The cost of living crisis is bad enough for precarious gig workers to cope with, but they also face the ongoing threat of the online reviews that govern how much work they get and how much they’re paid for it. Research from the University of Oxford highlights how fearful many gig workers are about their future income.
The researchers analyzed the reputation systems used by gig economy platforms, such as Upwork. They found that these systems often lack transparency and are highly volatile, which can leave workers vulnerable to malicious customers.
Unfair feedback
The results showed that around 70% of gig economy freelancers were worried about unfair feedback from clients negatively impacting their future income.
“It was shocking how workers expressed continuous worry about the potential consequences of receiving a single bad rating from an unfair or malevolent client, and how this could leave them unable to continue making a living,” the researchers explain.
It’s part of a growing trend towards so-called “reputational insecurity”, with self-employed contract workers suffering from greater instability about their access to work. This is especially so in the gig economy, where platforms rely on algorithmic systems to rank workers based on the ratings they receive from customers. The researchers argue that these systems are often unstable and opaque, and create considerable anxiety about their impact on income.
Slaves to the algorithm
The important, yet often fleeting, nature of reviews meant that many workers have been putting in considerable amounts of extra work to avoid negative ratings. This meant around 70% of gig workers reported feeling insecure about their reputations.
“We discovered some workers continued to make free revisions for clients to help ensure their satisfaction and favorable feedback,” the researchers explain. “Others canceled the contract and provided their work for free if they felt the customer was unhappy and might leave a harmful rating.”
What’s more, the researchers believe that companies were often operating with insufficient checks and balances to ensure the ratings were reliable, and neither were robust processes in place to help correct or redress the balance provided.
“This study is important as tech companies continue to rewire the social fabric of our lives and platform rating and reputation systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous beyond the gig economy,” the authors explain. “Therefore, countering these processes of reputational insecurity will not only be an important policy endeavor for improving gig work but also the wider platform economy.”
