Posts
The Platform Economy’s Gatekeeping of Class and Caste Dominance in Urban India
— by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — last modified Apr 19, 2024 03:11 AMAmbika Tandon and Aayush Rathi contributed an essay on how gated society management apps like MyGate and NoBrokerHood feed on caste and income inequalities in new datafied forms. The essay features in The Formalization of Social Precarities, an anthology edited by Murali Shanmugavelan and Aiha Nguyen and published with Data & Society.
Online Gender Based Violence on Short Form Video Platforms
— by Divyansha Sehgal and Lakshmi T. Nambiar — last modified Apr 11, 2024 03:24 AMAn inquiry into platform policies and safeguards. This report explores how short-form video platforms in India address online gender based violence (oGBV) by analysing their terms of service, community guidelines (CG), and reporting workflows.
Digital Markets and India: Demystifying the Draft DCB
— by Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri (in alphabetical order) — last modified Apr 15, 2024 06:15 AMThis document summarises the proceedings of the Roundtable on the draft Digital Competition Bill (DCB) [hereinafter referred to as ‘the Roundtable’]. The Roundtable was conducted online on April 1, 2024, and included representation from academia, law, civil society, and policy organisations. The primary objective of the Roundtable was to discuss the recent report published by the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL) in March 2024 along with the draft of the DCB.
Understanding Feminist Infrastructures: An Exploratory Study of Online Feminist Content Creation Spaces in India
— by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu — last modified Mar 25, 2024 01:02 PMThis report explores the growth of feminist infrastructures (including the various interpretations of the term), through research on feminist publishing, content creation and curation spaces and how they have informed the contemporary discourse on feminism, gender, and sexuality in India. The rise of online feminist publications, and related digital media content creation and curation spaces, has engendered new forums for debate, networking, and community-building. This report looks at some of the challenges of developing such publications and platforms, and the role of digital infrastructures in mediating contemporary feminist work and politics.
Workers’ experiences in app-based taxi and delivery sectors: Key initial findings from multi-city quantitative surveys
— by Aayush Rathi, Abhishek Sekharan, Ambika Tandon, Chetna V. M., Chiara Furtado, and Nishkala Sekhar — last modified Feb 16, 2024 01:27 AMIn 2021-22, the labour research vertical at CIS conducted quantitative surveys with over 1,000 taxi and delivery workers employed in the app-based and offline sectors. The surveys covered key employment indicators, including earnings and working hours, initial investments and work-related cost burdens, income and social security, platform policies and management, and employment arrangements. The surveys were part of the ‘Labour Futures’ project supported by the Internet Society Foundation.
Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures: Mapping the Data Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry in India
— by Amrita Sengupta, Chetna V. M., Pallavi Bedi, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Shweta Mohandas and Yatharth — last modified Jan 05, 2024 02:38 AMThe Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures project, supported by a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, aims to study the Al data supply chain infrastructure in healthcare in India, and aims to critically analyse auditing frameworks that are utilised to develop and deploy AI systems in healthcare. It will map the prevalence of Al auditing practices within the sector to arrive at an understanding of frameworks that may be developed to check for ethical considerations - such as algorithmic bias and harm within healthcare systems, especially against marginalised and vulnerable populations.
User Experiences of Digital Financial Risks and Harms
— by Amrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering Paul — last modified Dec 22, 2023 04:05 PMThe reach and use of digital financial services has risen in recent years without a commensurate increase in digital literacy and access. Through this project, supported by a grant from Google(.)org, we will examine the landscape of potential risks and harms posed by digital financial services, and the disproportionate risk that information asymmetry and barriers to access pose for users, especially certain marginalised communities.
Strategies to Organise Platform Workers
— by Chiaro Furtado — last modified Oct 22, 2023 09:54 AMIn 2022, the Centre for Internet and Society hosted a panel with Akkanut Wantanasombut, Ayoade Ibrahim, Rikta Krishnaswamy, and Sofía Scasserra at RightsCon, an annual summit on technology and human rights.
Strategies to Organise Platform Workers
— by Chiaro Furtado — last modified Oct 20, 2023 05:04 PMDocument Actions
