DiPLab co-director Antonio Casilli is featured in the culture pages of the Italian magazine L’Espresso, where he discusses the process that led to the release of his award-winning documentary In the Belly of AI, which he will present at the Festival del Pensare Contemporaneo in Piacenza, Italy on September 13, 2025. The 75-minute documentary, co-written with Julien Goetz and directed by Henri Poulain, exposes the hidden human costs behind artificial intelligence systems—from data centers consuming massive environmental resources to underpaid “data workers” in the Global South who process disturbing content to train algorithms, often developing psychological trauma in the process. Casilli’s appearance at this international philosophy festival, themed “Vite Svelate” (Unveiled Lives), aligns perfectly with his documentary’s mission to unveil the invisible labor powering AI systems. The film has earned critical recognition including the Outstanding Excellence at the Documentaries Without Borders festival the documentary has been shortlisting for the Melbourne documentary Film Festival. Find here the pdf version in Italian and the html version in English of Casilli’s article. EspressoDownload Last June, when Meta announced the appointment of Alexandr Wang to head its new artificial superintelligence program, the trade press hailed yet another enfant prodige of Silicon Valley. At only 28 years old, he has become one of the most influential faces in the race toward General Artificial Intelligence. A textbook American parable: brilliant MIT student, billion-dollar deals, rise to the top of the tech industry. Behind this glossy narrative, the reality is another: Wang is first and foremost a cofounder of Scale AI, and his entry into Meta coincided with the nearly $15 billion investment Zuckerberg’s behemoth made in his company. Founded only a few years ago, the startup that turned him into a star in the industry relies on a business that is anything but glamorous: employing millions of data workers who for paltry sums enter information, tag images, transcribe text, and filter sensitive content. These are the riders of artificial intelligence: precarious, underpaid jobs that fuel the technology of the future. While investors and the public are being dazzled by the rhetoric of superintelligence, behind the scenes is this industrial army that continues to work for Scale AI and hundreds of other such companies. The truth is that artificial intelligence, no matter how sophisticated it may appear, is still massively dependent on the most precarious human labor on the planet. An untold number of digital workers, estimated by the World Bank to be well over one hundred million globally. For years, the media have documented the working conditions of these “click proletarians.” In January 2023, two months after the launch of ChatGPT, a Time magazine investigation brought to light the existence of real digital sweatshops in Africa, where workers were paid as little as a dollar and a half an hour to “train” OpenAI’s artificial intelligence. Also supporting Time’s reporting was the research of academics like myself, who had been engaged in field investigations for years to document this reality. At that time I was already working with director Henri Poulain on what would later become our new documentary, In the Belly of Artificial Intelligence (In the Belly of AI, Federation Studios, 2025). My research activity has long been intertwined with the production of television investigations on the relationship between technology and work. This time we decided to shine a spotlight on a burgeoning phenomenon: the use, to make artificial intelligence work, of the most vulnerable people. From the victims of armed conflicts, to the millions of unemployed in the poorest continents, to low-income workers even in rich countries. These are not just companies like Scale AI, but international chains of exploitation in the digital economy. Uma Rani, an economist at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, explains this with disarming clarity during one of the first interviews in our documentary. Every time ChatGPT answers a question, a Tesla car avoids an obstacle, or Instagram recognizes a face in a photo, there is a stream of human labor running across the planet behind that automation. It’s not just code and algorithms: it’s sweat, toil and exploitation in countries where a few cents can make the difference between surviving and not making ends meet. But this interview was just the beginning. During months of filming we met dozens of people: inmates in Finnish prisons who for two euros a day train specialized intelligences, Ukrainian refugees reduced to tagging digital images to support their children, Indian migrants tagging images for a few cents an hour. But it was especially the slum workers in Nairobi, Kenya, who struck us the most. Not only because of the extremely exploitative conditions, but because of the devastating psychological consequences of their work. Many of them train the artificial intelligence of large multinational corporations not to generate illicit content: rape, torture, murder, abuse. This kind of activity, also called “moderation,” represents the darker side of artificial intelligence training. Even those who moderate content on Facebook are actually teaching automated systems to block violent or offensive photos and text. Those who perform these tasks often develop post-traumatic stress disorder after spending months viewing and cataloging gruesome content. In the face of these testimonies, we bumped into the wall of silence from