan 6 rioters whose location was swept up by Google and handed over to the FBI. A strong privacy law would protect their Fourth Amendment rights – but also the rights of BLM protesters who experienced this far more often, and with far worse consequences, than the insurrectionists.

The "we do it with an app, so it's not illegal" ruse is wearing thinner by the day. When you have a boss for an app, your real boss gets an accountability sink, a convenient scapegoat that can be blamed for your misery.

The fact that this makes you worse at your job, that it loses your boss money, is no guarantee that you will be spared. Rich people make great marks, and they can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Markets won't solve this one – but worker power can.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[neodymiumcuilz]

SUPPORT A FAMILY FROM 🍉🍉 TO SURVIVE THE HELLISH CONDITIONS.

Hello everyone, I would like to share with you a campaign for a family in Gaza. The people in Gaza have experienced much hardship, and are still in need of your urgent aid and attention, the people of Gaza still demand your voice, and most importantly donations. I hope their lives still matter to you, and you will help them out. Imagine living in a tent for over a year, starving each day, wondering where you will get another meal. Imagine being cold and wet each night. Imagine being in constant fear and suffering great trauma. Imagine having your home and income gone. That is a reality for them. You wouldn't like this, who why stay silent on them? Please raise your voice for such a crisis!!

One way you can help is by DONATING to this fundraiser, not enough donations are coming in for sustainable living, and their conditions worsen each day, their lives can really he helped by a simple donations, the amount really does not matter your donation is valuable no matter what. Even 5 dollars offers so much hope and is better than nothing. Please, have some humanity and help a family out!

26% goal raised.

"Hello, I am E'taf Al-Qataa,I'm from Gaza, Im34 years old ,I am a wife and a mother of five children. and I am communicating with you with a heavy heart and on behalf of my family, consisting of seven members, including 5 children. We were trapped in the devastating situation in Gaza. We were urgently seeking evacuation to Egypt after enduring more than 200 days of displacement and hardship. I seek to help them urgently and provide them with the minimum requirements. The occupation demolished our beautiful home and took my husband’s job and his car. I was displaced and was able to escape the scourge of war to Egypt, after fleeing to Deir al-Balah in Gaza and tasting the bitterness of displacement and losing a lot. Today, I find myself in a situation I never expected. The conflict in Gaza has left my family in desperate need of help. And here I did not find any money for the family’s expenses after the occupation managed to take away everything we had and we went back a lot. This war took our livelihoods and our factories, and we are struggling to survive."

@yosef-gaza is vetted, number 88 I believe(do correct me if I'm wrong)

I hope our humanity will unite, and we will come together to help them navigate this tragedy and help them rebuild their lives. Thank you for being so kind.

[hplonesomeart]

Hey!! So turns out a video I made between a certain “well beloved but highly sensitive/emotionally reactive T.V” and an “orange haired inkling-turned-human” has managed to sweep my YouTube channel and accumulate 100k VIEWS!! THAT’S A LOT OF PEOPLE ACTUALLY?? My most widely viewed video EVER to exist in this moment in time?? AAAAA?? Not even mentioning the various comments and staggering increase in subs! It’s so much more then what I expected or even prepared for—might even be the most impactful thing to happen for me this year <3

…aside from graduating high school + the social connections I’ve been fortunate to make lol

BUT THE POINT IS I’d been closely monitoring the YouTube growth through the entirety of October. It’s make me smile like a dork, gawk in astonishment, dance frantically in my room from the energy boosts, and grow courage to stop being so selective/self-conscious with what I wish to share with the world! It’s kept my ambitions going!

I needed to find some way to celebrate the occasion and express my thanks—because I can’t NOT acknowledge this milestone jksjskp. Typically I try to avoid getting tunnel visioned focusing on the metrics/numbers. Mr. Puzzles had already demonstrated how much those things can mess with the minds of creatives. Caring too much about chasing views or placing your artistic value in attention seeking gets damaging. But at same time…it’s hard to deny the sense of pride the 100k achievement has filled me with. I understand that reaching 100k views doesn’t immediately make me any “better” or “worse” then I was before. I’m still just me! It only helps me feel seen by others—and that’s all I really needed. To hear some nice words & receive reminders that my ideas are cared about. So thank you SMG4 fandom for that, seriously thank you.

Please accept this Mr. Puzzle drawing as a way of sharing the happiness around. He’s so entertaining. Love him for simply existing. So glad we can all collectively be super attached to him (and the rest of the SMG4 cast of course). Can’t wait to see more incredible artworks from the fandom :)

Just incase anyone is confused by my vague description over which “animated video” I’m referring to here—hopefully this photo will help clarify lol. It’s this one!! Sorry about not outright stating the title at the start, I got carried away with writing!!

