The Human Bots Who Power Parasite Platforms
Brazil’s click farms promise easy money, but mostly replicate the problems of informal work.
The platformization of labor affects workers of all kinds, across platforms. On “click farm” platforms in Brazil, workers perform countless fragmented data tasks. They spend hours every day clicking, following, and commenting on social media accounts — and earning less than a penny for each task.
Professor Rafael Grohmann, assistant professor of media studies at University of Toronto, coordinator of the DigiLabour Initiative, and a collaborator of the project Fairwork at University of Oxford, sees click farms as “the deep web of platform labor,” and argues that we need to make the work of their “human bots” visible. He talked to D&S about informal labor, the influencer economy, and the specific ways they collide in Brazil.
Data & Society: First, can you fill us in on the state of platform labor in Brazil?
Rafael Grohmann: For the majority of the world, “gig economy” is a horrible term because most people live their lives with the gig as the norm of the working class. Before digital platforms, many people were working as cleaners, as couriers, as drivers. Now digital labor platforms organize those work processes. The difference is the control the platform has over the economy.
The new data about platform labor in Brazil shows that there are about 1.5 million riders and drivers for rideshare platforms in Brazil; we don’t know yet about remote work through digital platforms. But during the pandemic, around 75 percent of Brazilians who were working and had access to the internet sold a product or service through digital platforms or social networks. This happens through Instagram and WhatsApp; WhatsApp in Brazil plays a big role in work and communication processes.
Most platform workers in Brazil are Brazilian people, not migrants as they often are in other countries. And more than in other countries, platform labor is a central issue in our election; riders and platform laborers are at the center of disputes between candidates. Right now, there are about fifty microwork platforms active in Brazil. There are many subtypes. Last year, for example, The Intercept discovered that Brazilian workers are being paid 70 cents an hour to transcribe TikToks, in a value chain that connects the country with Pakistan and China. But I strongly believe that in Brazil, there is a unique scenario around click farms, different from the rest of Latin America, and from Asia and elsewhere
So what is a click farm? What does it do?
In a nutshell, click farms are places or web-based platforms where people are paid to click and comment and boost others’ social media accounts. They are hired by clients like politicians, influencers, and celebrities around the world. But in Brazil, these platforms are Brazil-based, with Brazilian clients and Brazilian workers — it’s a whole segment of Brazilian labor.
The most famous click farm platform in Brazil is called GanharNoInsta, which means “earn money on Instagram.” And the other is called Dizu. They sell themselves as digital PR agencies, as innovative startups: They found a way to connect people who want to become famous with people who want to earn extra easy money. What they promise to their clients are real followers; the client can buy two thousand followers for about US$35. And who are the clients? We have discovered politicians and singers, TV show presenters and soccer players. But most clients are influencers or content creators with profiles in the health sector, fitness, law, psychologists, liberal professionals in general, entrepreneurs who need to boost their social media accounts to have many followers and increase their reputation or authority. There are also some small businesses, like a small restaurant that doesn’t want to put its services on a big platform; they want to sell food via Instagram, so they need to boost their social media accounts.
See more about how click farms work in Brazil.
Workers discover the click farm through promotional videos on YouTube. Those videos are made by coaches who are selling mentoring and courses to teach the people how to work in click farms. And with that, there’s an inspirational tone, the idea that click farm workers are entrepreneurs who just need to be better sellers to earn more money. So there’s a whole economy built around them, too.
This is a table of prices for GanharNoInsta. Most of the tasks are for Instagram, and now for TikTok too. In the last year, there were also tasks for YouTube. The minimum value is .006 cents per task. GanarNoinsta says yes, it can be low pay, but it’s easy and you can make good extra money if you do a lot of tasks.
Given that, it seems like the companies are at least giving the appearance of transparency. What is the gap between the promise of this labor and the reality for the workers?
Some people who work for click farms are middle class people with degrees. Others who now work for click farms were waste-pickers, or worked in street fairs, or have a history in informal work. They are desperate for money. Since the pay is very, very low, the platforms tell workers they can use multiple accounts to make more. At the same time, the platforms also say they do not accept fake accounts, and that they have ways to detect them. But people use fake accounts to survive.
This enables a parallel market with fake accounts and bots. Reselling is a hub of this parallel market; workers are invited to be not only click farm workers, but also resellers of fake accounts. Many of those accounts are blocked by Instagram and TikTok as suspicious. When the workers are blocked they are not paid. It’s lost time and money, and a cat and mouse game between workers and the platforms. It’s like fighting with demogorgons in Stranger Things: You can cut one down, but the fake accounts will proliferate. I call click farms parasite platforms because they need social media infrastructures to survive.
The prevailing idea is that this is money people earn on top of other means of livelihood. But clearly, there are people who are doing this as their primary means of making a living; it’s not extra money, it’s their livelihood. How do we incorporate that into thinking about who these workers are and how they are engaging with this economy in the first place?
I want to emphasize the continuities between click farms and other types of platform labor around the world: the digital labor platform, whether it is click farms or a ride hailing app, all promise extra money and flexibility and opportunity. They sell themselves as startups. But what researchers have found is that there are people who do this as a primary activity not only for this platform, but for the sector: reselling accounts or reselling bots or buying bots and doing other services and other gigs in the process. Most of the people are unemployed or lost their jobs during the pandemic or have always been informal workers. It’s a new type of survival; it is a way to survive.
