Let’s first start with a question: what is digital labour? Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani suggested that “the usage of commercial social media is the utilization or an act of manipulation of digital labour or a creative and participatory culture, which seamlessly creates contents as use-value. In the context of the capitalist system, use-value contains exchange value, which could be any form of commodities. Users of social media are creative, social and active prosumers who engage in a culture of sharing, doing, connecting and making, and social use-values are naturally produced and created in these activities.” (Sevignani, 2013)This explanation revealed two important and essential factors about digital labour. On the one hand, the dual characters of the content are created in social media, which can be use-value and exchange-value at the same time. On the other hand, the manipulation of digital labour and profit making process requires many participants. The more people are participating and connected in the process, the better results it seems to be shown. According tothe International Communications Market Report 2012, “the global advertising revenue of the Internet increased 16% from 2007 to 2011 based on compound annual growth rate, while the global advertising revenue of Newspapers and Magazines both decreased nearly 7% during the same period based on the same standard.” (OFcom, 2012)Therefore, we could almost conclude that “the notions of web 2.0 and social media created the impressions that newer platforms are radically new and promise huge economic returns.” (Fuchs, 2014)Uber was launched as a location-based app that hires an on-demand private driver quickly in San Francisco, California. (UberEstimate, 2018)Uber now operates in over 600 cities in the world and valued at about $70 billion. (Ibid, 2018) For this paper, I’m going to argue that Uber has posed a severe challenge to the traditional transportation industry because it successfully built a stable connection between the transportation industry and the information industry. This paper will demonstrate this argument by comparing Uber drivers and traditional taxi drivers and analyzing statistics about Uber.

Over the past several years, thousands of taxi drivers from all over the world have had protest activities against Uber. For example, Toronto taxi driver gathered together for such a protest in front of the city hall on December 9, 2015. (BLINCH, 2015)The crux of the issue was that traditional taxi drivers believed that Uber drivers “stole” their jobs. This kind of protests also brings us the question about the position of Uber drivers. According to Forbes, “Uber uses legal language in its contract with drivers to define them as partners, not employees. It says it is providing drivers with “business opportunities,” and it refers to itself as a “technology company” or a “platform” instead of a transportation company.” (Ben-Shahar, 2017)This claim is significant since it answers somehow Uber drivers are essentially different from taxi drivers. First of all, since Uber drivers are not employees according to Uber’s statement, the treatments must be varied because the relationship between Uber and Uber drivers is different from the relationship between transportation company and taxi drivers. For example, taxi drivers would reserve rights to get the pension or other benefits from transportation companies. However, on Uber’s website, I can’t find information about the pension. Instead, what I found are “Some general principles are set forth here, but may not apply in every case. (under legal process requirements)” and there’s no information about law enforcement to be told other than in Netherlands or United States, and what people can do is to send “emergency and exigent requests.” (Uber, 2018)A request means there’s no guarantee, which means Uber drivers are less protected than taxi drivers.

Second, the nature of Uber has decided that Uber drivers would spend their time much more flexible compared to taxi drivers. As I mentioned early, taxi drivers are employees of transportation companies, which means they must follow their companies orders to work for a specific duration every day, whereas Uber drivers would spend their time wisely and freely because they are considered partners of Uber. Fuchs pointed out that “Although there are very different forms of sociality and all media involve some form of sociality, the online platforms that today are referred to as social media have in common that they make intensive use of contributions from content producing consumers- ‘prosumers.’ In this context, the notion of ‘digital labour’ has merged…the emergence of social media is an expression of the changes between labour time and leisure time that have been conceptualized with terms as such as digital labour, presumption, consumption labour, and play labour.” (Fuchs, 2014)People could become customers or partners of Uber, as both are considered Uber users. I could make money and drive for anyone needs a ride and booked his order from Uber in the daytime, I could also order and pay for a ride from Uber after a party at midnight. Obviously, people wouldn’t drive taxi drivers home and make money from that. The apparent difference is that Uber driver could drive and work as much as they want, as less as they want, and as short as they want at any time. While taxi drivers cannot, which is one of the absolute advantages Uber drivers reserve all the time provided by the nature of Uber to challenge the industry.

