The platform is one of the scenarios where digital technology is widely used, and the platform breaks through the time and space limitations of traditional bazaars and industry boundaries, and places more emphasis on services, so that any platform participant can efficiently collaborate in meeting customer needs. Among them, platform labor has made a great contribution. This form of labor has become a flexible employment trend in the digital era through efficient and accurate service demand matching and intelligent labor process management. From the perspective of rights and interests protection, caring for platform workers and optimizing the platform labor process are related to the stability of the network social structure and the sustainable and healthy development of the digital economy. At present, several new characteristics of platform labor need to attract widespread attention from the society.
There is a new trend in the labor intensity of the platform. As the penetration of digital technology into platform labor continues to increase, platform workers continue to exist in a more visible way. This is mainly reflected in two aspects: first, the repetitive and high-intensity work of workers. In the process of platform labor, such as food delivery workers and online ride-hailing drivers, they must perform repetitive, high-intensity simple labor, which usually requires long hours of driving or cycling, as well as frequent program operations such as taking orders and delivering goods, and platform workers have to accept more dispatch tasks in order to pursue higher incomes. Second, as a "digital infrastructure", the platform enables the workers themselves to establish a link relationship with various business scenarios, such as some online platform anchors resonate with the audience through language, personality, and talent, and stimulate the audience to give them emotional feedback. In the process of platform labor, algorithm-driven performance appraisal mechanisms force workers to voluntarily extend their working hours, and this "efficiency race" often comes at the expense of workers' rest time and intensifies internal competition among workers.
The form of direct labor involved in platform services is simplified. The development of the platform economy has promoted the diversification of labor forms and the simplification of labor processes. The threshold for workers to enter the industry is very low, and they can generally start working through simple registration and receiving orders, without complex training or cumbersome qualification certification. For example, workers based on physical service platforms only need to use digital tools to obtain labor opportunities, perform contracts in accordance with regulations, accept labor supervision, and finally obtain labor remuneration. Short video creators based on content production attract audiences by publishing video content to obtain advertising revenue or fan rewards, and emotional anchors based on talent interaction produce leisure and entertainment content through "shows", and cater to consumers' emotional needs by interacting with consumers and conjectures to obtain fan rewards. These forms of direct labor not only improve work efficiency, but also reduce transaction costs; At the same time, the "participation is production" working model is promoted, and a large amount of data is generated from this and the platform algorithm is further optimized. Digital platforms give high-skilled workers and low-skilled workers the same entry threshold, and in a certain sense, this flexible employment method becomes a "reservoir" and "buffer" for employment. However, it also inevitably makes it easier for low-skilled workers to be replaced, increasing occupational mobility. In addition, the high degree of standardization of the labor process also limits the creativity and autonomy of workers.
Platform labor objects and the dematerialization of labor results. Most of the labor objects in the platform economy are data, information, knowledge, etc. For example, in the field of content production, UP hosts and short video creators create video content that meets the user's tastes according to their interests and needs; In the field of emotional experience, show anchors and virtual lovers provide personalized emotional companionship and comfort according to the emotional needs of users. The fruits of their labor are no longer limited to traditional material products, but are more embodied in the spiritual level or virtual environment. For example, in the field of services, the "service" provided by food delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers is itself a kind of dematerialized labor fruit; In the field of emotional experience, the emotional care provided by virtual lovers is a kind of spiritual labor. Some scholars believe that platform labor provides "services" that can be purchased, and that such services first have use value and can produce a series of functional functions, but these labor do not produce things as "entities", but only as an activity. It should be noted that the key factor of production in the economic operation of the digital era is data, the extension of production is expanding, the identity of production and consumption is increasing, and the process of service activities can produce data.
The temporal fragmentation and spatial mobility of platform labor. The highly developed Internet, Internet of Things and logistics have realized the accurate connection between people and things, production and consumption. The elasticity of people's needs determines the way in which they are met and the flexibility of their labor. From the perspective of time, with the popularization of digital technology and social networks, people can work through digital media at any time, which can enhance the autonomy and flexibility of work, but also blur the boundaries between working time and non-working time, leading to the potential extension of working hours, and even causing workers to fall into a state of uninterrupted work, that is, the so-called "sleepless" mode. In addition, the rise of platform labor has exacerbated the fragmentation of time, allowing individuals to process multiple tasks in parallel in the same time period, thus breaking the inherent continuity characteristics of traditional labor. This change not only reflects the innovation of work models, but also poses new challenges to labor efficiency and work-life balance. From the perspective of space, the workplace has two characteristics: virtuality and mobility. Its virtuality is reflected in the fact that workers can work in any geographical location with the support of Internet technology, thus breaking through the dependence of traditional labor on fixed space; Mobility, on the other hand, is reflected in the fact that platform labor based on physical services, such as Didi drivers, food delivery riders, domestic service providers, etc., requires workers to travel to different locations according to their work needs, and continuously adapt and adjust their working environment. In the context of fragmentation of work tasks and segmentation of professional fields, a large number of gig jobs have emerged, which has brought a broad space for the development of the platform and provided more employment options for workers. However, the changes in the time and space dimensions of the platform labor process have also brought about problems such as uncertain working hours and irregular work rhythms, making it difficult for workers to obtain stable income and living security.
Flexibility of the employment model of the platform economy. The employment model of the platform economy is fundamentally different from the traditional employment model based on the employment system. In order to optimize the cost structure and avoid employment risks, most platform enterprises mainly use informal employment methods such as signing labor cooperation agreements. With the transformation of the employment model from the traditional "company + employee" structure to the new model of "platform + individual", platform workers are usually classified as "self-employed" or "independent contract workers", rather than employees in the traditional legal sense. Therefore, in a market environment that emphasizes workers' "autonomy in employment (entrepreneurship)", various statutory labor rights and interests protections, such as minimum wage standards, employment security guarantees, pension insurance, etc., which are closely related to employees' status, have been "suspended" to a certain extent. In addition, due to the imperfection of the current legal norms and the inability of the existing labor law to be fully applicable in many situations, there is still a problem of ambiguity in the identification of labor relations in the platform employment model, resulting in unclear rights and responsibilities between platform enterprises and platform workers and the instability of labor relations, which in turn leads to the inability of some platform workers to obtain due protection of their labor rights and interests. For example, in the ride-hailing and express delivery industry, many employees do not have formal labor contracts with platforms or outsourcing companies, such as food delivery riders who have developed "platform stickiness" due to uncertain working hours, and their bodies and work are embedded in the highly unstable digital interconnection and algorithmic distribution, which further exacerbates the instability of their own work and life conditions.
The rise of the platform economy has given birth to new business models such as mass creation, outsourcing, and gig work, which have injected strong impetus into the development of the economy and society. While digital technology is promoting the quality and efficiency of the economy, it has also had a profound impact on the employment structure, employment quality and labor style of workers. However, with the rapid growth of the platform economy, a series of social problems have gradually become prominent, such as the strengthening of the platform's control over the labor process, the unreasonableness of labor quotas, the increase in the risk of data privacy leakage, and the insufficient protection of workers' rights and interests. In view of these problems and challenges, it is necessary for the government, platform organizations, and all sectors of society to work together to strengthen the legal protection system for labor rights and interests in the platform economy, deepen the review and supervision of platform operations, and promote the self-discipline mechanism of the platform construction industry and the self-organization mechanism of platform workers. Through a series of effective governance measures, while ensuring the healthy development of the platform economy, it is also necessary to promote the coordination and orderliness of the economy and society.