I’ve been in an odd place mentally when thinking about it. Wondering to myself if any of the attention is deserved considering it’s not even fully colored and could be dismissed as “low effort” content (despite taking several days making it). It’s easy to get into a trap of comparing yourself to others and questioning how much of the videos success is based on your skills, sheer algorithm luck, or only because you used popular characters and catered to a specific fandom. And then judging yourself by looking at other peoples videos. I’ve seen several artists post higher quality works then my own but it somehow gets less views. So why did mine succeed when others (who should have gotten just as much attention if not more) didn’t? Sometimes you feel like you’ve unfairly robbed them of that chance to be seen. However I’ve realized that I can’t ever expect views to be consistent—and comparing is pointless. So why worry about it or feel inadequate? I mean it’s pretty common for funny cat videos to go viral, so who am I to question the system lol. “Popular” YouTube videos can range from a passion project which took 7+ artists…to a clip of Toad singing Chandelier or a nonsensical Vine sketch. Anything can happen when it’s the internet! And just-so-happened my video was chosen. I should stay glad about that and get rid of all the overanalyzing. So that’s what I’ve chosen to do :)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

i love your bard! riz au so much. he is so tragic as a character for all the reasons of what living in constant danger fear does to your mind. can i ask about his relationship with the other bad kids and the major differences vs canon?

hey I'm glad ur enjoying what's goin on here! I don't have a Lot of it clear in my mind yet bc it is a full class swap of the entire party so some stuff will just. not play out until they do yknow? it is how it is. but I think from the beginning riz's motivation is decently different so he'll just get into it on an entirely different path - he did Not start out a very kind kid. he would be extremely conflict avoidant, he's got the Actor feat, he's stocked up on Disguise Self, he's ready to disappear mid-conversation, anyone who looks like troubles he's steering Clear of. he goes to aguefort not because he wants to be an adventurer but because sklonda was like "this works for you?" and he was like "yeah 's all good :]" (he is about to throw up bc that's where penny went missing)

I'd say he runs into fabian (rogue) first very briefly and they'd mutually be like oh. a guy. and immediately forget each other once they get out of the same like locked classroom they accidentally both hid in. and then during the corn cutie fight fabian would see the way riz react and Not Like It (haha whoa. like looking in a mirror amirite) and go actually I'd rather be a hero (derogatory) than whatever that is that guy's got going on. great surprise for him when they got out and registration's closed and the mirror is now one of his partners in the career-long group project :]

kristen (sorcerer) would be an Insane encounter at first for riz like this is someone who is extremely powerful, not very controlled, and so fucking starved for people to be nice at. riz is cordial to her on the way and she is like Fuck Yeah Friend! please go do paperwork with me I don't know shit from fuck I haven't had proper paperwork since I was like twelve and gay. do you like candies? she then throws ragh through a window for trying to bully gorgug and netting her and gorgug the detention (riz is of course immediately someone else while this is happening) (he shows up again right after like haha sorry that was scary! resolutely not looking at how kristen's face falls at the idea of someone being scared of her again)

riz and gorgug (cleric) get on like house on fire at first in the sense that they're at that point both fake bitches and they know this about each other and acknowledge this with each other implicitly and they're like I'm not poking at what's going on with you if you don't poke at what's going on with me. and then gorgug dies and sees that the god he's been feeding his anger to isn't real (yet) and has his realization that he's been indoctrinated into a cult through the support group he's been to and starts on deprogramming and in that process he starts poking at riz's deal just by proxy of dealing with his own. riz gets vicious about this a bit into it but after the arcade he kinda comes around again. it helps that at the end of sophomore year gorgug becomes the saint of the Inbetween and riz is very much in need of that stop on his way right then

fig (barbarian) on the other hand does Not like riz off the bat (her whole thing is leaning into rage to live her truth without fear) but then being as perceptive as she is soon she's like ohhhh you're just scared. like Really scared and it's ruining your life. and after that she's like I'll just protect you then :] (this is her solution to most things her friends go through) this does not help at first bc riz has picked up the pattern that is if you're protective of him bad things will happen to you. he will have a breakdown about this in sophomore year but it'll get better from there

adaine (artificer) on the Other other hand just straight up doesn't like riz until after the arcade lol. he's on the prep side, he's not socially awkward and he doesn't use that power for anything but being a coward, he lets biz talk at him in the AV club and that means biz never stops fucking talking, and every time adaine raises a complaint all he does is being like "sorry :[" and changing nothing. it's fucked up between them riz tries to appease her by doing nice things but he doesn't address the things she actually complains about so she doesn't take it. she's the person who outright calls him out for not having the backbone to stand up for himself or his party. despite this she never thinks of throwing him out of the party and he does pick up on this. they get better after the arcade and riz apologizing and by junior year adaine's the one handling the tech end of riz's freelance publication

all of this is subjected to change of course I'm mostly keeping things mobile that's where all the fun is hehe. the world is constantly in motion etc but this is kinda how I'm coming into my art atm we'll simply see!