Big Tech. What is the response of AI development companies in the face of all this? Virtually nothing. Apart from a few timid attempts to give themselves codes of ethics that have no legal standing, their main job seems to be to silence critical voices. The realization of In the Belly of Artificial Intelligence, more than in our other projects, has been a minefield: interviews with experts and witnesses canceled at the last minute, lack of approvals from institutions and government departments, intimidation by lawyers linked to large corporations and law enforcement. The most surreal episode happened in Nairobi, where we were interviewing some artificial intelligence trainers. While we were filming, a group of police officers raided the venue and pressured the crew to turn off the cameras. Kenya is in a particularly delicate position in dealing with tech giants. The country has become a crucial hub for these kinds of digital services, hosting untold numbers of data workers who work for global AI giants. This economic dependence makes the Kenyan government particularly receptive to pressure from multinational corporations. A few months after the police raid during our shooting, President William Ruto himself publicly intervened in lawsuits against companies that exploit workers at starvation wages. He announced an amendment to prevent future lawsuits against these companies: ‘We changed the law so no one can take you to court anymore.’” What we have realized during these years of work is that this army of data workers is not “invisible labor,” as it is often called. It is actively hidden by tech companies that use intimidation, legal hurdles and media manipulation to construct a storytelling that makes people like Alexander Wang the sole heroes of the digital revolution. But the real heroes are others. Ordinary people, without fame or recognition: the women and men who today are finally organizing in unions and associations to demand decent working conditions. It is they who, thanks in part to documentaries like ours, can now hope that their voices will finally be heard. Because behind every intelligent algorithm there is always human intelligence. And that intelligence deserves respect, dignity and justice.

DiPLab, as one of the co-organizers of INDL-8 (the 8th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor), has allocated 11 scholarships to support travel, accommodation, and meals of promising speakers. The theme of this year’s conference is “Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, Counter-uses, and New Directions in Research”. The recipients represent a global cohort of emerging scholars whose research touches upon the social and economic impacts of digital labor worldwide. The studies they will be presenting at INDL-8 span diverse topics and geographic contexts—from AI work in Romania, to gig work in India and Brazil, to freelance work in Argentina. They will be addressing critical issues like algorithmic management, gender dynamics, and health impacts. Here is the final list of our recipients: * Gonzague Isirabahenda (Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai [Cluj-Napoca], Romania) for the paper Reconsidering the implementation of Artificial intelligence in call centre jobs: Ethnographic study * Mariana Fernández Massi (CONICET, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires], Argentina) for the paper Algorithmic management and labour control on freelance platforms (in collaboration with Julieta Longo)   * James Oyange (African Content Moderators Union [Nairobi], Kenya), for the paper Empowering AI’s Invisible Workforce: Advancing Transparency and Data Protection for Data Workers. * Ethan Chiu (Yale University [New Haven], USA), for the paper The Human Circuit: A Comparative Study of the Semiconductor Industry’s Labor Conditions in the US and Taiwan * Debarun Narayan Dutta (Hertie School of Governance [Berlin], Germany) for the paper Orchestrating Mobility – How Immigration Agencies, Universities, and Platform Companies Construct the Migration and Labor Pathways of Indian Food Delivery Workers in Berlin * Dipsita Dhar (Centre for Studies of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University [New Delhi], India), for the paper From Riders to Influencers: The “Gigfluencer” Phenomenon in Ridesourcing DLPs (in collaboration with Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat) * Neha Gupta (Tata Institute of Social Sciences [Mumbai], India), for the paper Motherhood at the margins: ASHAs and the digital labour of antenatal care work * Søren Bøgh Sørensen (Copenhagen Business School [Copenhagen], Denmark), for the paper The Humans Behind the Filter: Uncovering the Costs and Consequences of Content Moderators in Kenya (in collaboration with Ephantus Kanyugi) * Amanda Biazzi (Universidade Estadual de Maringá [Maringá], Brazil), for the paper Technostress and the Health Related Risks on Content Production of Self-Employed Professionals: A Study with Brazilian Psychologists * Kanikka Sersia (Graduate Institute of International and Development studies [Geneva], Switzerland), for her paper Algorithms and the politics of production in the platform economy * Subhashri Sarkar (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research [Mohali], India), for the paper Precarity in Motion: Gendered Experiences in India’s Ride-Hailing Platform Work Please join us at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Aula Magna, Santa Cristina venue), on September 10, 9am to meet our recipients at the scholarship ceremony during the opening session of the INDL-8 conference.

