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Workers Are Fighting Back Against Silicon Valley's Race to the Lowest Wage
There should be rules that prevent companies from using personal data to quietly lower pay for some people while others earn more for the same work, and working people should have the ability to organize.
Jun 12, 2026
Recent reporting has confirmed what many working people already feel every day: Companies are using personal data to decide the lowest wage someone will accept. What working people call exploitation, Silicon Valley calls innovation.
The seven largest gig platforms in the United States—Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Favor, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber—are using data that tracks how long its users stay on an app, what jobs they accept, and how urgently they need income. This algorithm calculates what the employers can pay to get the job done at the lowest rate individuals will accept.
Not what their labor is worth. Not what is fair.
Gig work was sold as a way to make extra money on a flexible schedule. But that’s not what it looks like today. Nearly 1 in 4 people in the US now participate in some form of gig or freelance work. What was supposed to be a side hustle has become a main source of income for one-third of gig workers.
This isn’t just about gig work. It’s about whether we allow companies to rewrite the rules of the economy—or whether we demand a system that works for the people in it.
As layoffs rise and wages fall further behind the cost of living, more people are being pushed into this kind of work to keep up. Black people and other workers of color, who tend to be more dependent on this type of work than white people, have been especially hard hit. But these unfair practices can impact all workers.
“Under surveillance wage systems, different people may be paid different wages for largely the same work, and individual workers cannot predict their incomes over time,” the Washington Center for Equitable Growth reports. “Not only has pay for app-controlled jobs decreased over time,” but “people who work longer hours are paid less per hour.”
This is what happens when an economy limits options for some people, then funnels them into systems that take advantage of that lack of choice. Now they’re going even further—using data to predict what some experts call a “desperation wage,” or the lowest amount someone will accept based on their behavior.
And it’s not just happening in gig work. Similar systems are being used to set rent and adjust prices for goods and services in real time. The same idea applies: Use data to figure out the worst price or wage someone will tolerate, then charge just below that or pay just above it.
When you combine higher unemployment, lower wealth, and fewer protections, you get a system where some people have less room to say no—and are more likely to be taken advantage of. The message is simple: Take it or leave it. And for many, leaving it isn’t an option.
That’s why we’re starting to see pushback. Working people are demanding more transparency. Some are organizing. New models are emerging that promise fairer pay and more control. But these changes are happening because people are speaking up—not because companies chose to act.
So what needs to happen next is clear. If companies are going to use algorithms to shape pay and access to work, those systems should be transparent. People should know how their pay is calculated.
Workers should be able to see how much of each transaction goes to them compared with how much the company keeps. There should be rules that prevent companies from using personal data to quietly lower pay for some people while others earn more for the same work. And working people should have the ability to organize and push back.
Because this isn’t just about gig work. It’s about whether we allow companies to rewrite the rules of the economy—or whether we demand a system that works for the people in it. Technology should make work more stable, more fair, and more predictable. Right now, it’s doing the opposite. And that’s not inevitable.
It’s a choice.
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It's Time to Set Global Labor Standards for the Gig Economy
Strong International Labour Organization standards should start from a basic principle: If a company controls the worker, it should bear the responsibilities that come with that control.
Jun 04, 2026
Most discussion of artificial intelligence and work is about the future: which jobs may disappear, which skills may lose value, which workers may be replaced. But for millions of gig workers, who work for online platforms such as Uber, this future is already here.
Algorithms set their pay, assign their tasks, monitor their performance, and determine whether they can keep working at all. The issue is not just that technology may someday replace workers. It is that companies are already using it to control them while shirking the responsibilities that normally come with that kind of control. This leaves many workers with unstable pay, dangerous conditions, and little recourse when something goes wrong. But this could be about to change.
From June 1 to 12 in Geneva, governments will enter a final round of negotiations at the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency dedicated to labor rights, over the first binding global standard for what is called platform work. This new treaty would regulate jobs managed through apps and websites, from taxis and delivery to home care, cleaning, and online piecework. Governments will decide whether companies that control this work should be required to treat workers as employees and comply with labor protections.
The stakes go well beyond the gig economy. Increasingly, workers report to an algorithmic boss in hospitals, care work, domestic labor, and beyond. The question is whether governments will set rules for how companies use these systems to manage work or let companies keep writing the terms themselves.
If a business model works only because it evades workers’ rights, that is an argument for regulation, not against it.
Gig work today offers a preview of what happens when they do. These companies promise flexibility and independence. For many workers, the reality is low and unstable pay; dangerous conditions; and no sick leave, unemployment insurance, or retirement benefits.
This isn’t a flaw in the system. It is the system. Companies use software to manage workers closely, then contracts to deny responsibility for them. The result is familiar cost-shifting in a new technological form: Workers absorb the risks while companies maintain control.
And it is scaling fast. DoorDash, which now operates in 30 countries, reported global revenue growth of 38% from the same period the previous year in the fourth quarter of 2025, and Uber, operational in about 70 countries, ranked ninth on Fortune’s 2025 list of the 100 fastest-growing public companies, with earnings per share growing 445% over three years. These companies create value by shifting costs off the company’s books and onto everyone else.
