Hatim Rahman's "Inside the Invisible Cage"

Hatim Rahman is an award-winning associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers, and reported the following:

From page 99:

TalentFinder also retained the sole right to remove any feedback it deemed as hurting its interests:

In order to protect the integrity of the feedback system and protect Users from abuse, TalentFinder reserves the right (but is under no obligation) to remove posted feedback or information that, in TalentFinder’s sole judgment, violates the Terms of Service or negatively affects our marketplace, diminishes the integrity of the feedback system or otherwise is inconsistent with the business interests of TalentFinder.

According to this statement, TalentFinder was able to simultaneously absolve itself of the responsibility of investigating the accuracy of feedback scores while also monitoring these scores to the point that it could remove any feedback that it felt hurt its business interests. As is common with terms of services, TalentFinder’s polices allowed the platform to “have its cake and eat it too,” especially in regard to asserting control over the rating system.

None of the people I interviewed indicated that they had read any of these agreements, let alone expressed objections to them. Many scholars have commented that online contracts have been designed and implemented in such a way that users are simply conditioned to agree to terms without deliberating or reading the contract. Legal scholar Margaret Radin notes that, broadly speaking, people are subject to two different types of contractual agreements. In “agreement” contracts, either party can negotiate the terms before an agreement is reached and the contract is finalized. Think about negotiating the cost of a used car, the terms when buying a house, or even the price of a product at a flea market. These are variations of agreement contracts because such contracts are not set in stone before the contract is signed or verbally agreed to.

On the other hand, “boilerplate” contracts are standardized take-it-or-leave-it contracts that, in practice, are impossible to

Page 99 of my book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers, provides background knowledge about the book’s main argument. That is, the book’s main argument is that organizations, particularly digital platforms, are using algorithms to control high-skilled workers within an “invisible cage”: an environment in which organizations embed the rules and guidelines for how workers should behave in opaque algorithms. It is ‘invisible’ because organizations can use algorithms to change the rules and criteria for success at an unprecedented speed and scale without notice, explanation, or recourse. It is a ‘cage’ because these algorithms increasingly control our opportunities without our say.

Page 99 discusses one important mechanism that enables organizations to create an invisible cage. This page shows an example of how the organization I studied uses its terms of service to accrue power over workers, and enabled the organization to make changes to the platform. Specifically, this page illustrates how the organization established the right to control information and visibility of a workers’ feedback on the platform without workers’ consent or awareness. The power to make such changes is critical because workers rely on their rating feedback to attract new clients and secure additional work. Importantly, by embedding the provision mentioned on page 99 in the terms of service, TalentFinder is creating a “digital boilerplate agreement.” The beginning of the chapter argues that these agreements are shifting terms of service that enable an organization to implement any change that further entrenches its power and information asymmetries over workers. Page 99 is indeed an important page but it does not exactly reveal the quality of the whole book, which begins by laying out the history of online labor markets and ratings, then sharing the stories of real workers on the labor market, and finally discussing the construct of the invisible cage and its ramifications on theory and practice.

The reason I think the Page 99 Test does not, overall, provide an accurate understanding of my book’s quality is because many sections of the book provide greater depth to the book’s core thesis. Without knowing the thesis, which is laid out in the beginning of the book, page 99 does not provide the best illustration of the book’s quality.

Learn more about Inside the Invisible Cage at the University of California Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue