Hatim Rahman

In the gig economy, the customer isn’t king. They’re the emperor.

Workers on Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Instacart, Fiverr, Upwork, and other labor platforms are at the mercy of algorithms that funnel jobs their way based on customer ratings. The better ratings, the better the assignments. By using customers for control, the platforms have ditched traditional management and gained tremendous efficiencies for themselves and for their customers. Who doesn’t love the ease of calling a rideshare to their exact location with a few taps on a cellphone, compared with standing on a street corner to hail a cab?

We live in a world run by algorithms. Nowhere is this more apparent than with platform companies, such as Facebook, Uber, Google, Amazon, and Twitter. Platforms claim that their algorithms collect and use our data to optimize our experience with breathtaking speed and efficiency. 

Recent reports from scholars, journalists, and policy makers, however, have revealed that platforms’ algorithms exacerbate bias and discrimination in ways that are difficult to audit. 

In my recent study of workers on a labor platform, I found a broader concern about the way platforms use algorithms to control participants. Platforms’ algorithms create an invisible cage for platform users, because workers have no way of reliably accessing how their data is being processed or used to control their success on the platform.