Content “Creators” are WORKERS!
In a media environment increasingly dominated by Big Tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Google, the struggle for more equitable and dignified jobs begins with a struggle over classification: content creation is work. Last week dealt two major wins for Big Tech in this regard as U.S. courts decided to allow Facebook to continue building its monopoly and Black content producers lost a case against Google’s YouTube, the focus of this post.
Black content producers (or, per YouTube’s interpellation, “creators”) alleged that Google’s video streaming platform discriminated against them based on their race and ideological viewpoints, thus infringing upon their freedom of speech as granted by the U.S. constitution. I find this loss particularly frustrating after the past year’s public reckonings over racism and the pandemic’s lockdowns which have caused media consumption to skyrocket, making the work of all content producers that much more crucial to society. While I’m certainly no lawyer (and imagine the legal team handling this examined the case from every possible angle), I’m a cultural sociologist who studies labor and so, I can’t help but wonder if this is related to how we systematically undervalue cultural work as work. Why not claim that Google/YouTube discriminated against “creators” rights to equal opportunity and pay as workers? Here, I want to argue that fighting for proper classification as workers, both legally and (perhaps more importantly) in the public consciousness, is necessary to secure a more dignified living and equitable future for all content producers.
“… fighting for proper classification as workers, both legally and (perhaps more importantly) in the public consciousness, is necessary to secure a more dignified living and equitable future for all content producers.”
In response to this, I’ve heard some rather ridiculous things. Believe it or not, but fellow sociologists have said things like “They’re not workers! They’re just amateurs making cat videos!” Seriously? It’s 2021, people who make digital content can be and often are earning a living as professional content producers. There are multiple books and countless peer-reviewed studies on the topic (my own book being among them). I’ve also heard more established scholars make equally problematic statements like, “They’re not workers, they’re entrepreneurs!” If the former denies content producers the status of cultural worker, the latter ignores the power of Big Tech’s platforms over content producers.
I’ve been thinking hard on how to rebut these types of responses in a productive way. Now, part of studying the social and cultural aspects of labor and work means that I’m very interested in things like meaning and classification, which is why I think we need to understand that content producers’ struggle against platforms begins with a struggle over classification. Classifying content producers as workers requires no great leap of imagination. All who earn advertising revenues from platforms like YouTube are currently (mis)classified as independent contractors which means that YouTube’s content producers generally receive a 1099 tax form from YouTube just like Uber drivers and other platform workers.
“…we need to understand that content producers’ struggle against platforms begins with a struggle over classification.”
This alone makes space to consider creators’ claims against YouTube as a labor issue, rather than an infringement upon free speech. Creators’ legal teams could argue that Google/YouTube engages in systematic wage discrimination based on protected categories (i.e., race in this case). This could be done by analyzing how YouTube’s pay rates (CPM or cost per mille, a dollar amount per 1000 views) vary by race/ethnicity while controlling for audience size — a challenging task for creators who lack easy access to the necessary data, but one easily accomplished by YouTube. Google/YouTube already has the necessary data, so why not release an analysis that proves (lack of) wage discrimination based on race (and, I would guess, gender and sexuality as well, based on my research and others)? Regardless, YouTube’s discrimination against Black creators is not an issue of free speech, but is, instead, a labor issue of wage discrimination. Reframing the case in this way could lead to just the sort of wage transparency I’ve called for in previous posts.
Still, there’s a broader question left here: should YouTube’s creators and other content producers be classified employees, not independent contractors? Now, given my profession, I tend to think that struggles over classification are crucial to equity — something shown quite clearly by last week’s U.S. Supreme Court win for college athletes. The state wields an incredible amount of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “symbolic power”[i] or the socially recognized authority to name and define by codifying classification into law,. The state wields this power when it comes to peoples’ demands for recognition, playing the role of ultimate arbiter in contested definitions, classifications, and categories. For example, the state dictates who may or may not be legally considered “male” or “female,” thus wielding symbolic power over gender classification just as the state also dictates who may or may not be legally considered an employee.
