Uber manipulates driver-facing algorithmic information to depress wages

Evidence

Alex Rosenblat and Luke Stark92 review Uber’s record of economic manipulation through surge pricing and sudden driver deactivation as well as the general opacity of its algorithmic processing from the point of view of its drivers (the company can make it seem as though there are more drivers available in a location than there actually are, simply to push worker wages down). Unsurprisingly, Uber’s retention rates are quite low, with 96 percent of new Uber drivers quitting their jobs within their first year. This paints a picture of the Uber driver as the least important part of the equation, truly an expendable member of a reserve army. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 224

Categorization

• QUESTION: 96% first-year driver quit rate and fake-driver-supply manipulation are striking empirical claims worth verifying against the Rosenblat-Stark source.
• XREF: This echoes the surveillance-capitalism reserve-army framing of Google/Uber labor from earlier in the book and Couldry/Mejias’s core data-colonialism thesis. — connects to: AI reduces job quality by devaluing human labor. — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 126; Uber’s profit-less growth enriched investors while impoverishing its worker base; Algorithmic services extract unpaid user labor that trains the very algorithms — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 315

Broader Connections

• AI reduces job quality by devaluing human labor. #expands (0.78) — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 126
• Uber’s profit-less growth enriched investors while impoverishing its worker base #corroborates (0.78)
• Algorithmic services extract unpaid user labor that trains the very algorithms #complicates (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 315