Sina Häusler

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1. What is the title of your thesis? How did the idea come about to deal with this particular topic?

The title of my dissertation is "Three Empirical Essays on Data Privacy in Crowdsourcing Markets". I am writing the dissertation as part of the project "Data Privacy and Platform Work", which is funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation.

In my work, I mainly deal with the issue of how personal data and the rights of data subjects are treated in different countries. The idea arose on the basis of the legal regulation of the EU, which came into force in May 2018 and defines what personal data is. Data subjects, according to the DSGVO, receive their own rights (e.g. right to information - Article 15 DSGVO) regarding their personal data, which already existed in the German legislation. The DSGVO protects personal data in the online area internationally. This is important, because the trade of data cannot be stopped by national borders, especially with globalization, online trade has branched out the economic actors even more.

In Germany, the DGB's "Good Work" index specifies what a modern and humane world of work should look like, and we must also ask ourselves this question with regard to the online working world. In the online labor market, the constant exchange of personal data is hardly avoidable.

In our project we deal with the platform economy and the rights of crowdworkers, where so-called online platforms (e.g. Amazon Mechanical Turk) mediate job opportunities for registered crowdworkers. The completed projects are also uploaded via the platform and sent to the client by the platform.  

The EU has developed regulations for the platform economy that answer the questions of why we need new EU regulations for platform work. For example, platform workers are considered self-employed, but European national courts currently rule differently on the employment status of crowdworkers. The much bigger question, however, is how the platform makes decisions about the performance of crowdworkers through algorithmic management and what the consequences are for their compensation and employment.

2. What are the central research questions that you ask yourself in the thesis and what methods do you use to try to answer these questions?

My first question is whether German and US companies differ in the transparency of their data processing. To answer this question, I looked at 295 privacy statements, each from German and US companies. Using a Transparency Index, I filtered out the extent to which the DSGVO requirement for transparent communication of data processing was met in the privacy statements.

As a result, we wanted to test the extent to which requests for information (Article 15 of the DSGVO) are answered by companies. We evaluated the observation by recording in a data index which data was stored by the online platforms and which reappeared in the response, if one was given. The DSGVO states that companies must respond to requests for information within 31 days. For that reason, we created a survival analysis to determine whether it applies to our sample and compared whether there are any country-specific differences in the speed of response to the access request.

In addition, a systematic literature review will be conducted using the PRISMA method to capture the state of research on the DSGVO in the platform economy.

3. What do you think are the most exciting results of your research so far?

The project started with a market analysis of 295 crowdworking companies. One result of the review of the privacy statements was that the rights of users are described in more detail in German companies and that the right to information (Article 15 of the DSGVO) is equated with the right to erasure (Article 17 of the DSGVO) in US companies.

The DSGVO specifies that personal data must be transmitted "user-friendly", but not in which format. We have seen many different variants here, some have their file password secured, but most have it unencrypted stapled to the email. What was striking here was that some US platforms confused the right to information (Article 15 DSGVO) with the right to erasure (Article 17 DSGVO).

We found that 20% of our sample did not respond to the information request. In addition, the speed in Germany in the survival analysis in responding to the request in our sample was significantly different from the US.

 4. You have been working at the faculty as a research assistant since July 1st, 2023 and have moved from the University of Bremen to the TU Dresden to continue your doctoral project with Prof. Hornuf. What are you particularly looking forward to here in Dresden and what will you remember most positively from your time in Bremen?

At the TU Dresden, I am particularly looking forward to the exchange with the new colleagues, because the expertise in the field of data protection seems to be well represented at the TU Dresden.

During my time at the University of Bremen, I particularly liked that I was able to work on a project that dealt with the interdisciplinary issues of digital time and privacy on the Internet. I find this a very exciting topic. The exchange with many experts from the University of Bremen, but also from outside, remains a positive memory for me. Especially in the weekly Diginomics seminars of the Department of Economics, exciting insights into the current research results of internal and external experts were given. I have fond memories of that, as it allowed me to get to know various research methods.