Whisper Networks and Workarounds: Negotiating Urban Company’s Interface

Abstract

Most scholarship on digital labor platforms focuses on the unfair practices of platforms and the exploitation of workers. This paper foregrounds the difficulties workers face in dealing with middle-class customers. Drawing on interviews with beauty gig workers associated with Urban Company in Hyderabad, I explore the use of WhatsApp groups by workers and the subsequent creation of whisper networks to collectivize, resist, and exercise agency. The term “whisper network” refers to a thriving system of informal communication amongst women to warn each other about male sexual predators within their immediate environment. Departing from the dominant notion that men are the subjects of whisper networks, this chapter uses an intersectional feminist lens to broaden its scope to include caste and class.