Data Workers Detail Exploitation by Tech Industry in DAIR Report
The essential labor of data work—such as moderation and annotation—is systematically hidden from those who benefit from it. A new project, Data Workers Inquiry, highlights the lived experiences of data workers globally, revealing the costs and opportunities of tech work abroad. Many such tasks, often psychologically damaging, are outsourced to poorer countries where workers accept lower wages. This labor market mirrors other hazardous jobs, including electronics recycling and shipbreaking. While moderation or annotation work doesn’t physically endanger workers, it is neither safe nor rewarding.
The Data Workers Inquiry, a collaboration between DAIR and TU Berlin, was influenced by Marx’s work and aims to document labor conditions in politically actionable reports. Launched today, these freely available reports spotlight the cheapest labor markets where human expertise is bought to avoid public relations issues. For instance, flagged content might be moderated by a worker in Syria earning minimal compensation.
These reports are anecdotal and emphasize systematic observation over quantitative analysis. Quantifying these experiences fails to capture the real costs, such as the mental health toll on moderation workers. Reports rarely address the severe psychological consequences faced by these workers, such as nightmares or drug dependency. Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan’s report on Kenyan data workers, for example, details their struggles with mental health and drugs while working for Sama.
Recruited to handle flagged content, these workers confront continuous streams of violence, gore, sexual abuse, and hate speech, affecting performance and docking pay if quotas aren’t met. The work environment is described as soul-crushing, causing long-term psychological damage. Moderators often lack proper support and turn to drugs to cope.
Other reports include personal stories or unique formats, like Yasser Yousef Alrayes‘s short film documenting his experience as a data annotator in Syria, working to fund his education despite poor task definitions and client demands. Workers like Yasser are often masked behind numerous organizational layers, obscuring responsibility if issues arise.
Milagros Miceli, leading the project, noted they had received no comments or changes from companies implicated in the reports yet. However, the project plans to continue, targeting new regions such as Brazil, Finland, China, and India.
While some may dismiss these reports for their anecdotal nature, these stories hold intrinsic truth and should concern all who depend on these workers—from everyday social media users to corporate giants.
Source: Data workers detail exploitation by tech industry in DAIR report.