So, how does the state define who is and is not an employee? Google/YouTube’s home of California uses the “ABC test” to determine whether a worker may be classified as an employee or an independent contractor per 2019’s Assembly Bill (AB) 5. Note that Uber, another platform dependent upon misclassification of its workers, spent millions of dollars fighting against this law in Fall of 2020 — further illustrating how classificatory struggles are crucial parts of struggles against inequality.[ii] The law that Uber and other work platforms spent so much time and money fighting defines an employee as anyone whose employment relation does not meet the following three criteria of the ABC test:
B. The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business;
Most content producers, “creators,” or “influencers” do not pass the test, meaning they should be classified as employees per state law. Regarding A, most work platforms exert control in the form of information asymmetries, wage uncertainty, algorithmic management, and unilateral control over design and features, some of which reinforce race and gender discrimination[iii]. Regarding B, creators’ content is central to, rather than “outside,” YouTube’s primary business. These workers’ content attracts vast audiences to YouTube. YouTube then sells those audiences’ eyeballs to advertisers for profit. Creators’ content is so incredibly central to Google/YouTube’s profits that paying content producers their fair share could, in theory, bankrupt even the biggest of Big Tech [iv].
“…let’s be clear about one thing: platforms’ content producers are workers.Whether independent contractor or employee, Black creators’ alleged discrimination by the platform is an issue of discrimination at work, one subject to existing labor laws that ostensibly protect employees from discrimination based on race and gender.”
The answer to Part C, however, remains less clear cut. Many creators self-incorporate as businesses. Like so many other workers today, they’ve become what social theorist and historian Michel Foucault called “enterprises of the self”.[v] While this might seem to suggest an affirmative answer to Part C, most content creators whom I’ve met incorporated after they began earning money from platforms for their content. As written, the law remains ambiguous here (but again, I’m no lawyer). Further complicating the situation, creators straddle multiple occupations held to a more stringent test for employee status. For example, most engage in marketing, graphic design, photography, and videography (which are subject to the more stringent Borrello test rather than the ABC test I mentioned above), but few if any creators would be considered members of these occupational communities or professions. In fact, content producers often resist these conventional labels — a major problem for them when they seek representation from conventional guilds and unions in entertainment who often require identification with a single occupation or trade.
This all goes to show how complicated platformized work can be in terms of classification, but let’s be clear about one thing: platforms’ content producers are workers. Whether independent contractor or employee, Black creators’ alleged discrimination by the platform is an issue of discrimination at work, one subject to existing labor laws that ostensibly protect employees from discrimination based on race and gender. YouTube may not owe anyone a voice, but they do owe BIPOC creators transparent pay as well as unhindered access to their workplace (i.e., YouTube). Fighting for these rights as workers and pushing for proper classification as employees may further open Google’s racially biased blackboxes[vi] to scrutiny, helping to solve social media’s labor problem.
Notes
[i] see, e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford University Press, 1998); Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity, 1990); Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Stanford University Press, 2000).
[ii] Jeffrey J. Sallaz, “Service Labor and Symbolic Power,” Work and Occupations 37, no. 3 (2010): 295–319, https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888410373076.
[iii] Angela Jones, Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry (NYU Press, 2020); Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019); Alex Rosenblat, Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018); Michael Siciliano, “Control from on High: Cloud-Computing, Skill, and Acute Frustration among Analytics Workers in the Digital Publishing Industry,” Research in the Sociology of Work, Research in the Sociology of Work, 29, no. 1 (August 19, 2016): 125–53; Michael Siciliano, “Digital Labor’s Blackboxed Supervisors,” New Criticals (blog), October 16, 2017, http://www.newcriticals.com/digital-labors-blackboxed-supervisors/print; Michael Siciliano, Creative Control (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).
[iv] Christian Fuchs, “Class and Exploitation on the Internet,” in Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, ed. Trebor Scholz (Digital Labor: Routledge, 2013), 211–24.
[v] Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Picador, 2010).
[vi] Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press, 2018).
