#microwork

Human enhanced machine driven categorization: Thesis Proposal

Title: Human enhanced machine driven categorization (tentative) Mentor: Francesco Lelli Co-Supervisor Emiel Caron   Machines are better than human in executing repetitive and computational oriented tasks. However, humans are more flexible and can conceptualize and categorize

Check out the original post at https://francescolelli.info/thesis/human-enhanced-machine-driven-categorization-thesis-proposal/

Title: Human enhanced machine driven categorization: Thesis Proposal

Categories: Thesis

Tags: ESP game, machine driven categorization, master, Microwork, mturk, string similarity

After years of pussyfooting I finally begin my new dazzling work from home career on the smallest possible fucking scale: A micro job. Capital A. Just one. For a WHopping 25 cents. Capital WH, special emphasis on the H. Super simple: go to a site, scroll to the end, copy the last line of the post and paste as proof. 1345/1500 complete.

You accept the job.

You have 1 minute to complete the task.

Finish after allotted time and you fail.

Resubmit the post, they block you.

Write the wrong response you lose your reputation.

Less than 75% approval, they block you.

What could go wrong?

The timer starts at 35 seconds.

Bricks are shat.

34 seconds.

You paste the url. Safari is a face of questions.

32 seconds.

You type the url. Safari tells you it's a sham they're gonna steal your shit.

30 seconds.

You get to the site the mother fucker won't load.

26 seconds.

You reload and you don't know what the fuck you're looking at. My face is questions.

19 seconds.

You scroll down, there's no post. Y. Thats not a typo. Just Y.

17 seconds.

You scroll back up and see you have to subscribe to see the article. There's a humming sound growing louder and louder in your head.

16 seconds.

You wonder why they couldn't tell you that shit before.

15 seconds.

You manage to join and get the sentence. You can't tell if you're heart has stopped or if it's beating so fast its just vibrating. This is not the first time you've asked yourself this.

5 seconds.

Command-V has jumped out the window, you hit C and copy "fuck you, personally".

3 seconds.

You scramble back, grab the sentence and paste it properly with just enough time to see that the work order has been filled. But not by your ass.

You're 1501.

Hmm... 151... Anyways.

You realize you haven't been breathing, your chest is tight and you can't see out of your left eye. Your right ovary is on fire. Shards of shattered ground teeth are choking you. You might be dying. You collapse, this is where you live now. All is black.

...

You come to. You're splayed on your living room floor drenched in every conceivable personal bodily fluid and solid. Your eyes roll in your head to focus on a glint under the couch. You reach for it, but you actually don't because the right side of your body is paralyzed. You reach for it and it works because your left arm gives no shits.

It's a quarter.

Factories can’t run, farms can’t produce, mines can’t be mined, supermarkets can’t be stocked, and call centres can’t accept calls if workers don’t go to work. Even though the decks are often stacked against workers, the basic fact that workers can withdraw their labour with strikes, and encourage others to do so with picket lines, has done much to improve working conditions in a range of industries around the world.

But in a world of globalized, digitized, and atomized work, we now have a fundamentally different balance of power.

Traditionally, a core weakness of capital in its struggle with labour was its need to be spatially fixed. Employers needed geographical sites in which workers did their work. This is not to say that capital wasn’t inherently much more mobile than labour. But, although jobs could be outsourced and offshored, those new sites of production were often vulnerable to a withdrawal of labour power.

Recognizing that as a group they could wield significant bargaining power, many workers formed trade unions. Unions could engage in collective bargaining with employers to demand a greater share of returns generated by the work done by workers. Collective bargaining also enabled workers to regulate how they were treated in the workplace. For example, grievance and disciplinary procedures were developed to protect workers from managerial despotism. Because of the ever-present threat of a withdrawal of labour power, this collective bargaining tended to be far more effective for workers than individualized bargaining done by atomized workers. Unions have been shown to significantly increase the wages and conditions for workers.

This is now all changing due to the advent of digital work marketplaces. Platforms like Upwork.com, Freelancer.com and Fiverr.com mediate the auctioning of work. Clients post tasks and workers bid on them. With some colleagues, I have spent the last few years studying this phenomenon: interviewing about 120 digital workers in Africa and Asia who do jobs as varied as programming, content creation, transcriptions and clickwork. We asked each one of them how comfortable they felt asking for a raise or for better working conditions, and whether they had considered joining a union.