In recent months, Human Rights Watch spoke with workers in 10 countries. They described the same kinds of abuse everywhere.
In Beirut, we spoke with Apraham Orfalian, 74, who has worked for Uber since 2015. In October 2024, a passenger held a knife to his throat, forced him out of his car, and stole his vehicle and his phone. Without the car, he lost his income. Without sick leave, workers’ compensation, or support from Uber, he had to rely on his siblings to get by. “We are workers for Uber,” he said. “We generate income for them. At least they should show responsibility.”
In Gulf countries, delivery workers described cycling in extreme heat because they felt they could not afford to refuse orders, even when conditions were unsafe. In India, a worker injured on the job was left to cover his own medical costs. In the UK, another went months without income or injury compensation after being attacked while working.
Some governments have started to act. Mexico adopted legislation extending social security and labor protections to some full-time platform workers. In India, worker protests pushed the government to restrict 10-minute delivery promises that put dangerous pressure on delivery workers. Courts in the UK, France, Spain, and Italy have recognized rights that companies tried hard to avoid. But these gains are uneven and fragile. Without global standards, companies can keep exploiting gaps.
Strong ILO standards should start from a basic principle: If a company controls the worker, it should bear the responsibilities that come with that control. That means a presumption of employment in which companies exercise employer-like power; pay for all working time, which often includes waiting for assignments; safety protections; social security; protection from arbitrary deactivation; and a meaningful right to understand and challenge algorithmic decisions that shape pay, ratings, and access to work.
Some governments are trying to weaken those protections before they are written. They want standards that simply defer to weak national laws and define workers narrowly, and promise transparency without giving workers real power to challenge the decisions that shape their livelihoods.
Companies that depend on gig workers will say stronger rules would destroy flexibility. But that flexibility doesn’t really exist for many workers. Even if a worker can choose when to log on, they deserve protection from poverty wages, arbitrary dismissal, and uncompensated injury. If a business model works only because it evades workers’ rights, that is an argument for regulation, not against it.
This is about more than how companies that use gig workers operate. It is about whether labor law can keep pace with the way companies now organize labor. If workers cannot understand or challenge the systems that govern their work, software will become an efficient way to exercise control without accountability.
Governments meeting in Geneva can still set limits and protect workers’ rights. They should use that power before exploitation becomes the blueprint.
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For People of Color, Citizenship Offers No Protection Against ICE’s Techno Terrorism
The only thing that definitively clears suspicion for ICE is biometric identification. The presumption is that people may lie, documents may be forged, but biometric scans are objective and certain. People are guilty until an algorithm proves them innocent.
Dec 20, 2025
On December 9, Mubashir, a Minneapolis man who has chosen to only disclose his first name, was wrongly arrested by Immigration and Custom Enforcement for the crime of stepping “outside as a Somali American.” During his lunch break, masked men tackled him onto the ground, dragged him across the road, choked, and restrained him. Mubashir insisted that he was a US citizen. He repeatedly offered to show the men his digital passport, as well as to provide his name and date of birth to prove his citizenship. The agents refused.
Instead, they forced him to undergo a facial recognition scan to prove his identity. After several failed attempts to scan his face, he was arrested and taken to a detainment center. Mubashir was held for several hours without medical assistance or water, until eventually he was given the opportunity to present his passport. He was released after being subjected to fingerprint scanning.
Mubashir’s case is horrifying, but it’s becoming a common occurrence in President Donald Trump’s America. In April, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was arrested, detained. and threatened with deportation after “biometrics indicated he was not a citizen.” This, despite his insistence that he was a US-born citizen and offering his Real ID as proof. Lopez-Gomez was eventually released once his story gained national news coverage.
Another example: two ICE agents stopped Jesus Gutiérrez after he exited a Chicago gym. He didn’t have any identification on him, but he told officers he was a US citizen. Agents took a facial scan using the app Mobile Fortify to determine his legal status. While Gutiérrez wasn’t arrested, the experience left him traumatized.
Somehow, for the Trump administration, a voter ID is enough to prove one’s citizenship at the ballot box, but a Real ID is not enough proof if masked men randomly assault and question you about your legal status on the street.
In each of these cases, a person of color is stopped without probable cause or justification, forced to undergo biometric scans, and has their freedom left to the discretion of an algorithm.
These technologies function to silence those whose rights are being violated. Mubashir, Lopez-Gomez, and Gutiérrez all insisted that they were citizens—they all told the truth. However, for those agents, their words, even their state and federal documentation, were insufficient. Under ICE’s technologically driven terrorism, the only thing that definitively clears suspicion is biometric identification. The presumption is that people may lie, documents may be forged, but biometric scans are objective and certain. People are guilty until an algorithm proves them innocent.