Has artificial intelligence truly outgrown its “Global South data sweatshop” phase? The recent deluge of “AI tutor” job advertisements on LinkedIn targeting highly qualified candidates with advanced degrees might suggest so. When Sam Altman claims his chatbot is “PhD-level smart,” one might assume this reflects a genuine shift toward elite expertise in AI training. However, groundbreaking investigative reporting published by Africa Uncensored reveals a more troubling reality: these recruitment campaigns represent elaborate investor-facing theatrics rather than meaningful industry evolution. DiPLab applauds the exceptional work of data journalists and Pulitzer Center Artificial Intelligence Accountability fellows Kathryn Cleary and Marché Arends, whose year-long investigation exposed a curious case study in modern AI labor practices. Their research focused on companies like Mindrift and Scale AI’s Outlier, which have been flooding professional networks with advertisements for highly qualified and relatively well-compensated “AI tutors” and “trainers,” primarily targeting workers in high-income countries across North America and Europe. These positions appeared to target elite specialists rather than the typical pool of low-paid data annotators traditionally associated with AI training. The recruitment campaigns seems to suggest that major tech companies, in their aggressive push toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), are now seeking only the most brilliant minds to train sophisticated chain-of-thought models. The Africa Uncensored investigation reveals a starkly different reality. Once recruited, these qualified workers—many holding advanced degrees in physics, philology, and other specialized fields—were left idle for months, barely managing to earn double-digit wages. They were essentially serving as props in an elaborate performance of AI progress, carefully staged to impress investors and signal scalability to potential big tech clients. Meanwhile, on platforms targeting workers in the Global South, such as Mindrift’s sister platform Toloka, recruitment for poorly paid microtasks continued under largely exploitative conditions. This parallel system reveals the persistent nature of what researchers have termed “digital sweatshops.” For DiPLab and its research community, these findings represent “old wine in new bottles.” For nearly a decade, DiPLab researchers have been encountering and interviewing data workers who hold Master’s and Doctoral degrees—experts in their own right across diverse disciplines. Many of these highly qualified individuals remain unemployed due to dysfunction in traditional job markets, or find themselves forced to accept data work that neither matches their specialization nor provides adequate compensation. According to DiPLab co-founder Antonio Casilli, interviewed along prof. Edemilson Paranà and dr. Adio Dinika, in the exposé: “This is the biggest waste of social capital in human history. These people would be, should be, destined to the best jobs because they are probably the best and the brightest of their generation.” The mass recruitment strategy serves a specific economic function within what researchers call “labor hedging”—a tactic where companies amass large pools of workers primarily to signal scalability and attract major contracts. As the investigation revealed, Mindrift alone posted over 5,770 job listings across 62 countries in just four months, yet provided minimal actual work opportunities. This approach allows platforms to maintain what they euphemistically term “talent pools”—readily available workforces that can be presented to potential clients as evidence of operational capacity. When a major tech company inquires about access to specialized expertise, these platforms can point to their extensive databases of pre-vetted candidates as proof of their ability to deliver at scale. DiPLab’s research situates these practices within the broader context of platform capitalism surrounding AI development. The current AI boom and the associated recruitment theater serve as crucial signals in this speculative environment. As Casilli noted, “Investors are on LinkedIn too, they see this [mass recruitment], it is a signal for them. This looks more like a communications operation.” These platforms understand that LinkedIn functions not merely as a talent acquisition tool, but as a visibility platform for investor audiences. The courageous reporting by Cleary and Arends, supported by Africa Uncensored, an outlet willing to publish investigations that major US and European media often avoid, highlights the critical need for continued scrutiny of AI labor practices. