Digital technologies—especially social media platforms and AI/ML models—are powered by vast global supply chains of labor, often hidden from public view. At the heart of these systems are thousands of workers who perform content moderation, data annotation, and other forms of digital labor that are essential for training and maintaining complex technological infrastructures.
Tech companies housed in the Global North predominantly outsource this labor to cheap labor markets in the Global Majority, while remaining distant and largely unaccountable to the workers who make their business a profitable reality. While identifying and flagging labor rights issues in global tech supply chains is a good starting point, there is a pressing need to also investigate and map the socioeconomic enablers in South and Southeast Asia that make these markets fertile ground for outsourced digital labor, and leverage research to support grassroots worker-led movements in the region.
It is in this context that Tech Global Institute (TGI) is pleased to partner with Sigla Research Center (Philippines) and Aapti Institute (India) to form ATLAS: Alliance for Tech Labour across the South—a research alliance investigating digital labor justice issues in Asia.
India and the Philippines, owing to their mature business process outsourcing (BPO) industries and a vast supply of cheap specialized labor, have emerged as global hotspots for tech corporations to outsource content-related digital platform labor, including but not limited to content moderation and data annotation. This has led to the creation of a parallel informal economy of outsourced, platform-based digital labor, where working conditions and job security remain largely unregulated and unsupported by conventional labor safeguards. These industries, while having created opportunities for dignified and accessible work, are also marked by a wide spectrum of harms and precarity, warranting platform accountability and policy reform.
ATLAS aims to thoroughly study and support these complex domestic landscapes of content-related digital platform labor from various lenses—by assessing needs of worker communities and workers’ organizations, and supplying research, advocacy tools, and best practices that can help sustain their movements. This collaboration is an attempt to align on strategies and together move towards inclusive, robust, and participative labor policies and platform accountability framework. Starting with the Philippines and India, we aim to develop outcomes that can be scaled and applied to emerging digital labor ecosystems in other parts of the region.
Please write to us at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] for queries, concerns, or collaboration requests.
