cybertariat

C3Y4B3E1R1T1A1R1I1A1T1

noun

A proletarian class who perform repetitive, unskilled, and low-paid digital labour (such as moderating online platforms or click farming).

Scrabble 18

Meanings

noun
  1. Marxismneologismsingularsingular onlyA proletarian class who perform repetitive, unskilled, and low-paid digital labour (such as moderating online platforms or click farming).

    It is apparent that a new cybertariat is in the making. Whether it will perceive itself as such is another matter.

    2000, Ursula Huws, “The Making of a Cybertariat? Virtual Work in a Real World”, in Leo Panitch, Colin Leys, editors, Socialist Register, Working Classes, Global Realities, London: The Merlin Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20
    2 more examples

    On the eve of May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, all 50 volumes of the Marx and Engels Collected Works (MECW) were removed from the Marxists Internet Archive at Marxists.org at the request of the publisher, Lawrence & Wishart, igniting the cybertariat's fury.

    [2014 May 2, Jordan Pearson, “Not Even Radical Communist Literature Is Immune to Copyright Battles”, in VICE, archived from the original on 06 Nov 2023

    The work of matching drivers to ride requests on ridesharing apps, scoring web pages for quality, correcting digital maps, tagging and annotating videos, double-checking virtual assistants' responses, correcting biases, and moderating social media postings all demands, to this day, a multitude of real humans in the loop. What stands beneath the fetish of AI is a global digital assembly line of silent, invisible men and women, often laboring in precarious conditions, many in postcolonies of the Global South. A new class of workers stands opposite the coding elite: the cybertariat.

    2021 May 27, Jenna Burrell, Marion Fourcade, “The Society of Algorithms”, in Annual Review of Sociology, volume 47, San Mateo, C.A.: Annual Reviews, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 219

Origin

Blend of cyber- + proletariat. Coined by researcher Ursula Huws in a 2000 essay (see quotation below).

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

French cybertariat
  • cybertariatTranslations
Polish cybertariat
  • cybertariatTranslations
Cite this entry
APA

cybertariat. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cybertariat

MLA

“cybertariat.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cybertariat. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cybertariat,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cybertariat.

Source: cybertariat on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.