Crowdworkers’ temporal flexibility is being traded for the convenience of requesters through 19 ‘invisible mechanisms’ employed by crowdworking platforms

Lascău, Laura, Gould, Sandy J. J., Brumby, Duncan P. and Cox, Anna L. 2022. Crowdworkers’ temporal flexibility is being traded for the convenience of requesters through 19 ‘invisible mechanisms’ employed by crowdworking platforms. Presented at: CHI '22, New Orleans, LA, USA, 30 April - 6 May 2022. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ‘22 Extended Abstracts). New York, NY, USA: ACM, 10.1145/3491101.3519629

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Abstract

Crowdworking platforms are a prime example of a product that sells flexibility to its consumers. In this paper, we argue that crowdworking platforms sell temporal flexibility to requesters to the detriment of workers. We begin by identifying a list of 19 features employed by crowdworking platforms that facilitate the trade of temporal flexibility from crowdworkers to requesters. Using the list of features, we conduct a comparative analysis of nine crowdworking platforms available to U.S.-based workers, in which we describe key differences and similarities between the platforms. We find that crowdworking platforms strongly favour features that promote requesters’ temporal flexibility over workers’ by limiting the predictability of workers’ working hours and restricting paid time. Further, we identify which platforms employ the highest number of features that facilitate the trade of temporal flexibility from workers to requesters, consequently increasing workers’ temporal precarity. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of the results.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Poster)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	9781450391566
Funders:	Engineering and Physical Science Research Council
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 September 2022
Date of Acceptance:	February 2022
Last Modified:	02 Sep 2022 10:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/148396

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