[therealraewest]

Me: googling hyper-specific questions about video game mechanics

Google AI, crying: what are you fucking talking about nothing like that exists on the Internet

First search result: reddit thread with the exact answer to my question

[tinyfantasminha]

👍

[loveswirl]

hi. sorry this is a bit presumptuous from someone who hasnt even followed u that long. but u gotta like clean up ur feed by unfollowing the blogs that make u feel bad looking at their posts n stuff. this is a small bastion of nonalgorithmically-served content we have here so u gotta use it to the best u can.

yeah u know. i did that what i thought was recently but now that i think about it, it was actually months n months ago... this ask made me check how many people i followed, i was so shocked it's like 730?? i dont know how that happened. i thought itd be 450 max.

ill definitely be going through n getting rid of a lot of that x3 itd be much more enjoyable checking here if i could just see the posts by friends n not a bunch of filler. n ofc whatever my hyperfixation is atm...

it is also just a case of everything irl is very stressful n too busy to allow me a social battery or yknow... spare energy to post. but that'll pass. for now... i'll curate my online experience once more....

trodding off into the distance solemnly, armed with only garden sheers... bravely daring to venture to the scattered chaos of the dashboard....... snipping one bad post at a time

[paladingineer]

Me, a hopeless romantic asexual who yearns for romantic love:

My For You feed:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[neodymiumcuilz]

HELP ETAF ( @pgetpg ) AND HER FAMILY FROM GAZA - DONATIONS NEEDED 🍉🍉

Hello everyone - we must never forget about Gaza. Don't forget about the children currently starving, currently being burned alive, currently being bombed. Don't forget that just under half of the children in Gaza expressed a desire to die. Don't forget the threat of death is constantly hanging over their heads - it is a privledge to know you will be alive tomorrow, a privledge many take for granted. It is a privledge to have a safe area, where you know you are protected and won't be killed. It is a privledge to grow up healthy, and in a stable environment. It is a privledge to be operated on with anesthetic, or have health care at all. These are all privledges people in Gaza don't enjoy. They are experiencing a genocide, and we must never forget that - don't continue to ignore Gaza, the city where not a single building isn't destroyed.

Here on tumblr, people from Gaza are asking for donations. They pour their hearts out for us, share their stories and are hopeful we will help them despite everything. Imagine the disappointment when they don't receive any donations? Imagine living in a litteral hell, and the privledged people that can donate aren't bothered to help you? If you can donate - I implore you. Help them out, they are human beings, not robots or numbers. The children of Gaza should get to grow up, don't leave them. Don't ignore them. Helping people has never been easier.

Just put a small contribution into this fundraiser - no donation is too small. Any amount has a significant impact.

They are vetted, (#088) on the list.

Please support @pgetpg, send thoughts and prayers their way, they need it.

[literaryscribs]

Can I just say that I wish, I really really wish, people would quit calling 20-24 year old characters "bad" or "childish writing" for literally just... ACTING THEIR AGE?!??! Doubly if they have a disability or are specifically coded to be autistic, adhd etc.

Seriously? Is someone out there seriously implying that everyone magically matures into a grizzled, emotionally constipated war veteran the second a 19 year old crosses the threshold into their noughties?

Think real damn hard on things you did when you were younger if you're older currently. We've ALL done cringe stuff that keeps us up until the wee hours of the morning in embarrassment. Whether it be something we said or clogging up someone's toilet, puking all over the place because we partied too hard or sent literal car parts flying because you were learning to drive. You don't just snap your fingers and BAM! YOU'RE MATURE! CUE THE CELEBRATIONS!

Maturity comes from life experiences, the good times, the cringe moments and the failures. Not age. Otherwise you wouldn't have kids/teens behaving way beyond their years due to ongoing and consistent abuse/neglect, nor childish adults trying to relive their teen years at their 'prime' at the very least.

I don't care if it's a fantasy game or if it's set in the future. If a character is 21/22 I *expect* random stupidity, foot in mouth moments. I expect them to be over confident or make poor decisions at times. That's prime time to be figuring your own identity out, making yourself standalone, supporting friends via learning from said mistakes and experiences they've had. It's not supposed to be smooth or perfect.

[starlitangels]

Ignore this it’s just a tag rant

[cea-tide]

Just finished my second exam this week and it felt like both went well~

Now only one more theory exam on Thursday—

[frosted-woods]

hiii i'm back after easter. horrible as always. super stressed rn

[riddlerosehearts]

??? why is tumblr suddenly recommending me th*nspo/e.d. blogs and labeling them as "you seem interested". no tf i do not 😭

[maintitle]

I had to delete my 'do not recommend' youtube history because i accidentally misclicked one too many accounts on there, and my algorithm is officially fucking destroyed. In the last twenty-four hours I got recommended an asmongold video, Mr. Beast and an AI channel. i am never going to recover from this.