Group items tagged

To that end, supplying attention itself can be an act of complicity in the unethical actions of a platform. The mere act of choosing to look at something online generates real value for a company, materially helping to support its staff, its content, and the social interactions that a platform plays host to. This is why a website like Do Not Link exists: It promises a way to share a link from a website without boosting that site’s standing in search rankings.

attention boycott

ethical attention

But almost entirely overlooked amid the public outrage is the massive pool of low-wage workers – especially in the sharing economy – who are vulnerable to a wide range of abuses on the job because they lack basic labor rights.

“We have to talk about this as a problem these platforms have created,” said Mary Anne Franks, a University of Miami law professor who studies online abuse. “[If you’re] going to set up a platform to make it possible for people to instantaneously communicate with people they don’t know ... you know full well it’s going to be abused and weaponized.”

The success of many on-demand companies like DoorDash depends on hiring a large, cheap workforce of contract employees who have no benefits or job security.