Privacy, Surveillance, and Power in the Gig Economy

Abstract

This paper addresses calls for more research on privacy in the gig economy across a range of work platforms. To understand privacy risks, behaviors, and consequences from the perspective of workers, we analyzed workers' posts about privacy and surveillance from 12 Reddit forums representing four main types of work (crowdwork, freelancing, ridesharing, and delivery). We found that workers perceive both platform companies and customers as sources of unnecessary and opaque data collection and surveillance that can threaten their privacy, safety, and economic outcomes. Workers also engage in many risk mitigation strategies, including self-protective surveillance behaviors such as video recording themselves and customers, as a costly but necessary response to power imbalances created by surveillance. Based on our multi-platform analysis, we present a guiding set of questions that workers, designers, and researchers can use to assess the privacy implications of current and future gig work platforms.