In a new report, Moira Weigel focuses on the third party sellers who fuel the company’s global retail business. — In her Data & Society report Amazon’s Trickle-Down Monopoly: Third Party Sellers and the Transformation of Small Businesses, Moira Weigel tells the story of a group of hidden intermediaries who have played key roles in making Amazon one of the most powerful corporations in the world, while remaining mostly invisible…

This series of essays seeks to expand our vocabulary of algorithmic harms — and with it, our capacity to defend ourselves against them. — By Jacob Metcalf, Emanuel Moss, and Ranjit Singh With artificial intelligence — computational systems that rely on powerful algorithms and vast, interconnected datasets — promising to affect every aspect of our lives, its governance ought to cast an equally wide net. Yet our vocabulary of algorithmic harms is limited to…

The rise of data-centric technologies is an opportunity for the labor and racial justice movements to build new bridges. — Although the labor and racial justice movements have overlapping goals, their work has often been siloed. But with data-centric technologies increasingly impacting both movements, there are opportunities for them to build new bridges. With this in mind, over the past year, Data & Society’s Labor Futures team gathered an interdisciplinary…

Data & Society’s Top Reads — As we put the finishing touches on 2022 and get ready for our holiday break, we’re taking a moment to look back on some of our favorite ideas and publications of the year. Thank you for reading and being part of our community! We’ll be back with more in 2023. Responding to the Complexity of Our Data-Centric World …

Ranjit Singh and Rigoberto Lara Guzmán discuss the evolution of their project and the relationship of stories to research. — In October 2021, Data & Society researcher Ranjit Singh and senior producer Rigoberto Lara Guzmán hosted an experimental workshop that was designed to produce new ways of engaging with the global impacts of digital technologies, with an emphasis on storytelling as both a research craft and an intellectual practice. Yesterday…

“​​She’s never just doing one thing; she’s always doing 100 things that connect together over time.” — Earlier this month, Data & Society’s founder, danah boyd, announced that she was stepping down from her role as the organization’s board chair — and that she had decided to step away from the board entirely when her current term ends and join D&S’s advisory group. When she does so…

Aiha Nguyen and Eve Zelickson discuss security, privacy, control, and their new report: At the Digital Doorstep — Last week, Data & Society published At the Digital Doorstep: How Customers Use Doorbell Cameras to Manage Delivery Workers, a report by D&S Labor Futures program director Aiha Nguyen and research analyst Eve Zelickson. The report draws on interviews with delivery drivers and video doorbell users from across the US…

Brazil’s click farms promise easy money, but mostly replicate the problems of informal work. — The platformization of labor affects workers of all kinds, across platforms. On “click farm” platforms in Brazil, workers perform countless fragmented data tasks. They spend hours every day clicking, following, and commenting on social media accounts — and earning less than a penny for each task. Professor Rafael Grohmann, assistant…

Starting points, questions, and invitations for a new research agenda — The Datafied State is one remade by the data sources and infrastructures, computational tools and techniques that are being adopted across Government just as they are in the private sector. There is not an absolute distinction between public and private sectors in the Datafied State but more of a blurred…