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As one of the main organizers behind the 8th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor (INDL-8), DiPLab is proud to announce that our comprehensive program is now online, setting the stage for September 10-12, 2025, when Bologna will host one of the largest gatherings in digital labor research. his milestone event brings together a global network of researchers, practitioners, and activists to bridge the critical gap between academic investigation and the lived realities of workers’ struggles worldwide. Through our collaborative partnership with the University of Bologna, Fondazione Di Vittorio, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), we have crafted a program that reflects our commitment to understanding digital work not as an abstract phenomenon but as a concrete set of practices that reshape lives, communities, and economies across the globe. This year’s theme, “Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, counter-uses, and new directions for research,” emerges directly from DiPLab’s core mission to promote social change by illuminating the material conditions of the production of AI technologies. In particular, documenting how workers navigate, resist, and reimagine the digital economy’s constraints and opportunities has become a central issue. We have managed to accommodate nearly 200 oral presentations and posters, drawing speakers from six continents who will engage in discussions that stretch across disciplines and countries, creating the kind of interdisciplinary dialogue that has always been central to DiPLab’s approach. INDL-8 features keynote speaker Sarah T. Roberts (UCLA), who will examine “The Hydra of Artificial Intelligence: Labor Devaluation and Erosion of Human Agency,” drawing on her research as author of “Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media” and director of UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. María Luz Rodríguez Fernández (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) will present “Property rights and monetisation of the personal data of platform workers,” based on her work as former ILO Senior Specialist and author of over 200 publications on platform economy labor law. Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna) will deliver his talk “Beyond resistance. Digital Labor, Social Cooperation and Infrastructural Struggles,” contributing his expertise in political theory and contemporary capitalism analysis. The program also features a groundbreaking one-day event with a panel featuring AI data workers. The venue is actually the most original aspect, as the panel will take place inside an actual data center—the Tecnopolo DAMA. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to hear the firsthand accounts of the material conditions and human experiences behing AI, that our research seeks to understand and improve. Moreover, it will be a great opportunity to foster solidarity by establish a dialogue between European, South American, and African new and “legacy” union leaders and community organizers. The conference’s special union panel includes Joan Kinyua, President of the Data Labelers Association; Felipe Corredor Álvarez, co-founder of Riders x Derechos and former Deliveroo rider with a PhD in Social Psychology; and Kauna Malgwi, co-founder of the Africa Content Moderators Union, who was named among Time’s 100 most influential people in AI for 2024 and testified before the European Parliament on digital platform work conditions. Beyond traditional academic sessions, we have secured some of the University of Bologna’s most historic venues, situating our contemporary concerns within centuries of scholarly tradition, while our dedicated evening tour will explore Bologna through the lens of its activist movements, connecting past struggles with present-day digital labor organizing.

Italy’s national broadcaster Rai 1 has shined a light on a crucial but often overlooked aspect of artificial intelligence in their program “Codice.” Their recent report reveals the essential truth: AI is built on real human work. As you might expect, this report bears the fingerprints of our team at DiPLab Rai 1, with DiPLab’s co-founder Antonio Casilli being interviewed among the experts of AI supply chains.

