The contemporary world experiences a reality crossed by technology, fostering settings that range from constant privacy exposure on social media to the creation of new sorts of work. The current technological revolutions have transformed the way of living and continue affecting the construction of social reality. This paper aims to study influencers’ work, which is not regulated or recognized as labor activity, is not regulated, and therefore, remains unprotected by the law. It is known that the development of technology has induced sociological changes in the organization of production, thus significantly modifying the ways of working and how it is protected – or not. To examine the problem and verify the hypothesis, the method used was bibliographic research through theoretical frameworks. This text is an incentive to reflect on the changes that affect today’s society and the necessity to protect all sorts of work.

Keywords: digital influencers, work, protection

 A long time ago, the Roman poet Ovid¹ in his work “Metamorphoses” told a story of a handsome young man called Narcissus. Despite all the admirers that tried to get his attention, he was so vain that he ended up falling in love with his reflection. One day, while walking in the woods, Narcissus saw his image reflected on the river water. He was so amazed by it that he fell in love with his reflection and drowned, trying to reach it.

The word narcissism originated from this myth, one of the most famous in Greek mythology. This adjective refers to the people who overly admire their image and nourish an exclusive passion for themselves. The myth of Narcissus could not be more current when confronted with a behavior that most people have on social media. Technology enabled it, and the “spectacularization of the self” has become an increasingly common practice.

It is necessary to question: how many people start the day watching videos of their favorite Instagrammer on social media? That person with an ordinary life exposes his/her trivial routine based on an “acceptable” and “desirable” social pattern. Why do people sit at the table to have breakfast and watch any Youtuber’s video? Among the most famous YouTubers, some teach daily activities such as how to play video games, cook something, and change a light bulb.

And what does it say about the actual society and the construction of subjectivity? When did normal people – those who were not considered artists or did not work in the media industry – gain so much space on social media? It is necessary to think about what the sudden interest in people means, their daily lives, and their online exposure to the new technology-based web of social relations.

After all, relevant changes – some subtle and others drastic – happened in a short amount of time, and it is not possible to avoid them. But how were these changes originated, and how can they be related to work? This present paper will address these questions without, however, offering prompt answers.

First, this paper will analyze the current technological revolution and how they influence and are influenced by social reality. It is known that despite being based on a discourse of neutrality, technology is a part of capitalist class relations and seeks to serve the systems' objective.

Second, this paper will analyze how technological changes generate technical and sociological changes, influencing people’s lives, behavior, and subjectivities. The capitalist society has at least two perspectives that overlap, one real and another illusory. The real perspective represents a society divided into classes based on labor exploitation. The illusory perspective would be the consumption spectacle and the commodification of life exposed on social media.

Finally, this paper will demonstrate that the borders between public and private spaces don’t exist anymore, and the comprehension of what labor is or isn’t, has become a blur. This study aims to address the influencers’ work, which is not regulated and remains unprotected by the law. This paper is an incentive to reflect on the changes that affect the current society.

The contemporary world experiences a reality influenced by technology. In almost every moment of the day – if not all moments – a large amount of people are in touch with some technological device, whether a computer to work, a microwave to cook, or a digital camera to take pictures. Cell phones are almost a part of people’s bodies and are used at work and for leisure experiences.

According to Marx² technology would be part of capitalist productive forces used to assist the labor organization and to intensify the movement of capital and the obtainment of profit. The technological transformations go beyond the technique, since they refer to the development of machines, that are more potent and even smarter, combining new ways to organize labor.

In capitalism, the process of commodities’ production creates people’s material life, considering that in this system, everything is about production and its acquisition.² But what differentiates the capitalist economy throughout the time are not the commodities produced in each period. The economic markets in 1990 and in 2022 are not the same, because, at that time, walkmans were produced, and now they are replaced by smartphones. According to with Marx² transformations in each period should be comprehended according to the changes in commodities’ production processes and the use of new technologies.

The technology used in the production process can reveal the history of social relations in the world. According to Marx² technology and the organization of the ways of production internalize everything that is developed in people’s material life. Understanding how technology is used in production and labor processes reveals questions about social relations hidden by technology.

