Purple Code – With Aida Eyvazzadeh and Sakine M. Bozorg

Abstract

Aida Eyvazzadeh and Sakine M. Bozorg are former content moderators in Berlin who worked for a global social media platform. The are both from Iran and in this episode, they talk about why and how migrant workers in Germany constitute as a crucial labor supply to the global platform economy. They explain what content moderation is, how it is labor intensive work and requires several skills. Instead of being valued, content moderators face high control on their work and even repression, a kind of corporate authoritarianism that reminds them of the authoritarian regime in Iran. They go on to recount their experiences of challenging these power asymmetries through the German institutional resources and trade unions, and the difficulties they have faced in doing so. Talking about these experiences, they suggest ways for unions to reflect and make certain changes. Beyond these institutions, they also find hope in networking with different communities in Berlin and internationally for sharing resources and finding possibilities to organize. Aida currently works in the civil society sector and Sakine is an independent researcher and essayist. She is also part of the Data Workers Inquiry project (https://data-workers.org/) that is supported by the Distributed AI Research Institute and the Weizenbaum Institute and is launching on the 8th of July this year.