A Moment of Reckoning: Why the International Labour Conference is Just the Beginning for Platform Workers by Mustafa Qadri

This week, I’ll be walking into the International Labour Conference with a delegation of gig and platform workers from across the Global Majority. For many of them, this will be the first time their voices reach the corridors of international power. For me, it represents everything we’ve been building toward at Equidem—a moment when the invisible becomes visible, when the silenced find their voice.

The Human Cost of Our Digital Economy

Over the past year, our investigations have taken us deep into the hidden infrastructure of the digital platform economy. We’ve sat with 113 workers across Kenya, Colombia, and the Philippines—data labellers and content moderators who power the AI systems transforming our world. What we found was a systematic architecture of exploitation that would make the robber barons of the industrial age blush.

Behind every AI breakthrough, every content moderation decision, every data point that trains our algorithms, are human beings working in conditions that violate every principle of decent work. Listen to their voices:

”The content was 99% child pornography and abuse material. I lost around 15 kilos in 6 to 8 months. I have psoriasis… terrible sleeping patterns… I felt depressed.” — Content moderator, Colombia

(Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune skin condition triggered or worsened by severe stress. It causes painful, scaly skin patches and is often lifelong.)

”I am constantly exposed to sexually violent content. This has affected my sexual life. I feel detached and no longer have the desire to engage in sexual activity.” — Content moderator, Kenya

These aren’t isolated cases. Our report “Scroll. Click. Suffer: The Hidden Human Cost of Content Moderation and Data Labelling” documents systematic patterns of abuse across 113 workers we interviewed in Colombia, Kenya, and the Philippines.

Meta, OpenAI, and other tech giants have built empires on this hidden labour, contracting through layers of intermediaries to maintain plausible deniability. But the workers we’ve met aren’t statistics—they’re real people whose humanity is being systematically eroded in service of our digital convenience.

Why This Moment Matters

What excites me most about this week isn’t just that we’re bringing these stories to the ILC — it’s that we’re bringing the workers themselves. In collaboration with our sister organisations, we’ve built a powerful multi-country delegation spanning continents and sectors. The workers who have lived these realities, organised in defiance of NDAs, and found solidarity across borders despite the isolating structures of platform work — they will be at the ILC, speaking for themselves, demanding change.

And this is how change will happen. Not through reports filed away in bureaucratic drawers, but through workers finding their collective voice and demanding the world listen.

We’re calling for concrete action at the ILC:

• Recognise lead firms as joint employers—no more hiding behind intermediaries.
• Extend ILO protections to all workers, including subcontracted and platform-based.
• Ban NDAs that suppress abuse reporting and trap trauma.
• Regulate algorithmic management—these systems control lives and must be accountable.
• Enforce binding joint liability—so no company can profit from abuse without consequence.

These aren’t abstract policy proposals—they’re the difference between dignity and dehumanisation for thousands of workers.

The Dream We’re Fighting For

When I founded Equidem, it was born from a simple belief: that the communities most affected by exploitation should lead the fight against it. We don’t parachute in with solutions—we equip grassroots movements with the tools to investigate, organise, and demand accountability on their own terms.

The platform economy has shown us both the promise and peril of our interconnected world. These same technologies that enable exploitation also enable organising across borders. The same platforms that isolate workers also allow them to find each other, share strategies, build solidarity.

My dream is that five years from now, no worker will have to choose between their mental health and their livelihood to train an AI system. That algorithmic management will be transparent, accountable, and centered on human dignity. That the wealth generated by platform labour will be shared with the workers who create it.

Beyond the Conference

The ILC is just the beginning. Real change happens when workers return to their communities with new tools, new networks, new power. It happens when businesses realise that exploitation isn’t a sustainable business model. It happens when consumers understand the true cost of their digital convenience.

At Equidem, we’re not just documenting problems—we’re building the infrastructure for worker-led solutions. Training local advocates, supporting grassroots organisations, creating pathways for accountability that can’t be bought off or intimidated into silence.

The workers joining me this week have already changed the conversation. They’ve turned individual suffering into collective action, isolated grievances into global solidarity. They’ve shown that another digital economy is possible—one that serves human flourishing rather than extracting from it.

That’s the future we’re fighting for. And next week, the world will hear us coming.

Read our full investigations:  Scroll. Click. Suffer. The human cost of content moderation and data labelling — based on interviews with 113 workers across Colombia, Kenya, and the Philippines. 🔗 https://equidem.org/reports/scroll-click-suffer-the-hidden-human-cost-of-content-moderation-and-data-labelling/

📍 Realising Decent Work in the Platform Economy — A brief launched ahead of the ILC exposing the abuse faced by food delivery riders and data workers hired through BPOs and 3PLs. 🔗 https://equidem.org/reports/realising-decent-work-in-the-platform-economy-addressing-intermediated-platform-employment-in-food-delivery-and-data-work/

Follow our work at Equidem as we continue to rewrite the rules of evidence-based human rights investigations, always anchored in the Global Majority and led by the communities we serve.

Mustafa Qadri (Founder & CEO, Equidem)