This is the second report in a three-part series exploring digital labor industries in Asia that powers technological platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) systems worldwide.
In the first report, we outlined how invisible labor in content moderation and data annotation industries is extracted by technology companies from cheap labor markets in the Global Majority while remaining distant and largely unaccountable to the workers who make their business a profitable reality. While both industries create opportunities for dignified and accessible work in the jurisdictions they operate in, they are also marked by a wide spectrum of harms and precarity, warranting platform accountability and policy reform.
We identified a pressing need to not only point to these structures of power within labor landscapes, but also investigate and map the socioeconomic enablers in South and Southeast Asia that make these markets fertile ground for outsourced digital labor. This report, second in the series, delves deeper on these ideas and findings through first-hand accounts from data workers and their lived realities in the region.
