THE MYTH OF DATA. Can internet users claim worker status?

Résumé En

For the past fifteen years, there have been calls for legal regulations of "digital labor". This "labor" is said to train artificial intelligences and enrich web platforms, which are fed by the activities and data of users. According to Antonio Casilli or Maurizio Ferraris, these activities are actually invisible labor and should be remunerated. Their goal is not to ask for a basic income (conceived as an unconditional natural right for all humans) merely financed by platforms taxes. It is to defend that the wealth produced by the digital economy would not exist without users and that they therefore deserve a part of it as a salary. However, this neo-Marxist conception of wages has always been based on an implicit "natural right" which implies a very specific definition of labor. In this framework, labor is understood as a relationship between a client and a subordinate who performs a commanded task that he would not have done spontaneously. Yet we can argue that the digital activities of platforms users are "leisure" or "spontaneous social exchanges" rather than orders, and thus cannot be categorized as "work". Therefore, the use of this notion might not be strategic for political struggles over the redistribution of wealth in the Digital Economy.