However, biometric scanners are far from precision tools. Several of the problems with these technologies are spelled out in the Biometric Technology Report jointly submitted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). According to the report, factors such as “facial features, expressions, obstructions, exposure, and image quality” can all influence the results of biometric scanners. Moreover, a “key challenge” for facial recognition algorithms is that they are more likely to err “when comparing images of two people who look comparatively similar,” such as family members. These algorithms also “yield consistently higher false positive match rates when applied to racial minorities.” This is the algorithmic bias problem.
DHS, as a co-author of the report, is clearly aware of these problems. Yet, they still choose to prioritize these algorithms when confronting people they merely suspect of being undocumented—a feature that is impossible to tell simply by looking at a person.
This choice, however, is strategic. DHS and ICE are using these algorithms to help minimize their own responsibility. If Mubashir is arrested, it’s because the biometric scan was inconclusive. If Lopez-Gomez is detained, it’s because the algorithm says so. If Gutiérrez is released, it’s because the algorithm cleared him. The responsibility for the arrests, threats, and psychological harms these people experience has now been offshored onto an algorithm that cannot be held accountable.
After all, if the algorithm incorrectly identifies you as being undocumented, who do you appeal to? Even if the system is wrong, it’s now the voice of the accused against a voiceless algorithm. Unless an actual person is finally willing to listen to you, your words and documents won’t matter. Unless the press—an institution that is constantly under attack by the Trump administration—raises the alarm on your behalf, you may find yourself detained for weeks.
Even if someone speaks out after they’re released, DHS simply denies any wrongdoing. Despite more than 170 confirmed cases of US citizens being kidnapped by ICE agents, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem still claims that “we have never once detained or deported an American citizen. We have not held them or charged them. When we find their identity, then that is when they are released.”
What’s interesting here is this notion that “their identity” must be found, as if it’s some grand mystery that requires an entire array of surveillance and identification technologies. As if this problem hasn’t already been solved by the invention of identification documents. Somehow, for the Trump administration, a voter ID is enough to prove one’s citizenship at the ballot box, but a Real ID is not enough proof if masked men randomly assault and question you about your legal status on the street.
DHS claims that biometrics “help enable operational missions, both to support national security and public safety, and deliver benefits and services with greater efficiency and accuracy.” The reality is that these technologies widen the scope of who is vulnerable to ICE’s secret police. So long as the algorithm legitimizes the agent’s racial profiling, anyone can become a legitimate target of state violence. This violence has already been judicially legitimized by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s absurd ruling that immigration agents can deliberately target people on the basis of race, language, employment, or location.
The threat of biometric and surveillance technologies is only growing larger. DHS is still heavily investing in more invasive technologies that target undocumented immigrants and citizens alike. This will be a different struggle, but there are things we can do right now. First, we need to support independent news organizations that work to keep the public informed. The extent to which we know about many of these technologies is due entirely to the incredible work being done by journalists.
Second, we need to build tools and networks to support each other. This includes developing our own technologies to warn people about ICE raids, such as the website “People over Papers” and the “ICEBlock” app. Recording and posting pictures of ICE’s cruelty to popular social media sites is also incredibly important. The people who recorded Mubashir’s illegal arrest helped his story become national news.
Third, we need to put more pressure on Democrats to curb this violence. Democratic candidates running in 2026 are already integrating calls to “Abolish ICE” into their platforms. There is also movement at the state and federal level to stop ICE kidnappings. This includes bills like California’s SB 805 and SB 627 and Illinois’ HB1312, as well as HR 4456 and HR 4843. Even the recent House Homeland Security Committee saw Democrats holding Noem responsible for ICE’s abuses. These are positive steps, but more work is still needed.
While the road will be daunting, together, we can keep each other safe.
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'A Betrayal': Colorado's Democratic Governor Vetoes Bill Targeting Algorithmic Rent-Setting
The veto, said one critic, "sends the devastating message that corporate landlords can keep using secret price-fixing algorithms to take extra rent from people who have the least."
May 30, 2025
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender, used his veto pen on Thursday to block legislation aimed at banning rent-setting algorithms that corporate landlords have used to drive up housing costs across the country.
The bill, known as H.B. 1004, would have prohibited algorithmic software "sold or distributed with the intent that it will be used by two or more landlords in the same market or a related market to set or recommend the amount of rent, level of occupancy, or other commercial term associated with the occupancy of a residential premises."
A report issued late last year by the Biden White House estimated that algorithmic rent-setting cost U.S. renters a combined $3.8 billion in 2023. According to the Biden administration's analysis, Denver tenants have been paying an average of $1,600 more on rent each year because of rent-setting algorithms. The approximate monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city is $1,600.
Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, called Polis' veto "a betrayal" that makes "his priorities clear."
"Governor Polis had a simple choice: stand with working Coloradans or side with corporate landlords using secretive algorithms to allegedly price-fix rents," said Garofalo. "The governor talks a big game about affordability and abundance, but when given the chance to take real action—at no cost to taxpayers—he protected profiteers and let families keep paying a 13th month of rent. It's a betrayal of the values he claims to champion, and Colorado renters won't soon forget it."
"Governor Polis vetoed the most meaningful legislation we had to lower costs for renters."
