Privacy, Surveillance, and Power in the Gig Economy
Abstract
This paper addresses calls for more research on privacy in the gig economy across a range of work platforms. To understand privacy risks, behaviors, and consequences from the perspective of workers, we analyzed workers’ posts about privacy and surveillance from 12 Reddit forums representing four main types of work (crowdwork, freelancing, ridesharing, and delivery). We found that workers perceive both platform companies and customers as sources of unnecessary and opaque data collection and surveillance that can threaten their privacy, safety, and economic outcomes. Workers also engage in many risk mitigation strategies, including self-protective surveillance behaviors such as video recording themselves and customers, as a costly but necessary response to power imbalances created by surveillance. Based on our multi-platform analysis, we present a guiding set of questions that workers, designers, and researchers can use to assess the privacy implications of current and future gig work platforms.
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Algorithmic control relies on collecting a lot of information from workers and consumers, especially on the workers' side.
“algorithmic control relies on collecting a lot of information from workers and consumers, especially on the workers' side (Sannon et al., 2022).”
From Socio‐technical issues in the platform‐mediated gig economy: A systematic literature review: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper (2024) · cites this paper as Sannon et al., 2022
Cites
Kittur, A., Nickerson, J. V., Bernstein, M., Gerber, E., Shaw, A., Zimmerman, J., Lease, M., & Horton, J. (2013) · Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work · doi:10.1145/2441776.2441923 · Cited by 1,034 · see citing works
Studying Reddit: A Systematic Overview of Disciplines, Approaches, Methods, and Ethics
Proferes, N., Jones, N., Gilbert, S., Fiesler, C., & Zimmer, M. (2021) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/20563051211019004 · Cited by 537 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Reddit is an increasingly utilized data source in HCI and adjacent disciplines [59]; we selected it due to its broad coverage of gig work types and popularity among workers.”
BackgroundMethod“Why lose control?” A Study of Freelancers’ Experiences with Gig Economy Platforms
Carlos Alvarez de la Vega, J., E. Cecchinato, M., & Rooksby, J. (2021) · Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3411764.3445305 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
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Dedema, M., & Rosenbaum, H. (2024) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.24868 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
“Similarly, algorithmic control relies on collecting a lot of information from workers and consumers, especially on the workers' side (Sannon et al., 2022).”
Background
- Authors
- Sannon, S., Sun, B., & Cosley, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Independent, United States
- U.S. National Science Foundation (US)
- Venue
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2022-04-29
- Pages
- 1-15
- OpenAlex
- W4224989679
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 3
- FWCI
- 40.38
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2031951)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Economy and Work Transformation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Legal and Labor Studies
- Keywords
- gig economy, privacy, surveillance, power imbalance, gig workers, data collection, risk mitigation strategies, self-surveillance, ride-sharing, delivery work, freelancing, crowdwork, platform companies, occupational safety, Reddit posts
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