The transformations experienced in the fields of technology and capitalist production models affect – and are affected by – social relations and mental conceptions of material life. To enlighten this question, Marx² ponders: “Don't we see the world with different eyes when we have microscopes, telescopes, satellites, x-rays, and computerized tomography? We understand and think about the world today in a different way because of the technologies we have.”

It is relevant to bring this question to the present time: Has the way of seeing the world changed when cell phones, the internet, and social media became part of people’s routines? Technology has changed consumed commodities, how people present themselves, how they build their identity and subjectivity, and the way they work.

Technology changes the way how people see the material world, as well as each person with an innovative idea can also change the technology.² And with this cooperative relationship, technology is creating conditions for the development of material life and production of commodities, and social relations are making technical questions more useful.

In any of its phases, the capitalist system constantly needs to produce commodities and control the labor to extract surplus value and have to make the capital move, since stopping it is the ruin of such system.² The demands of material life have influenced the development of technology, which makes consumerism possible by means of an online infrastructure through the internet and cell phones. It provides more control over the labor process, externalizing the production and breaking barriers of time and space, allowing the increase of circulation and value appreciation of uninterrupted exchange.²

The changes that have occurred in technology affected the way of human life. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to know someone who does not have a cell phone with plenty of technological features that allow people to attend online work meetings and post photos on social media. Access to this technological environment has changed how private and public are perceived. Today, it is common to post day-to-day things on social media that were once considered undisclosable in the past.

Material life and technology are interconnected processes, where one is not necessarily the cause of the other, but they affect each other. Marx² enunciated that technology also hides parts of material life that occur in the production process. It happens because technology is not only a machine that develops itself, but it has the power to control and change the labor process.

The innovations experienced currently hide, for example, the fact that mechanical inventions cannot reduce labor. Sometimes, they worsen its development and conditions. This is because the aim of machines is not to reduce labor but to produce more value. Currently, it is possible to work remotely through technological devices, which caused an increase in labor.

Technological changes at present are compared to the Enlightenment revolution, and the expressions alluding to the Fourth Technological Revolution spread its reflex over humanity, including in labor.³ It is becoming more common to use expressions such as Big Data, and Gig Economy. It is known that it is difficult not to be a part of at least one social media, such as Instagram and Facebook. And professions once unknown, such as YouTubers, influencers, and Instagrammers, are becoming more common.

The most famous social media, where almost everyone is connected, introduces new products and services that are shown on the timeline without the need of a click. People only have to think and talk about a product, and it will be offered on social media. And consumerism presents itself as life’s main goal in society or the “principal propelling and operating force of society […] that coordinates […] the formation of human individuals […]”.⁴

This consumerism is stimulated not by the necessity of survival, but by what people desire, or by what society states as desirable, such as the behavior disseminated on social profiles through posts that appear as a demonstration of everyday life, a pattern to follow. The “public privacy"⁵ exposed on social media by those who intend to influence and strengthen a pattern of capitalist society, maintain gender hierarchization, work with the idea of binarity, and are shown as a whiteness manifest.

Currently, it is possible to buy clothes at 3 a.m. as well as it is possible to post an influencer’s photo of some trip. And the clothes that the influencer was wearing in that picture, could be the very clothes that were bought at 3 a.m., as a result of browsing social media in an attempt to ease insomnia caused by anxiety (work, home, money, bills). This is how capitalism is strengthened. There is no time to consume or work because it is possible to do it all the time. Thus, the new working hour of 24/7 is perpetuated (twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week).

Capitalism follows the logic that choices of consumption, work, and production are offered 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. According to Crary⁶ “24/7 is a time of indifference, against which the fragility of human life is increasingly inadequate and within which sleep has no necessity or inevitability”. The total time of work follows this logic, because 24/7 makes “plausible, even normal, the idea of working without pause, without limits”.⁶

The products sold on social media are the influencers’ lifestyles, people are the commodities, and marketing is done by constant posts on the internet, innocent at first, showcasing common scenes from everyday life. And the influencers, whether or not aware of the work done, whether it is free or paid, achieve the purpose of a system that objectifies them. The dissemination of new technologies potentiates the division of the capitalist reality, the labor is organized differently, hiding in the spotlight of social media, having the technology as the conductor of the fetichism and organization.²

Social relations are developing, crossed by technology and online networks, and have changed people’s behavior, people’s concept of public/private spaces, of labor and how it’s done, and how it’s protected – or not. It is acknowledged that technological changes transformed material life, changing the construction of subjectivity in a circulation of private to public⁵ exposed and sold on social media, hiding relevant changes in how to organize labor.

