Ghost Workers! How Facebook and Amazon rely on an invisible workforce

tech.hindustantimes.com:

You don’t see them, but they’re there: hundreds of thousands of people sitting at keyboards for hours on end to keep online services humming along seamlessly. It can seem like the Internet operates entirely automatically, but it doesn’t. Humans are often hidden behind the scenes, working in real time to verify your identity, flag hate speech or caption videos. The market for on-demand, digital tasks is estimated by the World Bank to be worth $25 billion, with Facebook’s Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube some of the biggest buyers. Over the years they have collected an array of global on-demand digital workers whom they have kept at arms length. Therein lies the problem.

Rather than hire these workers directly, online companies coordinate them via outsourcing agencies like Accenture Plc or Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., who in turn hire from yet other agencies like some vast, intricate puppet show. The work is often secretive, the hours unstable and the pay low.  

When contrasted with the high-salaried engineers and policy wonks for Big Tech firms who enjoy catered meals and free karate lessons, contractors are cheap labor at the bottom of the ladder. There’s a term for what they do — “Ghost Work,” coined by Microsoft Corp. researchers Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, who made it the title of a 2019 book. 

Some contractors have begun to agitate for change, but it’s a long road piled high with obstacles. Earlier this month, several content moderators for Facebook in the U.S. threatened a work stoppage — the first known action of its kind by such workers — via an open letter to Accenture and Mark Zuckerberg. Hundreds of their colleagues had not received a paycheck for January and if the money