Dignity of Rider under the Algorithm Management

Abstract

Millions of riders are on the streets every day, moving food from restaurants to doorsteps within tightly calculated time windows. The algorithm makes this possible. But the same system that delivers unprecedented efficiency also imposes serious costs on the people who carry out the work - costs that are systematically transfered onto riders rather than absorbed by platforms. This paper starts from a simple claim: efficiency is valuable, but not when it is achieved through the externalisation of harm. This paper proceeds in two stages. Chapter 1 examines algorithmic management as it actually operates: the information asymmetries embedded in order allocation, the lack of clarity around pay and penalties, and the ways in which performance pressure produces physical exhaustion, income insecurity, and psychological distress. Chapter 2 shifts from critique to remedy. It compares platform labour regulation in the United States, the European Union, and China, and identifies reforms that offer protection without dismantling the platform model. Two concrete proposals are developed in detail: rider-centred transparency that works in practice, and industry-wide insurance funds that attach to riders themselves rather than to any single platform. What emerges is not a trade-off between efficiency and dignity, but a recognition that the two can coexist - provided the institutional conditions are right. The platform economy is not going away, nor should it. But its sustainability depends on whether it can protect the people who sustain it. That is not a moral afterthought; it is a practical necessity.