Sam Gilman, co-founder and president of the Denver-based Community Economic Defense Project, said that the governor's veto "sends the devastating message that corporate landlords can keep using secret price-fixing algorithms to take extra rent from people who have the least."
"At a time when costs keep rising for working people and Republicans in Washington are attacking the social safety net," Gilman added, "Governor Polis vetoed the most meaningful legislation we had to lower costs for renters."
In a letter explaining his veto, Polis voiced agreement with the bill's supporters that "collusion between landlords for purposes of artificially constraining rental supply and increasing costs on renters is wrong." But he warned the bill could have the unintended effect of banning software that helps "efficiently manage residential real estate."
The governor's reasoning did not assuage critics.
"It stood up to corporate power," Gilman said of the legislation. "It promised to bring apartments back online. And it took on economic abuse that steals $1,600 a year from renters."
State Rep. Steven Woodrow (D-2) said it is "unfortunate that someone who claims to care so deeply about saving people money has chosen the interests of large corporate landlords over those of hard-working Coloradans."
State and local legislative efforts to rein in algorithmic rent-setting have gained steam in recent years following an explosive ProPublica story in 2022 detailing RealPage's sale of "software that uses data analytics to suggest daily prices for open units."
"RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money," the investigative outlet reported. "One of the algorithm's developers told ProPublica that leasing agents had 'too much empathy' compared to computer-generated pricing. Apartment managers can reject the software's suggestions, but as many as 90% are adopted, according to former RealPage employees."
The Denver Post reported Thursday that the vetoed bill "essentially targeted RealPage," which lobbied aggressively against a similar measure that died in the Colorado Legislature last year.
Polis also used his veto authority on Thursday to tank legislation that would have "limited how much ambulance services can charge for transporting patients and required health insurance companies to cover the cost, minus deductibles or copays," The Colorado Sun reported.
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Human Rights Experts: Meta's Trump-Friendly Policies Could Be 'Conduit' for 'Genocide'
"Rather than learning from its reckless contributions to mass violence in countries including Myanmar and Ethiopia, Meta is instead stripping away important protections that were aimed at preventing any recurrence of such harms."
Feb 17, 2025
An expert on technology and human rights and a survivor of the Rohingya genocide warned Monday that new policies adopted by social-media giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, could incite genocidal violence in the future.
On January 7, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to Meta policies that were widely interpreted as a bid to gain approval from the incoming Trump administration. These included the replacement of fact-checkers with a community notes system, relocating content moderators from California to Texas, and lifting bans on the criticisms of certain groups such as immigrants, women, and transgender individuals.
Zuckerberg touted the changes as an anti-censorship campaign, saying the company was trying to "get back to our roots around free expression" and arguing that "the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward, once again, prioritizing speech."
"With Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs lining up (literally, in the case of the recent inauguration) behind the new administration's wide-ranging attacks on human rights, Meta shareholders need to step up and hold the company's leadership to account to prevent Meta from yet again becoming a conduit for mass violence, or even genocide."
However, Pat de Brún, head of Big Tech Accountability at Amnesty International, and Maung Sawyeddollah, the founder and executive director of the Rohingya Students' Network who himself fled violence from the Myanmar military in 2017, said the change in policies would make it even more likely that Facebook or Instagram posts would inflame violence against marginalized communities around the world. While Zuckerberg's announcement initially only applied to the U.S., the company has suggested it could make similar changes internationally as well.
"Rather than learning from its reckless contributions to mass violence in countries including Myanmar and Ethiopia, Meta is instead stripping away important protections that were aimed at preventing any recurrence of such harms," de Brún and Sawyeddollah wrote on the Amnesty International website. "In enacting these changes, Meta has effectively declared an open season for hate and harassment targeting its most vulnerable and at-risk people, including trans people, migrants, and refugees."
Past research has shown that Facebook's algorithms can promote hateful, false, or racially provocative content in an attempt to increase the amount of time users spend on the site and therefore the company's profits, sometimes with devastating consequences.
One example is what happened to the Rohingya, as de Brún and Sawyeddollah explained:
We have seen the horrific consequences of Meta's recklessness before. In 2017, Myanmar security forces undertook a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims. A United Nations Independent Fact-Finding Commission concluded in 2018 that Myanmar had committed genocide. In the years leading up to these attacks, Facebook had become an echo chamber of virulent anti-Rohingya hatred. The mass dissemination of dehumanizing anti-Rohingya content poured fuel on the fire of long-standing discrimination and helped to create an enabling environment for mass violence. In the absence of appropriate safeguards, Facebook's toxic algorithms intensified a storm of hatred against the Rohingya, which contributed to these atrocities. According to a report by the United Nations, Facebook was instrumental in the radicalization of local populations and the incitement of violence against the Rohingya.
In late January, Sawyeddollah—with the support of Amnesty International, the Open Society Justice Initiative, and Victim Advocates International—filed a whistleblower's complaint against Meta with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concerning Facebook's role in the Rohingya genocide.
The complaint argued that the company, then registered as Facebook, had known or at least "recklessly disregarded" since 2013 that its algorithm was encouraging the spread of anti-Rohingya hate speech and that its content moderation policies were not sufficient to address the issue. Despite this, it misrepresented the situation to both the SEC and investors in multiple filings.
Now, Sawyeddollah and de Brún are concerned that history could repeat itself unless shareholders and lawmakers take action to counter the power of the tech companies.
"With Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs lining up (literally, in the case of the recent inauguration) behind the new administration's wide-ranging attacks on human rights, Meta shareholders need to step up and hold the company's leadership to account to prevent Meta from yet again becoming a conduit for mass violence, or even genocide," they wrote. "Similarly, legislators and lawmakers in the U.S. must ensure that the SEC retains its neutrality, properly investigate legitimate complaints—such as the one we recently filed, and ensure those who abuse human rights face justice."
The human rights experts aren't the only ones concerned about Meta's new direction. Even employees are sounding the alarm.
"I really think this is a precursor for genocide," one former employee told Platformer when the new policies were first announced. "We've seen it happen. Real people's lives are actually going to be endangered. I'm just devastated."
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Biden DOJ Sues Major Landlords Over Algorithmic Price Fixing
"If you mess with the price of rent, be prepared to meet the DOJ on the other side of that scheme!" wrote the American Economic Liberties Project.
Jan 07, 2025
The U.S.Justice Department on Tuesday announced that it has added six landlords as defendants in an antitrust lawsuit that the agency initially filed against the real estate software company RealPage, which the DOJ accused of engaging in a price fixing scheme that allows reduced competition between landlords so they can increase rents.
At the center of the case is RealPage's "algorithmic pricing software," which generates rent price recommendations using software based on their and their rivals' "competitively sensitive information," which they submit to RealPage, according to an August statement from the Department of Justice regarding the initial complaint.
The new complaint alleges that the six companies—Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC; Blackstone's LivCor LLC; Camden Property Trust; Cushman & Wakefield Inc and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC; Willow Bridge Property Company LLC; and Cortland Management LLC—"participated in an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters," according to a Tuesday statement from the Department of Justice.
The landlords collectively operate more than 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the agency.
The Department of Justice alleges that in addition to using RealPages's "anticompetitive pricing algorithms," the companies coordinated in a number of ways, including "communicating with competitors' senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics" and participating in "user groups" hosted by RealPage, during which landlords would discuss, for example, how to modify the software's pricing methodology and the companies' own pricing strategies.
"While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in today's lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high," said Doha Mekki, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, in the Tuesday statement.
Two states, Illinois and Massachusetts, have also joined the suit as plaintiffs.
The American Economic Liberties Project, a group that urges government to confront corporate concentration, touted the updates to the lawsuit, writing Tuesday, "If you mess with the price of rent, be prepared to meet the DOJ on the other side of that scheme!"
Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US, said in a Tuesday statement that "corporate landlords like Camden Property Trust, one of the landlord companies included in today's complaint, have reaped hundreds of millions in profits while using RealPage's algorithm, and that's just the tip of the iceberg."
According to the Tuesday release from the Department of Justice, pending a consent decree which must be approved by the court, the DOJ may resolve its claims against one of the landlords, Cortland, which would then cooperate with the Justice Department's investigation and litigation.
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US Trade Policy Shift on Big Tech Offers Hope Despite Huge Fights Ahead
The implications of the U.S. withdrawal of support for extreme Big Tech trade provisions for developing countries
and people across the world.
Dec 05, 2023
On October 24, the U.S. government withdrew support for a set of proposals for digital trade rules in talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the U.S. itself had proposed in 2019.
With regard to negotiations on digital trade, or “e-commerce,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative stated: “many countries, including the United States, are examining their approaches to data and source code, and the impact of trade rules in these areas. In order to provide enough policy space for those debates to unfold, the United States has removed its support for proposals that might prejudice or hinder those domestic policy considerations.” However, variations on the proposed rules continue to be supported by other WTO members, as can be seen in the most recent leaked text, and it remains to be seen where the U.S. will sit in relation to those.
The proposals, developed and backed by Big Tech lobbying groups, were intended to limit governments’ ability to regulate cross-border transfers of data, as well as governments’ regulation of source code and algorithms, a source of significant public debate in many countries around the world.
Although Big Tech includes the largest corporations in world history, the industry is subject to far less regulation than other economic sectors.
The Biden administration’s step back from outdated Big Tech proposals in trade agreements is a huge symbolic win for workers and small businesses, as well as for fairness, democracy, and development around the world. It’s a major win for the civil society groups that form part of the Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) global network that has campaigned against these rules since they were first proposed in other trade agreements as far back as 2015.
The U.S. first proposed these Big Tech rules when public opinion was largely unaware of the dangers of Big Tech corporations controlling our data, monopolizing key technologies, and preventing effective regulation of the digital environment.