At the WORK2025 conference in Turku, Finland, DiPLab co-founders Antonio Casilli and Paola Tubaro presented the results of their ongoing research documenting the human labor networks that power artificial intelligence systems worldwide. Casilli’s keynote (video 00:29-1:36:00), “Where does AI come from? Global circulation of data and human labor behind automation,” emphasized that AI systems are fundamentally built upon hidden human labor—specifically digital annotation, verification, transcription, moderation, and impersonation of data. This labor is fragmented, precarious, and carried out through digital platforms, predominantly by workers in the Global South who remain unrecognized in dominant AI discourses. Casilli presentation starts with an excerpts from the documentary In the Belly of AI (co-written with Julien Goetz and directed by Henri Poulain), describing the working conditions of women annotating data and producing AI from Finnish prisons for 3 euros per day. In the rest of his keynote speech, drawing from the decade-long research of the DiPLab program, Casilli explored how data work is organized across Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as Europe and North America, revealing models that support different types of data tasks while reinforcing enduring inequalities in wages, job security, and working conditions that particularly affect Global South workers. He highlighted the increasingly convoluted nature of these supply chains involving several intermediaries—from global tech firms to local freelancers—spanning continents, making it extremely challenging to trace accountability and working conditions. Tubaro’s presentation, “Women in the loop: the gendered contribution of data workers to AI,” examined who actually performs this crucial but undervalued work, focusing on women’s participation as the market has expanded. While data work appears theoretically well-suited for women since it can be performed remotely from home and platforms generally limit direct gender discrimination, statistical evidence reveals mixed patterns with women exceeding 50% of data workers in only four documented cases. Her research showed that in crisis-stricken countries like Venezuela, international platforms attract highly qualified workers in fierce competition, often dominated by young men with STEM backgrounds who crowd out women constrained by care responsibilities or fewer technical qualifications. Conversely, in more dynamic economies like Brazil, local job markets absorb highly skilled professionals, leaving platform work to more disadvantaged groups where women with family duties become more visible. This creates a paradox where women may be equally educated but lack time to cultivate advanced STEM skills, and as platforms demand longer, more specialized tasks, men increasingly gain advantages even in countries where women were once the majority. Both presentations converged on a critical insight: platform design treats workers as abstract entities, stripped of socio-economic and cultural contexts that shape real inequalities, while competition combined with local conditions deepens gender and regional disparities. sq

DiPLab researchers Paola Tubaro and Antonio Casilli recently completed a research mission to Santiago, Chile, participating in key academic events that advanced understanding of artificial intelligence’s social and environmental dimensions. Tubaro delivered a keynote address at the 4th annual workshop of the Millennium Nucleus on the Evolution of Work (M-NEW), where she serves as a senior international member. The interdisciplinary workshop convened labor scholars from across Latin America and internationally to examine contemporary work transformations. Her presentation drew on DiPLab’s multi-year research program investigating the invisible human labor underlying global AI production. Tubaro’s analysis traced the evolution of this work form over two decades, demonstrating that while core functions in smart system development have remained consistent, the scope and volume of these tasks have expanded significantly. Tubaro and Casilli also participated in the inaugural meeting of SEED (“Social and Environmental Effects of Data connectivity: Hybrid ecologies of transoceanic cables and data centers in Chile and France”), a new collaborative research project between DiPLab and the Millennium Nucleus FAIR (“Futures of Artificial Intelligence Research”). The project has received joint funding from the ECOS-SUD programme (France) and ANID (Chile) to analyze the complete AI value chain, examining production, development, employment impacts, usage patterns, and environmental consequences through comparative study of the Valparaíso-Santiago de Chile and Marseille-Paris corridors. In their SEED presentations, Tubaro and Casilli introduced the concept of the “dual footprint” as an analytical framework for understanding the interconnected environmental and social impacts of AI systems. This heuristic device captures commonalities and interdependencies between AI’s effects on natural and social environments that provide resources for its production and deployment. DiPLab researchers framed the AI industry as a transnational value chain that perpetuates existing global inequalities. Countries driving AI development generate substantial demand for inputs while externalizing social costs through the value chain to more peripheral actors. These arrangements distribute AI’s costs and benefits unequally, resulting in unsustainable practices and limiting upward mobility for disadvantaged countries. The dual footprint framework demonstrates how environmental and social dimensions of AI emerge from similar structural dynamics, providing a unified approach to understanding AI’s comprehensive impact on global resource systems.

