This article examines click farms in Brazil as a distinctive form of platform labor situated beyond dominant data work frameworks focused on artificial intelligence value chains. Drawing on multi-sited qualitative research conducted between 2020 and 2022, including platform observation, analysis of WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube content, and interviews with six women workers, the article analyzes the materialities, working conditions, and forms of organizing that sustain click farm labor. We argue that click farms operate as parasite platforms that depend on social media infrastructures while externalizing costs, risks, and material conditions of labor onto workers. Central to this arrangement is the production of artificial engagement, in which fake accounts and bots function not as deviations but as core features of click farm business models. The study situates click farms within longer histories of informal labor in Brazil, highlighting gendered survival strategies, parallel markets, and emergent forms of worker resistance.
Grohmann et al. (Sat,) studied this question.