Furthermore, the vital fact is that all these possibilities are enabled because of the support from Uber’s data processing system. Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani argued that “targeted advertising is at the heart of the capital accumulation model of many corporatesocial media platforms, which is legally enabled by terms of use and privacy policies.” (Sevignani, 2013)This statement almost concludes that many social media platforms include Uber are focusing on targeted audience or customers with the assistance of advanced technologies. Unlike regular taxi needs to “hang out” and look for customers, Uber drivers know exactly where to pick up customers and have clear clues where the customers want to go even before the customers get on board. The goal for Uber drivers and taxi drivers are both to provide a private ride for a customer. There are two parts needed to be done to meet that goal. One is to find the potential customer, and another one is to provide the ride. For taxi drivers, both parts are depending on themselves. Whereas for Uber drivers, the first part has already been finished by Uber’s data system. What Uber drivers need to do is simply following instructions offered by Uber and driving. Again, Uber is a location-based app to make a private ride happen more efficiently. With the reliable information support, Uber acts like an information filter and directory to lead Uber drivers to serve customers directly. The time would directly be spent on making money instead of being wasted for various reason. Therefore, the existence of the filtered data is an indispensable factor to make Uber strong enough to challenge traditional transportation industry since it connects both transportation industry and information industry. There are multiple layers when the benefits are added together. Specifically, Uber drivers would almost make sure they can make money when they have leisure time, and when they are willing to spend that time on making money by driving for Uber. The limited time Uber drivers would have for driving for Uber almost equals the limited time Uber drivers literally spent on driving without spending extra time on looking for targets. In contrast, it is the duty for taxi drivers to hunt for customers and work for their companies at the same time. I suppose what Uber drivers would get from Uber is trust, happiness, and concrete benefits, where what taxi drivers would get from transportation companies would get is fixed salary and pressure. Here comes “one downside about digital labour is the inability of any of the contributors to suggest a feasible alternative. If one decides to quit social media altogether, she or he becomes an outcast, literally disconnected and left behind.” (Lacey, 2014)Since the absolute advantage Uber drivers have is based on the stable connection between users and Uber, they are getting addicted and relying on the information support from Uber. Regular taxi drivers would be the best example you can imagine what Uber drivers would become if Uber drivers lost the reliable information from Uber because they are disconnected.

Apart from comparing various aspects of Uber drivers and ordinary taxi drivers, let’s analyze some statistics. From May 2015 to September 2016, the trips provided by yellow taxi every day decreased from about 440,000 to about 330,000 in New York, whereas the trips provided by Uber every day increased from about 80,000 to approximately 200,000. (Dogtiev, 2018)As Fuchs quoted from Marx, “in capitalist economy, the circulation time of capital is the time that is taken to buy investment goods, produce a new commodity and sell it…capitalism has ‘been characterised by continuous efforts to shorten turnover times, thereby speeding up social process while reducing the time horizons of meaningful decision-making’…The capitalist economy is driven by the need to accumulate ever more capital. Methods to achieve this are the increase of productivity, that is, the production of more in less time.” (Fuchs, 2014)For Uber drivers, there is almost no turnover time, but only producing time. The commodity is the service to drive people from one point towards another point and charge that service for a certain amount of money. Since the commodity is only offering private rides, but not anything else includes looking for customers, Uber drivers only work for this one single specific task. In this case, the efficiency is made sure to be high. Because every single ride will both make money for Uber and Uber drivers, the higher efficiency Uber drivers could achieve, the higher productivity Uber would be benefited. From this perspective, it is reasonable to understand that Uber drivers are considered as partners of Uber. The almost perfect efficiency is one of the best advantages Uber equipped to challenge traditional transportation industry.

Now, I’ve looked at many comparisons and contrasts between Uber drivers as digital labour and ordinary taxi drivers. Overall, I could conclude that Uber as a digital-mediated platform seamlessly creates useful and stable connectivity in a variety of aspects by producing and communicating practical data information with its digital labour, which is the Uber drivers. Basically, what Uber does is to link and merge two type of ready-made resources, which are human resources and direct mapping information. This method of manipulating resources reduced the useless time and enhanced the productivity and efficiency effectively. On the one hand, with data support from Uber, both Uber drivers and Uber are benefited. On the other hand, the existence of Uber drivers as human beings is somehow changed and become one type of resources that Uber is available to direct and manipulate. From this perspective, there’s no wonder why Uber is testing automatic driving and robot driving if Uber wants to lower the cost. In a broader context of social media or digital-mediated platforms, not only Uber but also many other platforms are doing things to organize and manipulate multiple resources to create different forms of content with use-value. Therefore, these contents could be sold as commodities with great exchange values, which requires high demand and quality of connectivity as well.

 

 

Bibliography

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