A recent AlgorithmWatch investigation featuring DiPLab co-director Antonio Casilli and affiliate Milagros Miceli exposes the systematic exploitation of data workers powering the generative AI boom. Authored by journalists Michael Bird and Nathan Schepers, the article, published in English on AlgorithmWatch and in German in the newspaper Taz, is titled “The AI Revolution Comes With the Exploitation of Gig Workers”. The findings align perfectly with DiPLab’s ongoing research mission: revealing the hidden human labor that makes artificial intelligence possible. “This has been business as usual for those companies and platforms for a number of years,” Casilli explains in the investigation. “Since the beginning, they have been predicated on wage theft.” Meanwhile, Miceli, sociologist and computer scientist at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin, argues that BPO companies strategically “give the impression that training is a form of qualification,” making unpaid work seem like a bonus rather than exploitation. The investigation reveals how AI companies like Scale AI and Outlier rely on vast networks of precarious workers who face unpaid training time, wage theft, and systematically violated labor standards. “Unpaid time that is attached to this type of work is a form of exploitation,” Miceli adds, noting how workers often don’t even recognize wage theft because it’s become so normalized in the gig economy. The AlgorithmWatch investigation proves that DiPLab’s research agenda remains urgently relevant. The AI revolution is here—but it’s built on the backs of workers whose stories deserve to be told and whose rights deserve protection.

It has been a particularly productive semester for DiPLab researchers and affiliates in terms of publishing articles and book chapters. Here are the complete citations (and open access links) of our recent contributions that compare data work in various countries. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Special issue of New Political Economy guest-edited by Uma Rani Amara and Nicolas Pons-Vignon on “Power relations in the digital economy” has been published as Volume 30, issue 3 of the journal. It includes our article on “Where does AI come from?”, a comparison of data work in Venezuela, Madagascar, and France. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, and Juana > Torres Cierpe. 2025. “Where Does AI Come from? A Global Case Study across > Europe, Africa, and Latin America.” New Political Economy 30 (3): 359–72. > doi:10.1080/13563467.2025.2462137. (preprint access here: > https://inria.hal.science/hal-04933816v1) The Journal Globalizations has published a special issue on The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America. It features our article on AI labor in Brazil and Argentina. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Mariana Fernández Massi, Julieta Longo, > Juana Torres Cierpe, and Matheus Viana Braz. 2025. “The Digital Labour of > Artificial Intelligence in Latin America: A Comparison of Argentina, Brazil, > and Venezuela.” Globalizations, February, 1–16. > doi:10.1080/14747731.2025.2465171. (preprint access here: > https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04935984v1) The Handbook of Digital Labor, edited by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, and Richard Maxwell, has been released by Wiley Blackwell. This comprehensive work brings together leading voices on the transformations of labor in the digital age. Among its contributions, our chapter on global inequalities and AI, comparing Venezuela, France, Madagascar, and Brazil. > Casilli, Antonio A., Paola Tubaro, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, Juana > Torres-Cierpe, et al. 2025. Global Inequalities in the Production of > Artificial Intelligence: A Four-Country Study on Data Work. In: Jack Linchuan > Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, Richard Maxwell (eds.). The Handbook of Digital Labor, > Wiley Blackwell, pp.219-232, 2025, ISBN10: 9781119981800. (preprint access > here: https://hal.science/hal-04742532v2) The journal New Technology, Work and Employment has made available, as an online first, the new article by Juana Torres-Cierpe and Paola Tubaro about Venezuelan data workers. > Torres-Cierpe, Juana and Paola Tubaro. 2025. Uninvited Protagonists: The > Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers. New Technology, Work and > Employment. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12340 (preprint access here: > https://hal.science/hal-05041068v1)

