How donors can protect workers from exploitation in the digital economy

Digitalization is disrupting not just the future of work, but the very nature of work today. Technology has given rise to the gig economy and the platform economy, which allow people to provide on-demand work through apps or websites. While the digital economy can provide workers with new opportunities to make money and offer perks like flexibility, it also poses immense risks of exploitation — particularly in lower-income nations where worker protections are already precarious. For example, in order to create the powerful artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, OpenAI outsourced data labeling to Kenyan workers. Their employer, a company called Sama that employs workers in Kenya, Uganda, and India to build training data for Silicon Valley clients, says it creates “an ethical AI supply chain.” But workers made $2 per hour to label text snippets from the darkest corners of the internet — including graphic detail of torture, rape, and murder — in order to prevent the ChatGPT app from responding with violent, racist, or sexist language. These working conditions point to some of the dangers that come with “digital microwork,” which breaks technical work into thousands of tasks that can be completed by remote workers. The shift underway is a form of “digital colonialism,” according to a recent report by IT for Change, an NGO based in Bengaluru, India. Tech companies often use exploitative data and labor practices. They’re also preventing low-income countries from demanding fair revenue shares, and making it harder for governments to ensure technology transfer for local innovation or form data governance policies. The report highlights emerging responses to “the problem of gig work being sort of in this shadow world of no protections,” said Deepti Bharthur, a research fellow at IT for Change. So far, experts tell Devex, few guardrails exist to protect workers from these threats. Meanwhile, donors are paying more attention and starting to enlist workers themselves to identify problems and propose solutions. The role of philanthropy Digital platforms are rapidly transforming services from ride-hailing to care work to food delivery. “We have an insane job for somebody to stand in a line forever that didn’t exist but it was made possible through an app,” Bharthur said. While this can open up new income generating opportunities, workers also lose the protections that come with standard employment. These short-term jobs pose some of the same challenges already faced by informal workers worldwide — along with new harms like workplace surveillance. “Where is the equity in all of this?” Bharthur asked. The NGO where she works, IT for Change, works on research, advocacy, and a curriculum to ensure that digital technologies can contribute to human rights, equity, and social justice. “How do we ensure the digital economy is built in a way that is not extractive? … That [people] have the kind social protections associated with work that are growing within this economy?” --— Ritse Erumi, program officer, Future of Work(ers) team at Ford Foundation The global development community plays a critical role in ensuring the digital economy creates opportunities for workers without “pushing them to further precarity,” Bharthur said. A small but growing number of foundations and bilateral donors are starting to explore this area. For example, the German development agency, known as GIZ, implements the Gig Economy Initiative on behalf of Germany’s development ministry. It aims to support gig workers by offering tools to develop their skills. It also offers policymakers, civil society organizations, and business leaders a course on the regulatory challenges around digital work platforms. Other funders supporting workers’ rights in the digital economy include the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the International Development Research Centre. Philanthropic funders can support efforts to guarantee standards for decent work in the digital economy, support worker mobilization, and establish data rights for workers, according to the IT for Change report. The idea is not to abolish platform work, but to ensure a more equitable digital economy, said Ritse Erumi, a program officer on the Future of Work(ers) team at the Ford Foundation, which funded the report. “How do we ensure the digital economy is built in a way that is not extractive? That the kinds of jobs that are created are fair, that people have agency on the job, that they have the kind social protections associated with work that are growing within this economy?” she said. ‘The ugly truth of the digital economy’ Daniel Motaung, a content moderator turned whistleblower, made the world aware of the exploitation of Sama’s workers in Kenya when he appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine last year in a story titled “Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop.” He has filed a lawsuit calling on Facebook and Sama to improve working conditions for their Kenya-based content moderators, including better pay and mental health support. Foxglove, a United Kingdom-based legal advocacy nonprofit supported by the Ford Foundation, is representing Motaung along with Nairobi-based lawyer Mercy Mutemi. “The ugly truth of the digital economy is tech giants continue to make huge profits while exploiting workers often doing poorly paid, dangerous work,” Foxglove director Martha Dark told Devex via email. She referenced a line from Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, a technology news website, who said, “the essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation,” or making the platform a safe place to be. “Meta continues to outsource this vital work to an army of workers on poverty wages and refuses to provide them with proper mental health care, despite the serious risk of PTSD, as we saw in the case of the former moderator Daniel Motaung,” Dark said, referencing Facebook’s parent company. Foxglove has taken up algorithmic justice as one of its causes as it challenges the abuses of power by big tech. The organization sees the law as just one tool needed to protect workers from the risks of the digital economy. “Cases like Daniel’s are just one part of the movement needed to fight back,” she said. “It also takes journalists and activists shining a spotlight on injustice and encouraging public outrage about workers’ treatment.” Beyond that, regulators and lawmakers should also act to force big tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to protect workers around the world, Dark said. Involving workers in the conversation The IT for Change report highlights some ways that workers are organizing to protect their rights in the digital economy. For example, in Africa, women platform workers have organized offline self-help groups to support each other and share their concerns. By investing in models like these, philanthropy can help to strengthen the care infrastructure for workers. Bharthur said funders will have to consider how to undo some of the harms to workers’ rights over many decades. Worldwide, she said, “workers’ rights to collective bargaining have been dismantled, repressed outright, and made illegal in some contexts.” And restoring workers’ faith in this process will require a lot of investment, Bharthur said. Funders looking to support a more equitable platform economy, from philanthropists to donor agencies to development finance institutions, should start by listening to workers, said Erumi of the Ford Foundation. “The future of work is fundamentally about people, the workers, and if we are not focused on how work is changing and how those changes are impacting workers, then we arrive at that sort of dystopian future,” she said. Update, Feb. 8, 2023: This story has been updated to correct the pay rate of Kenyan laborers working for Sama.