Alex Rosenblat at The New York Times: “For Uber drivers, the workplace can feel like a world of constant surveillance, automated manipulation and threats of “deactivation”…
Data and algorithms are presented as objective, neutral, even benevolent: Algorithms gave us super-convenient food delivery services and personalized movie recommendations. But Uber and other ride-hailing apps have taken the way Silicon Valley uses algorithms and applied it to work, and that’s not always a good thing.
The algorithmic manager seems to watch everything you do. Ride-hailing platforms track a variety of personalized statistics, including ride acceptance rates, cancellation rates, hours spent logged in to the app and trips completed. And they display selected statistics to individual drivers as motivating tools, like “You’re in the top 10 percent of partners!”
Uber uses the accelerometer in drivers’ phones along with GPS and gyroscope to give them safe driving reports, tracking their performance in granular detail. One driver posted to a forum that a grade of 210 out of 247 “smooth accelerations” earned a “Great work!” from the boss.
Surge pricing, which multiplies prices for passengers and earnings for drivers during periods of high demand, is another form of algorithmic management that encourages drivers to relocate to certain areas at certain times. The drivers get in-app notifications, heat maps and emails with real-time and predictive information about spikes in demand. A driver who wants to go home and is trying to log out might be prompted with an automatic message: “Your next rider is going to be awesome! Stay online to meet him.”
It’s easy enough to dismiss those gentle nudges, but in-app notifications like “Fares are at 3.0X right now!” or “There are lots of events in New Orleans this weekend where we expect Uber demand to be high!” raise expectations and are hard for drivers to ignore. But by wording its expectations as helpful hints, rather than orders, ride-hailing companies can avoid the appearance of a direct supervisory relationship with their drivers. Some Uber drivers say they feel misled when they travel to a surge area in high demand only to find that it has disappeared. The consensus in driver forums is, “Don’t chase the surge.”
Uber takes fees and commissions on every ride, and complaints about low pay and rate cuts are common. In 2016, Uber started charging passengers on some rides more than drivers were paid, without notifying them, in a policy called “upfront pricing.”…(More)”.
Full Post: When Your Boss Is an Algorithm