Social media: the cultural modification and the great spectacle

In 1967, right after the end of the Second World War, a time when there was no social media, the philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord⁷ announced that people measured their social relations by images. Debord⁷ defended that in a capitalist society, life would be dominated and controlled by images spread through media as a true spectacle.

In this context, people need to feel validated by others as in the pictures they have seen in the spectacle. The images published by the media as the “correct way of life” are accepted by people and are measured in their social importance according to the concept propagated.

The spectacle would be the fetishistic representation of the world, using commodities as the principle on which life should be developed and which should consecrate the reign of appearance, simultaneously representing the result and project of capitalist production.⁷ The images transmitted by the media build people’s identities, and it becomes necessary to transform life into a spectacle to reach the approval of others.

Social life, in a capitalist system, is controlled through the images supported by the media, and reality is developed under two optics, the first is real, and the second is modified by the image that is considered reality. There is an attack on everyday life with the monetization of time, leading to the redefinition of the person as “a full-time economic agent” at least in the context of “jobless capitalism”.⁶

While the real perspective of society represents the way of living in a society divided by classes, a few have access to commodities and rights, and others can only count on selling their physical strength to survive. The real perspective represents the true essence of a capitalist society where commodities are not the center of life, but merely a reflection of human labor shaped as objects. Furthermore, commodities would represent the social relations among people during production through the exploitation of human labor.²

In the context of real perspective, according to Nick Couldry⁸ capitalism would be a real system of cruelty, considering that most people are exploited and live under degrading conditions so that some people could enjoy the benefits of this model of production. Under this viewpoint, there are situations where people experience extreme poverty and hunger, and live next to people who have a luxurious life, whose vehicle’s price could feed a whole community.

To disguise the brutality of this reality, a second illusory perspective represented by the media images is presented because “every system of cruelty requires its own theatre”.⁸ The images presented by the means of communication represent a less harsh version of reality, and that disguises the disparity inherent to this system of social metabolism.

And this illusory representation of reality is essential to the capitalist system, since it enables people to forget themselves at the shelves of life, not realizing (or perhaps they do, but have no other choice) that they’re part of the system’s exploitation atrocities. With the arrival of technology, the illusory perspective increases and enables the image exhibition and the creation of an online reality based on a standard dictating spectacle that puts together capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.

In the spectacle of social media images, it is possible to follow routines that seem to represent, through images, the life of ordinary people, such as a mother with children who does not have a babysitter starting her day with a post of her fabulous breakfast. This trivial imagery representation can reach millions of views. It is quite obvious that such daily routine exposed on social media is not very common, since most mothers without a supporting system will not probably even have breakfast, so it is possible to conclude that it represents an illusory perspective of the spectacle.

This type of representation of day-to-day life, once upon a time unable to hold people’s attention, is now becoming more common and attractive. Currently, the public considers ordinary people’s lives to be funny and interesting to watch on social media. At the same time, people can also show their everyday life and become not only the person who watches, but the one who is watched.

These images exhibited through social media have an increasing impact on social relations and patterns (hierarchical) imposed for a “better insertion” and even the “acceptance” of individuals in the social environment. People’s accomplishments shifted from becoming to having, and the latter is what is represented through the images they see.

Image domination already existed in previous times, whether through television, magazines, cinema, or other means of communication. The difference is that today, technological resources allow people’s lives to be exposed. In this context, the images that disguise reality flood social media with capitalist illusions in a timeline with no end, representing the prestige of what is exhibited there.

The development of technology led to an actual change in the mental conception of people that enabled the transition from private life to public life, the latter known as the externalization of subjectivity, aiming social validation.⁵ To illustrate this situation, it is possible to think about how the meaning of photography has changed over time. Until recently, when smartphones were not carried as a part of people’s bodies, taking a photo meant memorizing a very special moment that would be saved privately or shared only with a few people.

Currently, under the influence of technology, taking a photo has a different meaning considering it is produced to be exposed.⁵ The photo is not only a record of a special moment since the aim is to spread that image on the spectacle in search of social prestige.

