Digital Circumvention as Platform Co-governance – A Case Study of a Food Delivery Platform

Research shows that workers in online labor platforms use various means –such as social media or specialized tools –to circumvent perceived limitations imposed by platforms that negatively impact their work. We call this phenomenon digital circumvention. While digital circumvention is often presented in research as an ad hoc solution, we propose framing it as a case of self-resourcing by workers. This framing allows us to integrate digital circumvention as a platform governance activity alongside other forms of self-resourcing, as well as resourcing and securing exercised by the platform’s owner. We use an empirical case study of the food delivery platform Foodora to map design ideas from workers onto the resulting conceptual model, investigate what types of circumvention are possible to realize, and see whether other types of self-resourcing or resourcing are more effective. Our findings show that only a small subset of the design ideas can be implemented using digital circumvention. Most of the ideas require other forms of self-resourcing such as national regulations, or resourcing that involves the platform owner. Our findings show that labor platform design must balance the needs of individual workers with those of different groups of workers and other actors in the platform ecosystem, including the platform owner. Our findings imply that future design-oriented research on online labor platforms should adopt a platform ecosystem approach.