Today, much of the world is far more aware of the damage caused by Big Tech as it monopolizes vast swathes of our economy to lock out fair competition for small businesses, profits from discrimination and surveillance, undermines civil rights, and foments extremism and disinformation. Using its vast economic power, it intervenes in policy-making processes to evade regulation, thereby weakening our democracies. Big Tech hoards, steals, and illegally collects data, the key economic resource today, thereby exacerbating inequities between industry owners and the rest of us. It also invades our privacy and makes us and our children less safe online. It violates workers’ rights in order to maximize profits.
All of these issues, and more, are subjects of contemporary debate, as well as multiple lawsuits, indictments, and financial penalties, in the U.S. and around the world.
For nearly a decade, Big Tech has tried to secure binding new global disciplines to constrain regulation on these issues and preempt appropriate governance through democratic channels. Although Big Tech includes the largest corporations in world history, the industry is subject to far less regulation than other economic sectors.
Big Tech’s proposals on source code are illustrative. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased exponentially in recent years. AI involves using large data sets to train computers to make decisions using the data provided to them, based on instructions from algorithms written into the source code.
However, algorithmic systems can exacerbate racial, gender, and labor discrimination; facilitate corporate evasion of regulatory oversight; and be used to prevent competition. Yet Big Tech is pursuing proposals that would bar governments from having access to the source code for algorithms in order to regulate it. Companies use AI to decide more and more business practices, many of which, it turns out, often violate competition rules, privacy, or civil or labor rights. Thus, Big Tech wants to lock source code up in permanent, binding “trade” agreements to ensure that governments can’t regulate most of their business practices!
Proponents argue that these source code provisions are needed to protect against forced technology transfer (usually referencing China). But this is not considered a real issue in most of the countries party to digital trade deals. Source codes are already protected by intellectual property law, including copyright and, in some cases, patents, as well as trade secrets. The proposed bans on source code disclosures would have represented an additional layer of protection for algorithms embedded in source code, affecting a broad swathe of human activity in which hardly any other counterbalancing human, social, economic, or cultural rights would have been affirmed.
Extensive further reasons why exceptions to the source code text in these agreements are insufficient — in the US, the European Union (EU), and around the world — can be found in the report, “The European Union’s Digital Trade Rules: Undermining European Policy to Rein in Big Tech.” For example, experts have noted that for algorithmic systems, “white box” testing (with access to the source code) is far superior to “black box” testing (without it). True public oversight would require scrutiny, and thus access to the source code, by academics, media, critical engineers, and trade unions, and not only by the regulators and judicial adjudicators currently recognized in the proposed provisions.
In a debate in the European Parliament with this author, the head of services and digital trade for the European Commission, Sylvia Baule, tried to claim that the “general exceptions” in the WTO — the model for those in the digital trade provisions — would be sufficient to protect the public interest. However, these provisions have been successful in defending public interests in trade cases only 2 out of 48 times in the WTO’s history, which Baule sheepishly acknowledged was “not 100 percent.” In addition, enforcement of public interest laws, labor rights, and civil rights such as privacy must not be subject to review by a trade tribunal, which prioritizes trade considerations over human and fundamental rights.
Finally, the exceptions contemplate, however insufficiently, only some known risks inherent to AI systems. As new risks and social harms become known, it will be even more important for governments to maintain the power to regulate algorithmic systems, including their source codes, to ensure that human rights are upheld and that harms to society are reduced.
[Countries] need to use the public’s data for the public’s interest, such as for addressingclimate change or resolving global pandemics — rather than having it monopolized for the private profit of a handful of Big Tech corporations.
Allowing Big Tech monopolies to establish rules enabling them to transfer data around the world without regulation would also further tilt the playing field against workers, consumers, citizens, small businesses, and developing countries generally, thereby locking in unequal access to the greatest source of wealth creation in the future: data. Countries need to be able to use their data for digital industrialization, based on decent job creation. They also need to use the public’s data for the public’s interest, such as for addressing climate change or resolving global pandemics — rather than having it monopolized for the private profit of a handful of Big Tech corporations.
When these risks are considered, together with the myriad harms to society and development potential becoming more well-known each day (and detailed in “Digital Trade Rules: A disastrous new constitution for the global economy written by and for Big Tech”), it is difficult to avoid a conclusion: there is no compelling justification for, and in fact an abundance of arguments against, including provisions that bar governments from requiring the disclosure of source code, and from regulating data flows, in “trade” agreements.
Other provisions would also be harmful for development, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s “Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce (JSI): Economic and Fiscal Implications for the South,” and much other research available at the OWINFS site here.
Nevertheless, Big Tech has thrown a predictable temper tantrum since the announcement, deluging the press with outlandish claims that this prudent and cautious change will somehow benefit China (it won’t) or that it’s harmful to workers (it isn’t, and Big Tech wouldn’t care anyway).
None of these claims have merit. Yet their lobbying offensive demonstrates clearly how much Big Tech stood to gain economically from the provisions.
The EU, Japan, Australia, Canada, and other countries pushing these proposals should also hit the “pause” button. Their national industries were never set to gain from them; rather it would have been the local divisions of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and the like, which formed the core of the lobbying pressure for the provisions around the world.
Developing countries being pressured to join these agreements can take this opportunity to strengthen their resolve. The Africa Group’s rejection of these proposals at the WTO in December 2017 set an important precedent. The majority of developing countries have stayed out of the so-called Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) by a breakaway group that led to negotiations on digital trade without a mandate from the WTO. This is despite an ongoing pressure campaign which includes the egregious use of “development aid” funds to lobby countries to join.
A few dozen developing countries have joined the JSI. Nigeria has proposed an exception that would allow them not to comply with the most problematic rules, but there’s no real chance it will be accepted. The change in the U.S. position is an important sign that the tide is turning against these rules, even in countries that have championed them. This new context provides a signal for countries to withdraw from participation. Many countries are also being pressured to accept the same provisions through bilateral or regional trade agreements, and these should also be rejected. And the US position could change again.
Preventing “trade” policy from imposing regulatory handcuffs on the digital economy is the first step toward using digitalization in the public interest, including for digital industrialization.
The change in the U.S. position is an important sign that the tide is turning...
Next, countries should fill that policy space with appropriate regulations. These would include rules to, for example, prevent monopolies and promote start-ups; prevent discrimination; ensure that civil rights, such as privacy and labor rights, are enforced in the digital sphere, and assess fair taxation; among others. For developing countries, technology transfer and a genuine commitment to supporting digital industrialization are top priorities.
Legal, policy, and programmatic developments in the EU, and some developing countries such as India, already go beyond the data flows and source code-related provisions proposed in the JSI. As their digitalization progresses, all countries will have to employ policies inconsistent with these provisions, as the U.S. — otherwise the home of digital laissez faire — has now realized.
In a few months’ time, WTO members will have to make a decision on another digital trade issue. More than 25 years ago, the U.S. snuck an agreement into the WTO to ban customs duties on electronic transmissions. But there is abundant evidence that Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft can afford normal trade taxes on electronic books, movies, music, and software, while still making huge profits selling these products around the world. This agreement has been extended over and over. These taxes could be essential revenue sources for developing countries to build their digital infrastructures, not to mention for public services, climate resilience, and other key needs. A tax holiday for the most profitable of Big Tech corporations does nothing for workers or small businesses, in the United States or around the world. Now, developed country members of the WTO must drop their insistence on extending it yet again.
Instead, the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions should be allowed to expire at the upcoming 13th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Abu Dhabi in February 2024. This will be the next test of the “worker-centeredness” of the trade policy of the U.S., the EU, and other countries.
Only with proper policy space — by keeping rules preventing effective regulation of the digital economy out of trade agreements — will citizens worldwide have a chance to rein in Big Tech.
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'Focus on Structural Power': Lawmakers Told to Press Big Tech CEOs on 'Toxic' Business Model
"Tech CEOs want to talk about their content policies and moderation efforts—because they know their core business models are indefensible."
Mar 25, 2021
With the CEOs of Twitter, Google, and Facebook set to testify Thursday on the role social media plays in promoting the kinds of misinformation and far-right extremism that sparked the deadly Capitol attack, anti-monopoly experts are urging members of Congress not to allow the executives to divert attention away from their fundamentally nefarious business model that thrives on the spread of dangerous lies.
"False or radicalizing content is not an unfortunate byproduct of the business model. It's core to these corporations' ad-based revenue models."
--Fight Corporate Monopolies
"The tech CEOs want to talk about their content policies and moderation efforts--because they know their core business models are indefensible and toxic," Morgan Harper, senior advisor at Fight Corporate Monopolies, said ahead of the House technology subcommittee hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 12:00 pm ET.
"If lawmakers are serious about fixing these problems," Harper added, "they must focus on structural power and resist the distractions. Anything less would be a massive failure."
Watch the hearing live:
Amid intensifying scrutiny from lawmakers and growing support for forceful antitrust and regulatory action, Facebook, Twitter, and Google in recent months have taken steps purportedly aimed at stemming the flow of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19 vaccines, elections, and more.
In the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection--fueled by lies that circulated widely on social media--Facebook and Twitter banned former President Donald Trump for being the chief architect and amplifier of those lies.
But Fight Corporate Monopolies and other advocacy groups argue that such self-regulation--by design--does nothing to address the fact the Facebook, Google, and Twitter's profits depend to a significant degree on cultivating outrageous falsehoods and using invasive surveillance advertising to ensure they spread to receptive audiences.
"False or radicalizing content is not an unfortunate byproduct of the business model. It's core to these corporations' ad-based revenue models," said Fight Corporate Monopolies. "Facebook and Google's YouTube generate a substantial portion of their revenue by selling user data to advertisers--which means any social media obsession becomes a profit hub."
Tech CEOs, the group warned, "want to talk about modest regulatory reforms that would allow them to continue operating in largely the same ways they do today. We have seen this misdirection before, after YouTube and Facebook supercharged a conspiracy theory claiming George Floyd's death was faked to reach 1.3 million viewers."
Amnesty Tech's acting deputy director Joe Westby offered a similar critique, noting that "the business model of Big Tech firms like Google and Facebook depends on capturing people's attention to generate ad revenue--to that end, the algorithms that determine what we see on Facebook's newsfeed or Google's YouTube frequently amplify discrimination and inflammatory content."
