The rise of platform work is often described as a triumph of technological innovation. This is a convenient fallacy. What really strengthened this model was the combination of financing and pressures to reduce labor costs. Technology alone does not explain widening inequality. Platforms thrive because they operate in a regulatory vacuum. This model is based on the deprivation of employment relations, the fragmentation of occupational groups, and the dismantling of unions – all disguised under the phrases “collaborative economy,” “flexibility,” and “autonomy.” In practice, these relationships are largely unequal and unprotected.
In Brazil, the rise of recruitment platforms has not been a spontaneous phenomenon. This problem was accelerated by the 2017 labor reforms, which institutionalized a precarious employability system and weakened workers’ ability to organize. The promise of modernization has, in fact, served to open the floodgates to informal work and allow companies to shift risks and costs to increasingly vulnerable workers. Recent data from Contínua PNAD – IBGE, 2025 – highlights the scale of the problem: a 25.4% growth in the number of platform workers in just two years, reaching 1.65 million in 2024. The vast majority of them are young men, middle- or higher-educated workers – people who would occupy more stable positions in a poorly regulated labor market. Instead, they face long working hours (44.8 hours per week), low social protection (only 35.9% contribute to Social Security), and alarming rates of informal employment (71.1% on average, nearly 88% in the Northeast).
The regulatory necessity is clear. The Brazilian state must abandon the position of spectator and assume its role as guarantor of rights. This means: 1) legally recognizing forms of algorithmic dependency, as the language of “cooperation” is an obvious tool for concealing exploitative relationships; 2) Provide organizational density for those on platforms, strengthening unions and collective bargaining spaces; 3) Create mandatory social insurance arrangements, with contributions shared between workers, companies and the state – it is unacceptable for multi-billion dollar platforms to exempt themselves from social responsibilities. The supposed “flexibility” of working on platforms cannot be a bargaining chip to give up social rights. This devil’s bargain – trading Social Security for more autonomy – only matters to digital companies, never workers.
What we see today is not “the end of wage labor,” but the consolidation of a mass of workers made invisible through app-mediated employment relations. To ignore this process is to choose a future characterized by low productivity, continued informal work, and widening inequality. The Brazilian digital economy cannot rely, in the twenty-first century, on labor relations that reproduce the Manchester logic of the nineteenth century. Regulating the work of the platform is not an option: it is a civilized necessity.
Editor Michael Fransa asks each participant in the Folha de S. Paulo Politics and Justice space to suggest a song for readers. And in this text he chose Arnaldo Profaci Lanzara It was Frank Zappa’s “Plastic People.”
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