According to Paula Sibilia,⁵ in 2013, the word “selfie” before inexistent in vocabulary, which means a type of self-portrait made with a cellphone camera, became the most important term of that year and the most generated kind of image. In 2006, Time magazine elected as the personality of the year various “me” exposed every day on social media, such was the importance of self-image exposure in social ideology.⁵ Every ordinary person, with their everyday life exposed on social media, has become more important than those who were named “artists” or “great personalities”.

Such cultural change, combined with the possibility of people carrying their cellphones turned into cameras, minicomputers, and portable offices, is enabled through technology. In addition, the social media that allows the exhibition of the image is considered a digital platform, a new business model enabled by technology.³ It is possible to notice that the changes initiated by technology go beyond the technique, being capable of changing social relations. Daily routines were formerly comprehended as the set of habits largely unnoticed that maintained the person in anonymity, in a “vague constellation of spaces and times outside what was organized and institutionalized around work, conformity, and consumerism”.⁶ Now, it becomes today’s currency of an economy that surpasses the separation “between the personal and professional, between entertainment and information”, exposing its logical compulsory of “communication that is inherently and inescapably 24/7”.⁶

The devices developed by technology have enabled, besides the technical development, the “death of anonymity”, as it modifies the thin line that once separated what was private and what was public,⁹ “submitting our rights to privacy to the slaughter of our own will.”⁴ The famous sentence of René Descartes “I think, therefore I am” could be easily replaced by the sentence “ ‘I am seen, therefore I am’ - and the more people who see me, the more I am…”.⁴

There is a time alignment of how markets function with the individual. This process started two centuries ago and has made “irrelevant distinctions between work and non-work time, between public and private, between everyday life and organized institutional milieus”.⁶

Social media poses as great shelves in this trade market, where those who fit in the patterns proposed by the images of the spectacle have an advantage. Social media – capitalist companies dressed in new clothes – use the economy of attention, which consists of keeping the users connected as long as possible, allowing the platforms to collect more personal data to induce a higher circulation of commodities.

Image domination can be noticed when white, skinny, rich and willing-to-spend women exposing themselves on social media find a place at the most visible shelves. And this does not happen randomly, since social media algorithms choose the images that will show first,¹⁰ dictating and validating the experiences from those images. Reflecting gender standards, among the most followed profiles on Instagram, are the ones that share unrealistic “wonder woman” routines,¹¹ showcasing daily physical exercises at 5 am, flaunting skinny, white, and unreachable bodies for most women. After that, they go to work, and in general, they have successful high paying jobs, they take care of the children, and at the end of the day, they still cook dinner for their proud husband. These positively toxic women do not yell, do not argue3, do not have a breakdown, do not get fat, or do not grow old. After all, a woman with visibility on social media is ideal for patriarchy and capitalism – an invented and maybe “nonexistent” woman.¹²

In addition, real women’s profiles are sometimes invisible and censured. They have their accounts excluded for being real, fat, black, transgender women, for denouncing chauvinism, fatphobia, transphobia, and racism every day.¹¹ Therefore, the influencer Polly Oliveira, in an interview with Mariane Santana,¹¹ reported she had suffered algorithmic censorship from Instagram when she started talking about the vulnerability of women, abusive relationships and posting photos of her “non-standard” body.

According to the interviewee, depending on the words or images used, the algorithm did not show her posts to her followers, and then she started to realize: “Something is not right, my body is insulting social media” (SANTANA, 2021, online).¹¹ Statements such as these reinforce what Marx had already foreseen² that technology is influencing reality, and reality is influencing technology, but what rules everything are the capitalist intentions alongside patriarchy and racism.

Technology has an important role in consolidating the society of the spectacle, acting as an instrument of assistance in the construction of lifestyles attuned to exploitation.⁷ It is possible to say that the spectacle, as well as technology, influence and is influenced by cultural relationships, and all of them directly impact the way of being in the world of work.

From the factory floor to floorless factories

The word influence comes from the Latin “influentia” and its etymology refers to the power wielded by the “Astros” over human destiny.¹³ In this sense, the one who was able to exert a psychological or intellectual influence on a certain person identified him/herself as a superior being who was beyond the common human reality.

