In this situation, a fraud mechanism of digital caporalato against drivers has rapidly flourished through the official extension of the app called UberFleet. In short, thanks to UberFleet, an owner of several cars can become a platform-based micro-entrepreneur, making them profitable and renting them out to other Uber drivers via the dedicated app. Through his smartphone, the owner can monitor the fleet and has a commanding position over the drivers: he can follow their movements, check when and how they are working, and he is also the one who pays the commissions of the different drivers to Uber and collects a fee for himself. In a nutshell, it acts as an intermediary between the company and drivers who lack a vehicle of their own. But what happens, according to several drivers, is that the fleet owner often exempts himself from paying the full share of commissions and only pays the ‘minimum payment’ allowed by Uber in Argentina. In this way, he can pocket the difference in unpaid commissions on top of the percentage he is entitled to. This mechanism is therefore very similar to fraud because, as one expert driver explains, the drivers are not aware of what the owner of the fleet is doing, but it also outlines another kind of illicit and fraudulent intermediation of labour. It may also happen that Uber then decides to block the fleet due to insolvency, in which case unsuspecting drivers will find their account blocked without knowing exactly why (deactivation notices generally contain a generic reference to a breach of the ToS). Often, as one driver explains:
3 DIGITAL CAPORALATO AND MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE GIG
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