The emergence of algorithmic solidarity: unveiling mutual aid practices and resistance among Chinese delivery workers

Yu, Zizheng; Treré, Emiliano; Bonini, Tiziano

doi:10.1177/1329878x221074793

Cited by 33 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…By examining a case study focused on how tech workers and their superiors participate in the production of algorithms, this paper has explored how the subalternity of DSs and colleagues is constructed and resisted within the corporate environment. In this regard, if prior research on digital labour has extensively explored how certain subjects, such as gig workers undergo and resist algorithmic power (e.g., Yu et al, 2022), how the emergent group of tech workers experience their workplace and perform aid and resistance practices emerges as an interesting area that could be further explored in future research. Furthermore, this area can be noteworthy also for organizational studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The role and impact of algorithmic processes and the extractive models underlying digital platforms have received an increasing interest from researchers within the interdisciplinary field of critical algorithm studies (e.g., Beer, 2017;Airoldi, 2022). Several studies focused on different types of platforms, such as social media (Gillespie, 2018), search engines (Noble, 2018), streaming services (Seaver, 2019a), delivery platforms (Yu et al, 2022), advertising services (Kotras, 2020), in order to understand how the technical workings of these architectures, their design and uses, play a key role in the construction and organization of social life. A commonplace regarding algorithms is that they can be considered 'black boxes', i.e., systems 'whose workings are mysterious' (Pasquale, 2015: 3).…”

Section: Beyond the Black-box Metaphor: Algorithms As Cultural Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Algorithms and hegemony in the workplace: Negotiating design and values in an Italian television platform

Pronzato

2023

Big Data & Society

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In recent years, several scholars have highlighted the necessity to scrutinize the practices and material settings in which algorithmic models are designed, in order to unpack the working activities and socio-cultural constructs underlying their production and deployment process. Drawing on a multisited ethnography, this paper investigates the practices of tech workers within the corporate environment of an internet television platform, the hierarchical relationships between different professional figures, and how these individuals frame algorithms and contribute to the enactment of these systems with their activities. Findings highlight the hierarchical organization of tech work and the subordination of operative figures to the goals imposed by business clients and to both internal and external forms of control. Specifically, it emerges how the subalternity of tech workers is materially and discursively constructed and forms of causal, dispositional and facilitative power exerted on them. In this environment, frictions, negotiations as well as concealing strategies by tech workers regarding the design and meaning of algorithms emerge, thus showing their cultural, contingent and multiple composition. Within the framework of Giddens’ structure/agency cycle, it is shown how everyday working activities and relationships contribute to the reproduction of hegemonic arrangements in the workplace, and how these hegemonic arrangements are at the core of algorithmic production, thus playing a key role in the framing, construction and enactment of these systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Beyond the Black-box Metaphor: Algorithms As Cultural Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithms and hegemony in the workplace: Negotiating design and values in an Italian television platform

Pronzato

2023

Big Data & Society

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“…Also studying Upwork freelancers, Jarrahi and Sutherland [2019] discuss how freelancers cooperate in strategically feeding the algorithm data so as to improve their outcomes. Cooperative strategic behavior among drivers on ride-hailing platforms is common, e.g., [Cameron, 2020, Robinson, 2017, Yu et al, 2022, as are digital strategies involving bots, or multiple phone apps [Chen, 2018]. Workers have also used forums, browser extensions, and online spaces to share information and strategize collectively, e.g., [Irani and Silberman, 2013, Salehi et al, 2015, O'Meara, 2019.…”

Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithmic Collective Action in Machine Learning

Hardt¹,

Mazumdar²,

Mendler-Dünner³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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We initiate a principled study of algorithmic collective action on digital platforms that deploy machine learning algorithms. We propose a simple theoretical model of a collective interacting with a firm's learning algorithm. The collective pools the data of participating individuals and executes an algorithmic strategy by instructing participants how to modify their own data to achieve a collective goal. We investigate the consequences of this model in three fundamental learning-theoretic settings: the case of a nonparametric optimal learning algorithm, a parametric risk minimizer, and gradient-based optimization. In each setting, we come up with coordinated algorithmic strategies and characterize natural success criteria as a function of the collective's size. Complementing our theory, we conduct systematic experiments on a skill classification task involving tens of thousands of resumes from a gig platform for freelancers. Through more than two thousand model training runs of a BERT-like language model, we see a striking correspondence emerge between our empirical observations and the predictions made by our theory. Taken together, our theory and experiments broadly support the conclusion that algorithmic collectives of exceedingly small fractional size can exert significant control over a platform's learning algorithm.

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“…The authors offer new luddite, feminist, and decolonial approaches with examples as ways to antagonise these algorithmic norms. Yu, Treré & Bonini (2022) consider how riders working for Chinese food delivery platforms collectively act on algorithmic power. Their article provides a detailed account of the gamification ranking and competition techniques deployed by delivery platforms to drive the riders to achieve efficiency and productivity gains.…”

Section: Issue Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to algorithmic antagonisms: Resistance, reconfiguration, and renaissance for computational life

Heemsbergen

Treré

Pereira

2022

Media International Australia

Self Cite

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The chant of hundreds of UK school students echoed across the streets in front of the UK's Department of Education. Students, livid, were protesting their chances of university entrance being snuffed out or otherwise manipulated by 'the algorithm'. The exasperation focussed on the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation's automated process for estimating marks for final exams that were cancelled due to COVID-19: 'the algorithm' deployed had taken predictable biases (Noble, 2018) and delivered inflationary marks to private school students, while deflating the marks (and dreams) of students at government schools and of lower socio-economic status. This example from 2020 is just one that shows how problematics of algorithmic governance pervade society. Yet the focus here on algorithmic antagonisms is not meant to comment on being oppressed by algorithms, or resisting their power through protest, or even being resigned to their effects.Instead it asks what happens when energy is put into fucking with algorithms to produce political movement within societies that are increasingly governed by them? Specifically, this introduction and the papers that follow in the special issue turn the critical study of data to consider algorithms'

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The emergence of algorithmic solidarity: unveiling mutual aid practices and resistance among Chinese delivery workers

Cited by 33 publications

References 35 publications

Algorithms and hegemony in the workplace: Negotiating design and values in an Italian television platform

Algorithms and hegemony in the workplace: Negotiating design and values in an Italian television platform

Algorithmic Collective Action in Machine Learning

Introduction to algorithmic antagonisms: Resistance, reconfiguration, and renaissance for computational life

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