DiPLab is releasing a report on the surveillance of data workers today. Entitled “Surveillance at Scale : How AI training platforms gather personal data from European workers” this report is a research project in collaboration with Reversing.works and Intérêt à Agir, funded by the Digital Freedom Fund and the European Artificial Intelligence & Society Fund. International technology companies collect vast amounts of personal data from European citizens. Public debate and policymaking often focus on data taken from consumers through e-commerce, social media, or streaming platforms. Yet many Europeans also use digital platforms to work and train AI systems. Online freelance platforms are usually discussed in terms of low pay and insecure “gigs”. Much less attention is given to another resource these platforms extract from workers: their personal data. This report examines the case of Outlier, a key data work platform for artificial intelligence. Outlier is operated by Scale AI, a company that recruits workers to perform tasks such as evaluating AI-generated responses, creating training data, and improving AI models. This report shows how digital platforms rely on data workers worldwide, including in the EU, to label, check, and organize training data. These data are harvested online. But Outlier also collects workers’ personal data, financial records, biometric information, and even facial recognition scans. This data is used for surveillance purposes, and probably for further AI training purposes. Our interdisciplinary team analyzes the evidence collected from qualitative interviews, network logs, and guidelines, to provide evidence of a large-scale data collection process, through hidden trackers. We also provide a legal analysis in terms of likely European law (GDPR) data protection violations : the AI WORLd project reveals how the EU has become a periphery for data extractivism in the production process of AI models. Ethical AI requires the ethical treatment of the modern-day factory workers whose work makes it possible. Beyond the economic exploitation data workers through inadequate compensation, this report reveals the extraction of personal data for purposes ranging from covert AI training to potential military applications. These practices raise serious concerns about social justice, labor law, and European data security. Surveillance_at_scale_diplab_october_2026Download To cite this report : Thomas Le Bonniec , Antonio A. Casilli, Mathilde Abel, Simone Robutti, Gaetano Priori, Donatella D., Paul S. Surveillance at Scale : How AI Training Platforms Gather Personal Data from European Workers DiPLab / Reversing.Works report, 2026.

In a recent article for Nouvel Obs, Thomas Lebonniec and Neil S. question the intentions behind a proposed law to ban children under the age of fifteen from accessing social media. Their argument is straightforward: protecting children online is a legitimate and urgent concern, but age restrictions should not become a pretext for introducing systematic digital identity controls at the expense of fundamental privacy rights. For the authors, identity verification is a strategy of obfuscation: by placing the emphasis on users’ identities and ages, it risks diverting attention from the ways in which platforms themselves produce and regulate harmful content, while opening the door to forms of mass surveillance in the name of protecting minors online. Lebonniec instead calls on policymakers to take a closer look at data workers, and more specifically at content moderators, the workers who put platforms moderation guidelines into practice. Their work can help explain why some accounts identified as belonging to sexual predators are not removed, why potentially dangerous content remains online, and why harmful material can sometimes slip through the platforms’ moderation systems. This, in turn, means that legislators should pay closer attention to both the moderation guidelines themselves and the working conditions under which moderators apply them. These workers are routinely exposed to disturbing and psychologically demanding content, often at the cost of their own mental health, while being paid very little for work that is central to the safety and governance of digital platforms. Read the full article in French here

DiPLab associate, Julian Possada (Assistant Professor at Yale University) was recently interviewed by Seth Camillo and Caroline Risberg for the podcast The Internet is Crack. In his book, “Platform Extractivism: Data Work and the People Powering Artificial Intelligence“, forthcoming at the University of California Press in October 2026, he examines the often invisible labor that makes AI and digital platforms possible, focusing on the workers, data practices, and extractive processes that underpin today’s AI systems. In this one-hour-long podcast, Julian Possada discusses the hidden labour behind artificial intelligence, how platforms source work from workers in the Global South, what this type of work actually entails, and how it perpetuates colonial patterns. He draws a few examples from his books and discusses the reality of data workers in Venezuela, a country specifically targeted by data annotation platforms because of its widespread internet access and the inflation crisis that has been ongoing for several years. You can listen to the podcast on Youtube

Thomas Le Bonniec, DiPLab PhD researcher, was interviewed by Pierric Marissal for L’Humanité about Palantir Technologies and its growing presence in Europe. The journalist describes Palantir as a technofascist company that profits from the military and war industries and actively contributes to the development of a mass-surveillance society. Thomas Le Bonniec also highlights Palantir’s strong presence in Europe, including within political circles. Perhaps surprisingly — or perhaps not — the company has found significant support among social-democratic parties. In France, progressive parties flirt with the US tech giant. French Socialist Party appointed Julie Martinez, a former Palantir data protection officer, as spokesperson and later as a candidate in Clichy-la-Garenne. Asked about Palantir’s role in tracking migrants in the US, she dismissed it as “fake news,” while expressing pride in the company’s work with France’s intelligence agency, the DGSI. She was also endorsed by the French Communist Party (PCF). In Switzerland, meanwhile, the government has stated that it does not want to work with Palantir, amid concerns that the company could act as a “Trojan horse” for US intelligence and mass data collection. In the UK, the Labour government signed a £240 million, three-year contract with Palantir, while the German army has been using Palantir software for at least two years. As Thomas Le Bonniec puts it: > “It is impossible to be antifascist while collaborating with Palantir. It is > impossible to be pro-European and collaborate with Palantir. It is antinomic.” Read the full article in L’Humanité: https://www.humanite.fr/monde/etats-unis/palantir-ce-quil-faut-savoir-de-lentreprise-technofasciste-americaine-en-croisade-pour-le-futur-de-loccident

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the Belly of AI, directed and written by Henri Poulain and DiPLab’s own Antonio A. Casilli, takes research out of academic journals and into television screens and cinemas. Over the coming weeks, the documentary is screening across Europe bringing open questions about the human and environmental cost of AI to new audiences. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 April 2024 — Stockholm, Sweden Bio Skandia A free public screening at Stockholm’s Bio Skandia cinema. A panel discussion follows, with Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Melanie R., Anna Essén and Johan Fredrikzon representing Stockholm University, KTH, the Swedish Red Cross, and Stockholm School of Economics. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 April 2026 — Rotterdam, Netherlands Kino Rotterdam, 10:30–13:30 Hosted by SocTalk and the Platform Labor Group, EUR A free screening followed by a live discussion with screenwriter Antonio A. Casilli, joined by platform work and AI researchers Damion Bunders (UU), Francisca Grommé (EUR), Floor Fiers (UvA), João Gonçalves (EUR), and Martien Schaub (EUR). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 April 2026 — Rome, Italy CGIL Nazionale, Corso d’Italia 25 (TBA) Italy’s largest trade union confederation screens the film at its national headquarters, in preparation for May Day. Director Henri Poulain will join live via video link. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The public debate on work remains largely focused on quantity: are companies hiring or laying off? How many jobs will AI replace? Much less attention is paid to a more fundamental question: what is happening to the quality of work? It turns out that job quality is shaped by a wide range of factors, including gender, environmental conditions, migration, precarity, multiple jobholding, and, increasingly, technology. These questions are addressed in « Job Quality in a Turbulent Era », a new volume edited by Agnieszka Piasna and Janine Leschke, published today. The book brings together contributions that examine how work is being reconfigured in the context of ongoing economic and technological transformations. Among them, Paola Tubaro, and Antonio Casilli, analyze how AI and platformization are “fissuring” contemporary workplaces, and what this means for job quality across sectors. The full volume is available in open access via Edward Elgar Publishing It can be freely downloaded and used for research, teaching, or whatever else you do for a living