Currently, influencing can be defined as an action exerted by an agent over someone or something inciting modifications of any kind.¹³ As such, the agent capable of influencing other people is no longer located in a superhuman reality and does not need to be a “star” posing as someone who has authority, education, or prestige in a given field of knowledge.

The term influencer, despite not having a direct connection with the word influence, is a word relatively new that did not exist in the vocabulary until recently. According to Paula Sibilia,⁵ when a new word arises in social reality, it indicates a practice that hitherto was nonexistent or if existent, it underwent important modifications.

According to with Issaaf Karhawi¹⁴ the practice of digital influencers would be, as well as a new business model developed in social media, a result of a set of features present in social relationships; consequences of the present time that have become possible due to technological development. The word influencer indicates a social practice that was potentialized by technology and enabled by its cultural changes.

Influencers use technology and social media to achieve a “daily self-disclosure” through propagation on social media of “daily fragments that propose to communicate to others that a content producer’s particular sensible personality trait would be worthy of exaltation by his peers.”¹⁵ Potentialized by the possibility of exhibiting himself/herself in real-time and with a wide reach through social media, influencers share their lives, tastes, and preferences, which transform this practice into a real occupation.

Jonathan Crary⁶ argued that “reification has proceeded to a point where the individual has to invent a self-understanding that optimizes or facilitates their participation in digital milieus and speeds.”

However, the digital influencer’s performance was not born as a type of labor immediately recognized as such, but grows in stages that go from sharing experiences related to generosity among peers to legitimation and professional institutionalization of influencers.¹⁶ Countless important influencers at present, previously known as bloggers, mention they started their trajectory by writing on private blogs owing to “personal motivation related to the sharing and generosity”.¹⁴

With free time to dedicate themselves to blogs, bloggers used that online environment to address topics interesting to them, and about which they had some knowledge, even though most of the time they did not have academic or professional training on such topic. It is possible to notice a great number of amateurs expressing their opinion backed by the public and without professional aid, which seems more interesting than the academic knowledge about a given subject because of the value of the image conveyed by the blogger.¹⁴

According to Issaaf Karhawi,¹⁴ in their genesis, the bloggers' practices do not have a professional purpose and are described as the social changes that were more important than the possible monetary benefits received. Insomuch that the person’s image has become the product displayed on the digital shelves. At that time, blogging practices were related to the “gift economy”, where an amateur (unskilled in a particular activity) expresses an opinion about subjects he/she likes. In return, this person would agree to get more followers and likes and receive gifts from some brands without consolidated commercial partnerships between the parties.

It is important to emphasize that in the early stages, blogs worked as a “content filter”, which made the search easier on the internet, since the blogger writes a short summary on the topic to be addressed, indicating main links for those who wanted to know more.¹⁴ Such facilitator bias led blogs to a very popular level on social media since it saved internet users' time and effort.

Gradually, this amateur practice, marked by personal nature, gains the status of work, and the term blogger now alludes to the “professionalization of the blogging practice”.¹⁴ The space occupied by social media, once used to share ideas and opinions, is now seen as a profitable environment that leads to a process of institutionalization and professionalization. Besides blogs, other social media have turned up, and the term blogger transitions to digital influencers.

With the evolution of technology and the culture that empowers social media, people who once shared their thoughts with a small number of followers have become online workers with multitasking teams, directed to map and create strategies to gather followers, as well as analyze the results of actions and behaviors, monetizing online spaces. However, the exposed routines on social media are part of day-to-day life and can be emulated by any “Johns and Janes”, even though this kind of exposure has become a new type of labor.

The professionalization of such practice is not only marked by the intensification of the activities performed or by the increase in the teams that follow given influencers, but also by the credibility relied on their opinions. Sometimes they do not have a professional or educational background and yet, they are seen as “opinion leaders”.¹⁴ Influencers work in a field named Influence Marketing, in which major brands hire “ ‘ordinary’ people – with thousands of followers – to mention the brands’ benefits while going about the content intended for social media.”¹⁷

The images represented in the media were an important capitalism tool to accelerate the circulation of commodities, improving the system’s flow and profitability. Issaaf Karhawi¹⁴ states that mass media, which once worked as a mediator between production and consumption, is being gradually replaced by a more personal and intimist interaction directed to a specific niche. It happens because “groups such as families, neighborhood friends or co-workers have more influence on people than the regular means of communication”. The interaction of digital influencers with their followers, who see influencers as a thriving and personal extension of themselves, is now more effective than impersonal advertisements directed to a nonspecific group of people.¹⁶

Influencers sympathize with their followers because they share information with a specific niche of people with common interests, giving them legitimacy and credibility. The fact that they do not identify themselves as traditional celebrities, but as anonymous people who, willingly, expose themselves to help other anonymous people, allows influencers to identify with their niche and to establish a lasting network of social relationships which can be defined as its “social capital”.¹⁶ And the more social capital an influencer has, the more credibility his/her words and opinions will have, and the greater his/her influence will be over the circulation of commodities.

According to Eduardo Soares¹⁸ Betaway’s research demonstrated that the industry of digital influencers profited 10 billion dollars in 2020. This research (SOARES, 2022, online)¹⁸ also demonstrated that 73% of social media users have already bought a product because of an influencer; 55% search for an influencer’s opinion before buying a product, and 86% have already discovered a product because of an influencer. The market of digital influencers is quite promising and interesting to the capitalist system, and there is no doubt that the activities performed by influencers are considered unprotected labor.

Despite the large amount of money influencers mention they receive for their performance, they could still be recognized as a salesperson or an advertising boy/girl seeking to ideologically identify with a given brand or a specific type of followers, having neither a particular work place/working hours, nor a defined and protected professional statute. We say that influencers could be recognized as a salesperson or an advertising boy/girl because it is not how they see themselves or how they want to be seen, despite the principle of unavailability applied in Labor Law, which gives no choice to the parties concerning the application of the labor protection regulation.¹⁹ And this refusal would be justified because part of the task of being an influencer is to belong to a superior caste of people who live for consumption and not for work.

This is what platforms and brands seek when they use an influencer’s work, they want people who exhibit their happy life, who make a large amount of money for a job that seems more like leisure, who are willing to consume trendy products used by a superior caste, teaching their followers to pursue patterns imposed by society. In this environment, products that can be acquired materialize human subjectivity, therefore, peoples’ value, individuality, and freedom would be represented by everything a person can or cannot buy.⁴

The sustainability of influencers’ work is based on the publicity of brands and products, but it can go beyond that, considering that the position held by influencers can amplify or neutralize given discourses. This way, through their work on social media, influencers can put necessary topics for society on the agenda or vanish them.¹⁶

To illustrate how influencers' work extends beyond marketing, during the COVID-19 vaccination in Indonesia, digital influencers were the first ones to get vaccinated in order to convey favorable messages about the necessity to be vaccinated (G1, 2021, online),²⁰ demonstrating how influencers have the attribution to popularize important information. Another example is the TV host Gabriela Prioli, considered an influencer of democracy since she seeks to disseminate political information using simple and funny language, ascending this discourse on social media.²¹

Despite the slant, the activities performed by digital influencers are presented in a glowing reality, always happy and full of realizations. After all, part of their work is to make others want to have this life. This activity is often confused with leisure and not recognized as real work by a large part of society.¹⁶

Even though the work of influencing is monetized and in the market, it still is not regulated and is an informal work without the protection of the State. It is a work developed on digital platforms to promote brands and the very platform itself. However, both brands and platforms, refuse to recognize themselves as employers or responsible for the activities of these workers. These companies benefit from influencers’ work, who are recognized as entrepreneurs, self-employed, and are highly paid for their posts on social media, not needing State protection.

The digital platforms used by influencers are presented in a disruptive manner as technology companies, providing an online environment that intermediates the relationship among brands, influencers, and consumers.⁸ Under this discourse, what platforms do is seen as a favor, a genuine act for everyone, considering that they provide free online environments. These environments are full of free functionalities, where those who want to exhibit themselves, want to work or want to consume can find each other without any problem.

It is necessary to remember that social media platforms only exist because of the influencers’ work since they provide information to “scroll the feed”. This way, influencers perform the main activity of these companies, developing it under the direction of digital platforms. In order for social media algorithms to provide a given influencer with great visibility on Instagram, it is necessary to post at a specific time, post regularly, and use functions such stories and hashtags.²² This is the power of management that the platform exercises over the influencers’ work.

