Beyond exploitation through work: research denounces the logic in Brazil of indebtedness operated by digital platforms

The financialization of the economy, a hallmark of neoliberalism in the twenty-first century, has updated the mechanisms of colonial domination through digital platforms. The logic of financial capital, materialized in speculation, datafication, rentism and hyper-exploitation is the vector of this process. This begins to redraw the global map of exploitation with the advent of digital platforms, giving capitalism a new lease of life until another structural crisis. These corporations transcend national borders and act as agents of a digital neocolonialism, extracting value and surplus labor from peripheral countries in an efficient and deterritorialized way.

The Fairwork Brazil 2025 report highlights the issue of indebtedness of digital platform workers in Brazil as a growing and multifaceted problem. The survey has a specific section on the subject entitled “Digital neocolonizers: platforms pay little and still profit from loans to workers”, in which the logic of indebtedness is detailed. The synthesis on indebtedness can be organized, basically, based on two main points: the first composes the causes that lead to indebtedness and, the second, that places the platforms as financial agents.

With regard to the causes of indebtedness, the combination of low wages and the high costs of maintaining work tools (vehicle, fuel, data packages, etc.) creates a scenario where earnings often do not cover expenses. This forces workers to take on debt in order to continue working. A survey cited in the report points out that about 92% of digital platform drivers in Brazil are in debt^[1].

The lack of coverage in cases of accidents or health problems, which are common due to exhausting working hours, contributes to the accumulation of debts, as workers are prevented from working and generating income. In other words, the absence of social protection for workers, although it is an aspect that goes mostly unnoticed, ends up being a trap for those who work on the platforms. This is because they simply transfer all the risks of the activity to the workers.

In addition, not only in the case of accidents, but also in the case of fines or maintenance with the vehicle, they are sources of expenses that can lead workers to accumulate debts. There are also situations of direct involvement with companies, such as cases of order cancellation, loss of products (even for theft reasons) or when they cannot locate the customer. In all of these, workers are usually held responsible for the costs of the material that was not delivered. A Rappi worker reported: “When the customer cancels an order in your hand, he already generates a debt for you.” Situations like this are recurrent in the workers’ reports, especially giving rise to customers who, perhaps, want to act in bad faith, claiming that the product was not received, when in fact it was, for example.

Another central aspect in the many layers that involve the issue of indebtedness is the extensive trade in car, motorcycle and bicycle rentals that is created around and in the direct relationship with the platforms. Often, these rental companies are partners of the platforms, which authorize direct debit from the professional’s account. This causes workers to start the day with a negative balance. A driver described the situation: “without having worked at all, I arrived on Monday to work in debt.”

In the second point of this organization is the role of platforms as financial agents. The Fairwork 2025 report reveals that platform companies have increasingly acted as financial providers, offering pre-approved loans directly to workers through apps. Platforms such as Uber (Banco Didio), 99 (with the 99 Loans service), iFood (with iFood Pago) and Indrive (with inDrive.Money) adopt this practice.

This strategy creates a vicious cycle: the platform pays little, generating the need for credit and then profits from the interest on the loans it offers. An Uber driver reported accepting a loan out of desperation to pay for what he spent on medicine to treat occupational diseases. In other words, the company creates the problem for the worker, transfers the responsibility entirely to him, who, in the condition of not being able to pay, ends up hostage to financing provided by that same company. In the end, the platform not only exploits the work of the subjects who depend on it, but also earns interest on what he was forced to pay for not being responsible for the costs of the activity itself.

In addition to generating additional profit, this practice increases the likelihood that the worker will remain linked to the company to pay off the debt. Such a context can intimately feed a cycle of dependence of the worker on the platform. In short, the report highlights that indebtedness is not an accidental consequence, but rather a structural and strategic element of the business model of digital platforms in Brazil. They impose precarious conditions that lead to indebtedness and then position themselves as the financial “solution”, doubling down on the vulnerability of workers and deepening their dependence and exploitation.

Several authors have highlighted that capital has acted not only through exploitation, but also through the dispossession and expropriation of labor (Antunes, 2018). Harvey (2024) defines this current context as “new imperialism”, since it is increasingly marked by “accumulation by dispossession”, in which capital seeks profits through predatory practices and not through expanded reproduction. Lazzarato (2010) shows that debt policy is one of the fundamental characteristics of financialization. For him, subjection and servitude work together to capture the desire and productive force of the social, requiring a new approach to political action that aims at de-subjectivation. In this context, financialization is configured as a central mechanism for the platformization of work, operating as a mode of accumulation of wealth by platforms (Grohmann; Salvagni, 2023). For the authors, this mechanism acts in an articulated way with algorithmic management and datafication, including its ideological dimensions of neoliberal rationality as a crucial step in this process.

Exploitation is the classic case of the extraction of more value in the labor process. It is, therefore, a form of capital accumulation through a relationship in the economic sphere. In theory, workers are “free” to offer their labor power to capital. Expropriation and dispossession were concepts until then linked to non-capitalist forms of production, such as feudalism and slavery. However, in the twenty-first century, we have seen more and more the use by capital of extra-economic resources, many in the political and coercive field, to impose their work regimes and advance in the accumulation of capital.

The withdrawal of protective rights of work and citizenship is an example of this, constituting social phenomena such as the case of the precariat (wage earners who receive incomes below what is necessary for their social reproduction and are deprived or limited of their rights as citizens). In the past, debt as a resource for the dispossession and expropriation of a worker’s income was linked to the activities of the rural environment. The farmer ended up assuming a debt with the farmer (on account of the rent of the house, the debt at the farm’s grocery store, the trip spent on migration, etc.) and, despite not being a slave, he was prevented from escaping by means of overseers. The very isolation of rural properties, far from large urban centers, made any attempt to free themselves from this unjust debt difficult. In the case of modern debt, as is the case between app delivery workers, the mechanisms of dependence and coercion are more sophisticated. Living conditions have been eroded over the years and protective rights have been withdrawn (such as the power of inspection and the recognition of the employment relationship), leaving them even more vulnerable to the power of capital. In this way, these workers end up subjugating themselves to the condition of debts, especially because the context presents them with no other alternative.

This context demonstrates that the alleged autonomy in platformized work is illusory. The transfer of business risks to the worker results in a position of subservience. The option for loans does not result from a free choice, but from a reality marked by indebtedness and the scarcity of options. The experiences narrated highlight the nuances of a significant restructuring of the world of work, driven by technology. Working on digital platforms, therefore, deepens exploitation and can end up establishing a relationship of direct dependence on the company.

References

Antunes, R. (2018). The privilege of serfdom: The new service proletariat in the digital age. Boitempo.

Grohmann, R., & Salvagni, J. (2023). Work through digital platforms: from the deepening of precariousness to the search for democratic alternatives. Edições Sesc SP.

Harvey, D. (2004). The “new” imperialism: accumulation by dispossession. Socialist register, 40(1), 95-126.

Lazzarato, M. (2010). Subjection and servitude in contemporary capitalism. Notebooks of subjectivity, (12), 168-179.

About the authors:

Julice Salvagni – Professor at the School of Administration and the Graduate Program in Public Policy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Ricardo Festi – Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Brasilia and guest researcher at the Institut de recherches interdisciplinar en sciences sociales (Irisso) at the Université Paris Dauphine.

Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente – Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute.

 

^[1]  Zem, R. (2025) App drivers work up to 60 hours a week, earn less than R$ 4 thousand and accumulate debts; says research. In G1, 07/26/2025. It can be found in https://g1.globo.com/trabalho-e-carreira/noticia/2025/07/26/motoristas-de-app-faturamento-trabalho-horas-pesquisa.ghtml.