在线众包平台的运作机制和劳动控制研究——以亚马逊土耳其机器人为例

The Mechanism and Labor-Control of Online Crowdsourcing:A Study of the Amazon Mechanical Turk

本文是关于众包平台运作机制和劳动控制的探索性研究:从全球外包实践和众包平台的兴起切入,以亚马逊土耳其机器人为案例分析对象,探究其运作机制和内嵌其中的劳动控制问题。一方面,平台劳动者的劳动过程受到普遍且隐蔽的控制,这是众包平台中不对等权力关系展演的必然结果;另一方面,平台劳动者通过积极组建网络社区进行各种形式的反控制实践。这些实践既展现了平台劳动者的能动性,又为他们提供了有效的支持网络,但却仍受到强大的结构性制约,难以和平台中既存的控制相抗衡。为了改变这一状况,结合当下众包平台的全球治理经验,本文认为,建构多元主体共同参与的管理、监督和保障机制应成为众包平台未来发展的方向和目标。

This paper is an exploratory study on the operational mechanism and labour control of crowdsourcing platforms.It starts from the global outsourcing practice and the emergence of crowdsourcing platforms,takes the Amazon Mechanical Turk as its case study,and explores its operational mechanism and embedded control of platform labourers.More specifically,on the one hand,the labour process of platform labourers is subject to a widespread and invisible control,as an inevitable result of the unequal power relationship in crowdsourcing platforms;on the other hand,these labourers actively form online communities to carry out various forms of counter-control practices.Accordingly,labourers take initiatives and provide effective,networked support for each other.However,such practices are conditioned on existing structural factors,for which reason they are dwarfed to compete with the existing platform controls.To counteract such tendencies,this paper,drawing on contemporary global governance experiences of crowdsourcing platforms,emphasizes that the management,supervision and support mechanisms may seek to involve the participation of multiple entities,which have emerged to take the lead and become the trendsetter in the aspect of labour relations.