We’re proud to share that DiPLab research was featured at the 9th Regulating for Decent Work (RDW) Conference, hosted by the International Labour Office in Geneva from 2–4 July 2025. In a joint paper with Nagla Rizk (A2K4D, American University in Cairo), DiPLab’s Myriam Raymond presented research titled Regulating Digital Platform Payments: Barriers to Fair Compensation and Policy Implications for Egyptian Microworkers. > This study draws on extensive survey data (N=948) and focus group discussions > with Egyptian microworkers performing small online tasks on global platforms.  > It sheds light on the lived reality of financial precarity: unpredictable > payments, opaque fees, currency exchange losses, and reliance on informal > intermediaries. Many workers remain excluded from fair financial participation > due to technical, institutional, and regulatory gaps. Our findings emphasize > that these payment frictions are not marginal inconveniences—they are central > to workers’ experience and reinforce their vulnerability in ways largely > invisible to existing labor regulation. The paper calls for targeted financial > inclusion policies, better platform accountability, and a serious rethink of > regulatory frameworks to protect microworkers as legitimate workers deserving > fair pay and institutional support. > > Within the frame of this ongoing study, a closed-door meeting with key > policymakers and public actors will be convened on November 2025. Amongst the > participants: Egyptian Ministry of ManPower, Central Bank of Egypt, Central > Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), ILO Egypt’s office, > National Telecommunications Regulating Agency (NTRA), Financial Regulatory > Authority (FRA), and the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Development Agency > (MSMEDA).   This year’s RDW theme focused on Strengthening labour institutions and worker voice to deliver decent employment. It brought together an extraordinary range of grounded research from all over the globe—scholars, policymakers, and practitioners all exchanging ideas on how to make work fairer, safer, and more inclusive. Every session, keynote, and plenary was packed with insights. It was a privilege to be part of such a collective effort where research meets purpose and gives real meaning to what we do.

The Défenseur des droits, France’s national rights watchdog, has just made public their latest decision (Decision No. 2025-086) concerning a major French platform that offers internet users micro-tasks in exchange for payment. This landmark ruling follows an in-depth investigation into discriminatory recruitment practices—based on nationality, bank domiciliation, and place of residence—brought to light with the support of DiPLab’s research, after the French data authority CNIL – Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés had already flagged the platform. DiPLab’s 104-page anonymized report “Discriminations and vulnerabilities in France’s micro-work platforms” (in French) provided critical evidence and analysis. Our key scientific contribution was the development of a “vulnerability index,” a novel statistical measure that reveals how economic precarity can lead to indirect discrimination among microworkers. This tool—pioneering in its application to platform-based data work—helped demonstrate how structural conditions on these platforms can unfairly disadvantage certain groups. The Défenseur des Droits’ final recommendations to the platform include eliminating discriminatory registration criteria, increasing transparency in worker evaluation and payment systems, limiting intrusive personal data collection, and auditing algorithmic systems for potential biases. This decision carries significant implications for DiPLab. Being formally consulted and cited in such a high-level ruling affirms the scientific value and societal relevance of our work. It validates our methodological innovations—particularly the vulnerability Inde—as tools for understanding and addressing structural inequalities in digital labor. The outcome strengthens DiPLab’s position as a trusted partner for institutions, NGOs, and regulators working on platform fairness and algorithmic accountability, while providing a concrete case study that will inform future research. For a preview of our continuing work in this area, we invite you to attend our upcoming presentation at the INSNA Sunbelt Social Network Conference (June 23–29, 2025, Paris). Paola Tubaro, Antonio Casilli, José Luis Molina, and Antonio Santos-Ortega will present a comparative study on data worker vulnerability in France and Spain (see link in comment).