"These companies appeal to our emotions of fear and anger to keep us staring at our screens," said Westby. "This can have a devastating effect at a population scale, fueling polarization, division, or serious human rights consequences."
Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University, expressed hope that House panelists will ask Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg "how much money the company made off of QAnon," the far-right conspiracy theory whose adherents played a considerable role in the violent siege of the Capitol earlier this year.
Emma Ruby-Sachs, executive director of SumOfUs, said in a statement Thursday that Facebook, Google, and Twitter's "inability to deal with the violence, hate, and disinformation they promote on their platforms shows that these companies are failing to regulate themselves."
Ahead of the House subcommittee hearing, activists with SumOfUs gathered near the U.S. Capitol and displayed cutouts of tech executives dressed as insurrectionists to stress the role their platforms played in the violent January 6 attack.
"It's no shocker that Facebook failed to tell us about how its technology is being used to manipulate voters and spread harmful misinformation. How many times are we going to be fooled by these profit-hungry monopolies before Congress finally acts?" said Ruby-Sachs. "Letting Facebook decide how it should be regulated is like letting a criminal decide their own sentence."
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Why the Future Doesn't Need Us--Revisited
Aug 18, 2015
When the stunning article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" by Bill Joy, chief scientist for Sun Microsystems, made the cover of Wired Magazine in April 2000, it created quite a rumble in high-tech circles. It argued that "our most powerful 21st-century technologies--robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech--threaten to make humans an endangered species."
Bill Joy was writing about out-of-control, self-replicating technologies that, once the stuff of science fiction, were now on the way in decades, if not years. Tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and systems analysts are working in countries worldwide, churning out theories and specialized applications without much consideration of their overall impacts.
The funding has come from various governments' military budgets, heavily contracted out to industrial corporations, and, now increasingly, from the commercial pursuits of global corporations. The rate of knowledge production has been exponential as computers become faster and are programmed to become more self-reliant.
Seventy percent of the volume of stock trading in the U.S. is now driven by computers and their algorithms--a mere glimmer of the future pictured by Mr. Joy.
Sensitive futurists worry about both the intended and unintended consequences. Government militaries may intend autonomous weaponry for certain purposes, but the more dreaded unintended consequences arise when these weapons decide when and whom to strike.
Last month, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Elon Musk of Tesla Motors were some specialists who signed an open letter that called for a ban on autonomous weapons. The letter says, "If any major military power pushes ahead with artificial intelligence weapons, a global arms race is virtually inevitable," adding that "unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce."
Artificial intelligence (AI) or "thinking machines" are worrying far more of the serious scientists/technologists than those few who speak out publically.
In a BBC interview last December, Stephen Hawking, using a computer-generated voice, warned that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race... It would take off on its own and re-design at an ever-increasing rate." Hawking, a big thinker, noted that "humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded."
Self-restraint is not a characteristic of companies developing robotics for businesses that want to replace tens of millions of white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Look at the latest factories, refineries, and warehouses to illustrate what is coming fast. Even the work of lawyers is being automated.
But the warnings of people like Nassim Taleb, author of the runaway best-seller Black Swan, and Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, co-author of the textbook on artificial intelligence, who writes about "risks that could lead to human extinction," need to reach wider audiences.
Complex systems can be very fragile in ways not foreseen until they happen! That is why Bill Joy saw all three of these technologies--nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence--as interwoven systems expanding over the globe beyond human control.
In a recent interview (July 17, 2015) with Science magazine, Professor Russell was asked, "What do you see as a likely path from artificial intelligence (AI) to disaster?" He replied, " The routes could be varied and complex—corporations seeking a super-technological advantage, countries trying to build AI systems before their enemies, or a slow-boiled frog kind of evolution leading to dependence and enfeeblement, not unlike E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops."
He told Science he "is unaware of any large movement calling for regulation either inside or outside AI because we don't know how to write such regulation." Such, he noted, is the "bewildering variety of software."
In the meantime, Congress is oblivious to these grim scenarios. The Republicans in charge have no interest in holding educational public hearings because the corporations who own them have no such interest. Meanwhile, the myopic Democrats are too busy dialing for commercial campaign dollars to grease their campaigns to retake Congress in 2016.
Some of these Democrats know better. They championed the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), an arm of Congress established to research and advise members of Congress about such matters. When Congressman Newt Gingrich toppled the Democrats in 1994, one of his first acts was to defund and shut down OTA.
Congress has played ostrich ever since. The American people will surely pay the price unless a few, including leaders of the scientific community, organize and demand that Congress reinstate this technical warning system that OTA provided. With a tiny annual budget of $22 million, OTA saved far more in preventing boondoggles circulating on Capitol Hill.
None of this domestic inaction should preclude international efforts to expand the Geneva Conventions against chemical and biological warfare to cover these latest mass destruction weapons against humanity. This initiative would constitute an updated declaration of profound human rights.
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