Despite this narrative, digital platforms are a new business model performed under new ways of organization through externalization of the production process and transferring the costs to the workers. These platforms, while denying their responsibility for the influencers’ working conditions, obtain great benefits from this situation since “using platforms and devices to work, people are turned into commodities that take the form of personal data, which is sold to advertisers and data brokers”.²³

On the other hand, commercial brands – capitalist companies the that once hired advertising agents, advertisers, or salespersons as employees – also externalize the production process through influencers’ work. Influencers assume all the costs and liability for their work because they are recognized as self-employed and do not have working protection.

Digital influencers’ work was recognized as a profession in the Brazilian Classification of Occupations (CBO) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, under the number 2535-10, in February, 2022.²⁴ Despite this recognition, there is no regulation or explicit rules especially applicable to this type of work, which leads workers in this field to face problems to have social rights guaranteed in a working relationship.²⁵

The lack of a defined professional statute, as well as an association of digital influencers to entrepreneurship and financial stability, induces workers in this field to not have defined or constitutionally limited working hours, as well as not having access to labor amounts as thirteenth month pay, paid vacation, Government Severance Indemnity Fund for Employees, social security protection or protection concerning health and labor safety.

Although there is a professional guide of good practices published by the National Council of Self-Regulation in Advertising,²⁶ there is not adequate liability for irresponsible practices by influencers, which is a fact that directly affects access to information. Professionals such as media analysts, advertising agents, or journalists are easily conformed in a typical employment relationship and take liability for their practices, while digital influencers are considered entrepreneurs and excluded from Labor Law protection,²⁴ as well as they often are not duly liable for inadequate practices.

The lack of protection of influencers’ work leads these professionals to deal with problems related to work, ranging from financial insecurity to a lack of health and labor safety guarantees. The research conducted by Costa et al.²⁵ concerning how influencers’ precarious working conditions affect their mental health has demonstrated that 83% of interviewed influencers reported symptoms of depression, and 33% reported anxiety, as well as other disorders such as Burnout syndrome and body image disorder.

To make the routine more interesting, an influencer needs to find new subjects and themes to approach in order to be active on social media and increase the number of followers. According to Costa et al.,²⁵ this situation leads influencers to have a pressured routine to produce new content, characterized by the insecurity of not being able to gain their followers’ attention. To deal with these issues, influencers have to extend their working hours and live in a highly competitive environment, which leads to work-related illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, body image disorder, and Burnout syndrome.

The reason for the deterioration of influencers’ mental health is the “excessive necessity of productivity, extensive working hours, the inability to separate work from leisure, the insecurity related to acceptance of the content produced, and the negative comments”.²⁵ This entire scenario is developed in an environment with no protection, where influencers’ mental health and financial security are not prioritized, considering that they do not have a professional statute or state protection through Labor Law.

The “future profession” consists of products and lifestyle advertising to influence people’s consumption and keep them online on social networks. This unprotected profession requires “consistence in the number of posts, which sometimes can lead to a personal life exposure” that crosses the line of what was considered personal privacy. All of this has the purpose of “maintaining content innovation and, in many cases, leads to influencers’ financial stress due to financial instability”.²⁵

Interviewees reported that negative comments, the excessive need to produce interesting content, sharing almost every part of their lives and that of their families’, the time dedicated to social media, and the difficulty in separating work and leisure, as reasons that lead to mental illnesses. That is because even when they are enjoying themselves, it is necessary to show everything on social media as an attempt to seek perfection.²⁵ Many influencers declared that talking about mental illnesses on social media is still taboo because their work consists in “showing a perfect life”.²⁵

In a video posted by Youpix²⁷ digital influencers declared that work on the internet and social media presupposes 24 hours of work per day, seven days per week. For them, there is no option to disconnect from work “because the internet is a treadmill, and if you stop, you get pushed out of it”. There is also a difficulty in realizing what is or is not work, “you have to work during your free time, otherwise, other influencers' videos will have more engagement than yours…”.²⁷

While the line between public and private space is crossed, the understanding of what would or would not be labor gets mixed up. The factory floor, which once represented the delimited space where human work was developed and led to a minimum level of rights in order to achieve a decent job with the support of technology, is transmuted into floorless factories – cloud factories, social media factories – where labor developed by influencers is unprotected.

