The Uber app is the drivers’ workplace, as much as the city where they’re driving is. Each decision about its interface structures drivers’ interactions with Uber the company as well as Uber the transportation marketplace. And Uber is now putting the finishing touches on a from-scratch rebuild of the driver app…

The app is both the factory and the boss, and its design has ramifications on drivers’ autonomy, power, earnings, and quality of life. The technical system determines how rides are assigned, how much drivers get paid for each ride, and how workers are evaluated through rider ratings and other factors. These kinds of tasks all used to fall to humans. Now they don’t. Carnegie Mellon researchers have termed these new forms of organizational control “algorithmic management.”
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