publications

2024

1. From Surveillance to Sousveillance: Designing Data Tools to Empower Platform-based Gig Workers

   Lindsey Schwartz

   2024

   Written as a Public Policy Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology

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2023

1. Deactivation with and without Representation: The Role of Dispute Arbitration for Seattle Rideshare Drivers

   Lindsey Schwartz, Eva Maxfield Brown, and Nic Weber

   2023

   Abs DOI SocArXiv

   For drivers who depend on an app in order to make a living, losing access to their account (or, being deactivated) is the equivalent of being digitally fired. Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber or Lyft justify frequent and prompt driver deactivations as a matter of customer safety. However, mounting evidence shows these companies do not follow their own deactivation policies to give drivers fair warning and due process. In 2021, the City of Seattle implemented a Deactivation Rights Ordinance that was meant to improve the workplace rights of rideshare drivers. This unique legislation was the first in the USA to grant rideshare drivers the right to legally challenge a deactivation through a dispute arbitration process. This report evaluates the impact of Seattle’s Deactivation Rights Ordinance (DRO) and the performance of the Driver Resolution Center (DRC) from July 1, 2021 through January 31, 2023. We rely upon data from three empirical studies: A survey of 134 Seattle-area drivers; Focus groups with 16 Seattle-area rideshare drivers; and, a statistical analysis of ~1400 deactivation cases from July 2021-January 2023. The findings contribute to recent research on account deactivation in app-based gig work, but are notably the first to utilize verified deactivation data.

2. Asymmetric by Design: How and Why Labor Policy Impacts Gig Workers

   Lindsey Schwartz, and Nic Weber

   2023

   Preprint

   Abs DOI SocArXiv

   Information asymmetries are a key feature of platform capitalism - they allow large multinational companies to exploit workers, and dodge regulation at all levels of government. In the following paper, we evaluate the impact of three experimental policies meant to regulate platforms and protect gig work in Seattle, WA. Drawing on focus groups and interviews with over 100 gig workers we describe how information asymmetries impede workers’ awareness of new rights and access to policy benefits. We describe how platform labor regulation faces a sociotechnical gap between policy design and implementation. We show that this gap cannot be bridged when platform companies, who rely upon information asymmetries to turn a profit, are responsible for communicating emerging workplace rights. We conclude by outlining three public policy implications from our work: 1. Distributing responsibility in the enforcement of platform regulations; 2. Involving gig workers in policy design and implementation; 3. Addressing information asymmetries in regulating platform companies, including but not limited to the gig economy.

3. Soft-Search: Two Datasets to Study the Identification and Production of Research Software

   Eva Maxfield Brown, Lindsey Schwartz, Richard Lewei Huang, and 1 more author

   In 2023 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 2023

   Abs DOI

   Software is an important tool for scholarly work, but software produced for research is in many cases not easily identifiable or discoverable. A potential first step in linking research and software is software identification. In this paper we present two datasets to study the identification and production of research software. The first dataset contains almost 1000 human labeled annotations of software production from National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded research projects. We use this dataset to train models that predict software production. Our second dataset is created by applying the trained predictive models across the abstracts and project outcomes reports for all NSF funded projects between the years of 2010 and 2023. The result is an inferred dataset of software production for over 150,000 NSF awards. We release the Soft-Search dataset to aid in identifying and understanding research software production: https://github.com/si2-urssi/eager

2022

1. Sustaining Experimental Policy through Research Coalition Building: Where Public Interest Advocates Can Matter Most.

   Lindsey Schwartz, and Nic Weber

   2022

   Position paper for Who Has an Interest in “Public Interest Technology”?: Critical Questions for Working with Local Governments & Impacted Communities Workshop at CSCW ’22

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