Thread by @ljin18

The labor movement has given us many of our current rights, including paid sick leave & protection against job discrimination.

But as work shifts to platforms, what becomes of participants' ability to effect change?

New essay w/ @skominers & @LilaShroff

hbr.org/2021/09/a-labo…

Gig workers and content creators are now reckoning with the fact that their livelihoods depend on the actions of platforms that they have little ability to sway, and to which are locked in given lack of data ownership and portability.

As a result, a new form of labor activism is appearing in the platform economy, which we call decentralized collective action or DCA.

DCA aims to achieve many of the same goals as historical labor movements: better pay and working environments, protection from harassment, etc.

Historically, collective action—workers organizing and negotiating with companies—has helped promote social change and regulate the relationship between companies & workers.

Labor unions grew out of the Industrial Revolution and fought for better, safer working conditions.

At the turn of the 20th century, these labor movements won many of the legal protections workers enjoy now, including the right to unionize and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established minimum wage, overtime pay, and the 40-hour work week.

But today, gig workers and creators exist in a new, liminal labor category, without rights to unionize or the protections of employees, and are subject to the monopsony power of a small number of algorithmic managers that unilaterally dictate the terms of their work.

Gig workers and content creators have little recourse to suboptimal policies and other negative experiences.

The set of alternative platforms for reaching a large number of potential customers is small, and low barriers to entry on the supply side limits negotiating leverage.

Today, platform worker grievances include issues such as ownership of data, content moderation, ability to reach customers, harassment in virtual “workplaces,” and monetization policies.

Decentralized collective action is a set of tactics to effect change, that is more bottom-up and diffuse than historical labor unions wherein workers directly negotiated with management.

With DCA, platform workers team up with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion; voice opposition on online forums and to the media; undermine or challenge a platform’s normal operations; leverage the power of their audience or customers; and at times, exit platforms altogether.

There are essentially two choices for platform workers today when confronted with suboptimal situations: voice or exit.

- Voice involves raising awareness to improve/resolve a situation
- Exit entails leaving the environment entirely, often in search of a better alternative

Recently, there have been many expressions of creator & gig worker voice:

- Twitch streamers took a day off to protest harassment & demand product changes
cnn.com/2021/09/02/tec…

- DoorDash drivers coordinate to decline orders to raise floor prices bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Creators & gig workers are utilizing social media & other public forums to raise awareness of their frustrations:

- This TikTok user's emotional account of the realities of driving for delivery apps
tiktok.com/@deliveryguy10…
- @hankgreen on the Creator Fund tiktok.com/@hankgreen1/vi…

We classified several sub-categories of decentralized collective action:

1) Informal unionization e.g. Instagram Memers Union or Black creators TikTok strike
theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
nytimes.com/2021/06/25/sty…

2) Mutual aid, where workers engage in reciprocal support

3) Third-party product enhancement: digital tools that improve the worker experience, e.g. an app that cross-checks drivers' pay vs. mileage
wired.com/story/gig-work…

4) Information leveling, or workers pooling together learnings/information, e.g. @FYPM_vip for brand campaigns

5) Algoactivism, or resistance of the managerial control increasingly exercised by algorithms (e.g. the DoorDash #DeclineNow movement)

6) Public media campaigns, when workers share instances of mistreatment or frustration on social media

Ultimately, however, the lack of meaningful evolution in platform policy in recent years indicates that decentralized worker voice is an ineffective method for instigating long-lasting change.

At the end of the day, platforms still have leverage & workers have few alternatives.

We believe that the platform labor movement then will be more successful using DCA to build a set of more worker-friendly platforms that disrupt the existing ecosystem — and thus enable participants to *exit*.

We are extremely excited about cryptonetworks and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as the future of internet-native worker enfranchisement.

Cryptonetworks address two major issues that have prevented traditional cooperative businesses from becoming pervasive: access to capital and complexity of governance.

With the issuance of a token, cryptonetworks distribute ownership to all stakeholders and reward actions that contribute to a network’s success, and benefit from market speculation and can raise capital that enables them to be competitive vs. traditional corporations.

Experimentation around internet-native governance endeavors also enables diverse member bases to coordinate decision-making at scale.

Examples:

- The digital art marketplace @SuperRare recently launched a token to decentralize curation and oversee a treasury that is collected from platform commissions and fees.

- @YieldGuild a gaming guild that trains and onboards players into play-to-earn video games can be seen as the crypto-native version of a workers’ union; its large contingent of gamers allows it to negotiate for better platform policies and game design.

New alternatives will succeed at scale only when they can be genuinely — and holistically — better for workers.

That, in turn, sets into motion a positive macro flywheel, pressuring incumbents to evolve their policies and products to favor platform participants.

Decentralized collective action helps us move in the right direction — both by influencing current platforms, and by forging the next generation of disruptive networks that are more aligned with their participants.

In the coming months and years, as creators and gig workers realize their power, decentralized collective action movements will grow in number.

As demonstrated throughout history — from the French Revolution to the growth of Wikipedia and Bitcoin — the power of the distributed many can greatly outperform the power of the hierarchical few.

Thank you to our amazing editor, @tom_stackpole!!!

Tons of more detail in the full essay:

HBR: hbr.org/2021/09/a-labo…
Substack: li.substack.com/p/a-labor-move…