Gig-economy platforms in the UK are facing pressure from civil society groups to open up their ‘black box’ algorithms that determine the working lives for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

Privacy International, alongside other civil groups including Amnesty International and the Open Rights Group, have kickstarted a campaign aiming to increase the transparency and explainability of algorithmic decisions for those employed by some of the world’s biggest platforms.

In an open letter to Deliveroo, Just Eat Takeaway, and Uber, the coalition calls for the creation of a public register of the algorithms used to manage workers, including any algorithms that influence decisions around how workers access and are assigned work, how their performance is assessed, and how much they are paid.

According to Privacy International, a public register of this kind would address the ‘information imbalance of algorithmic management’, allowing workers to understand how decisions made by algorithms directly impact them and determine their treatment by employers.

“We believe the foundation of respect is transparency. Yet current systems withhold vital information from workers – creating precarity, stress, and misery,” the letter reads.

The group is also urging platforms to be more transparent about the reasons behind the decisions of algorithms, including reference to any personal data about workers used in the process, along with the specific parameters and inputs algorithms work with, which it claims would allow workers to challenge decisions that might be unfair or flawed.

Lastly, the coalition, which also counts the Independent Workers Union and App Drivers and Couriers Union among its members, wants gig-workers, their representatives and public interest groups to have access to the algorithms these platforms have built in order to test how they work.

The civil group says that this could be achieved by providing API access to a sandboxed version of systems, and making key algorithms used by platforms open-source. However, with billions potentially at stake, companies are reluctant to provide access to what is often closely guarded, proprietary information that provides them a competitive advantage.

For example, according to Statista, JustEat alone received 245 million orders from the UK and Ireland in 2023, amounting to over £1 billion in revenue, with the company’s 88,000 couriers delivering over four million orders a week.  

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Platforms argue that they already give workers information around the algorithms they use. For instance, Deliveroo has provided a general outline of the factors affecting the decisions made by its algorithm, named ‘Frank’, that determine which couriers are assigned what work. The company further explained to the Guardian that its workers are able to escalate data concerns, and that the most serious decisions regarding employees are subject to human oversight.

However, according to its letter, Privacy International and its partner organisations believe that these platforms are not doing enough, claiming that market leaders like JustEat and Deliveroo are ‘automating exploitation’ through the use of technology.