Influencers’ work is expected to grant total access to people’s lives through the trail left on the internet by the uninterrupted use of technologies and social media. At these places, everything can be exposed, including a photo of a breakfast meal, cake recipes, political opinions, body exposure, and love relationship opinions. The market, now blended in one’s private, focuses on the production of idea relations between product and consumer.²⁸

 But under this framework that makes the experience easy for consumers, and this supposed opportunity and freedom for workers, lies exploitation. Human work, distant from the factory floor (despite still existing,²⁹ is materialized in clicks, posts on Instagram or Twitter, through videos of YouTubers, remaining controlled, but unprotected by the State, since the salary is disguised under the form of freedom and entrepreneurship.²⁹

Technology is not only the work and development of the technique, but the improvement of the production process that allows organizing and controlling human labor.³⁰ Nowadays, the use of technology in the labor process demonstrates an increase in working hours instead of a reduction. While there is an impression that working hours are less controlled, there is a contradictory overview based on ideologies that hide the exacerbation of working hours beyond the maximum limit legally fixed. On the other hand, many narratives reduce the fight for limited working hours.

Technology ends the workers’ resistance since it bears the perception that the work is easier to be executed and less difficult³⁰ or gives the impression that this is not work, but leisure. The malleability of working hours, concerning flexible hours, regardless of being more extended, seems to enable a better conciliation between life in and outside the workplace.

The spectacle, always divided between two realities, hides exploitation, lack of protection, disrespect to minimum rights related to labor, and workers’ health deterioration. The factory floor disappears, while social media factories materialize without a “floor”, lacking protection to those who work there.

In this scenario, with no specific regulation for digital influencers’ work, one of the possible options would be to restore what is defined in the Federal Constitution.³¹ After all, the rights described in article 7 of the Federal Constitution³¹ are meant to protect the workers, and these guarantees are not limited to those included in the classic employment relationship.³²

Not ensuring minimum protection to these workers, as guaranteed in the Federal Constitution, means to act against the constitutional order in effect. It is necessary to validate “the comprehension that fundamental labor rights expand to any other working relationship”.³²

It is essential to consider that, regardless of the entrepreneurship discourse and the enticing technological modifications, it is not possible to offer protection since the individual needs them for his/her complete development, as well as for the preservation of his/her dignity.³³ Despite not being conformed to a classical employment relationship, influencers’ working hours must be defined. It is also necessary to think about health protection to these workers and make sure they have minimum financial stability to live. Although they say how profitable their financial situation is, this is not what is actually perceived in their realities.²⁵

Technology is here to stay and brings many benefits to human life, such as communication among people, the possibility of having access to information on a large scale, and how prompt one has access to it. But, regardless of the slant under which technology is seen, it is not possible to lose sight that its development takes place in capitalist terms, not existing neutrality in its transforming process. In addition to the technical changes that technology has provided, lifestyle, the construction of subjectivity, and even work are influenced by technology. Many sociological changes could be noticed in this transformation process of social relations, including the will to expose one’s private life on social media as part of the construction of subjectivity. The social media spectacle is a product of technology developed under capitalist bases that potentialize the division of social reality. With the advent of technology, human labor is still necessary, and its exploitation still is a reality in today’s society. Under this illusory perspective, the spectacle of consumption, self-exposure, and commodification of life is disclosed on social media.

The work done by influencers, in an illusory point of view, has flexible working hours, has more balance between personal and work life, and is considered light work, almost a well-paid entertainment. Under the real perspective, this line of work lacks specific regulations, slightly poses as entrepreneurship, and fails to offer minimal protection to the worker. The factory floor disappears while the factories of social media materialize with no floor, as it lacks protection to those who work there. In this scenario, possible options would be to debate the labor protection and the restoration of what is defined in the Federal Constitution.³¹ After all, the rights described in article 7 of the Federal Constitution³¹ are meant to protect the workers, and these guarantees are not limited to those included in the classic employment relationship.³² Despite not being conformed to a classical employment relationship, influencers’ working hours must be defined. It is also necessary to think about health protection to these workers and make sure they have minimum financial stability to live. Although they say how profitable their financial situation is, this is not what is actually perceived in their realities.²⁵

None.

The authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

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