What we heard back from many of them was that they felt extremely replaceable. The nature of much digital work means that workers from all over the world are thrust into the same marketplace and are forced to compete against each other on very short-term contracts: some lasting only a few hours. Digital workers in Kenya know that if they withdraw their labour, then workers in the Philippines can easily take their jobs. And Filipino workers likewise know that Indian workers can do their jobs if they were to refuse to work. Every worker on these digital platforms knows that there are many more out there to take his or her place.

Does this mean that digital work represents a move to a fundamentally post-union world? A world in which work is fundamentally characterized by competition rather than solidarity between workers? If we want to avoid a world in which competition between workers leads to a race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions, then I would argue that there are three key strategies that we should be thinking about to redress the current structural imbalance of power.

Networks instead of hierarchies

First, we need to strengthen efforts to build collective identities amongst digital workers. Many workers do not see the utility of unions, and many workers do not even see themselves as workers! Here there is a space for more groups like the so-called ‘Freelancers Union’.

It is important to point out that while that organization actually promotes precarious freelancing (their website features articles like ‘Top 10 signs you were destined to be a freelancer’), its efforts could nonetheless be useful in generating a collective identity amongst digital workers. Many workers also digitally assemble on Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other digital points of assembly to chat, complain, share opportunities, and exchange knowledge. As my colleague Alex Wood has demonstrated, these networks can be the launchpad for successful activism to counter workplace injustice. Thus, in areas where hierarchical unions or collectives make little sense, we can instead look to networks.

Digital-era strategies

However, although these efforts could be useful in generating a collective identity amongst digital workers, they might not alone tip the balance of power in their favour. A second strategy could therefore be to focus on effective trade union strategies that are properly brought into the digital age.

Some might argue that in a world of precarious short-term contracts, with workers all over the world competing against each other, it is impossible to emulate traditional strategies that made trade unions effective. But even though digital markets are not really fixed to a single geographic space, it might be strategically useful for digital workers to think of them that way.

In the same way that a physical picket line disrupts business as usual, a digital picket line might be used to similar effect. This is usually most effective when targeting the most consumer-facing firms in any value chains, which in turn involves understanding the virtual production networks of digital work. We hold Apple responsible for poor working conditions in Chinese Foxconn factories and we hold Nike responsible if any of their shoes are sourced in sweatshops, so let’s use investigative journalism and radical transparency approaches to equally hold the Googles and Facebooks of the world to account for poor conditions in the ways that they source work.

In practice, that would entail using a tactical media approach to take control of the visibility of corporate controlled narratives. This means making sure that problematic workplace practices are outlined on Twitter and Instagram hashtags; on comments on Facebook pages; and on search-engine results pages by using ‘Google-bombing’.

Consumer-led activism

But while these sorts of strategies remove the ability of companies to escape responsibility for any problematic production practices, they can do little to stop workers undercutting each other in digital work marketplaces. So, in tandem with digital picket lines, we need more consumer-led activism to support workers.

Consumer boycotts of companies engaging in the worst sorts of abuses often persuade companies to rethink how they source products and services. But what we probably also need are organizations committed to measuring and certifying fairness in production networks.

In much the same way that the Fairtrade Foundation inspects and audits sites of production of products like coffee and chocolate, couldn’t we envision a Fairwork Foundation that ensures that employers of digital workers adhere to certain social and economic standards? Doing so would allow end-users of services to express unity with workers by choosing services, platforms, apps and websites that have been certified.

Many have proclaimed that unions make little sense in our era of hyper-globalized digital work. And online work platforms are certainly designed to foster a sense of competition rather than solidarity between workers. Although this presents a somewhat bleak outlook for digital workers, there remain some strategies that can be employed to further the interests of worker collectives.

As ever more of the world’s population connects to the internet and looks for jobs, there is the potential for ever more downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Yet it is rarely in workers’ interests to compete against each other, so let’s find ways of collaborating, joining forces and building alliances.