Privacy Group Accuses Scale AI of Invasive Tracking of Freelance Workers in Europe

The Austria-based digital privacy group noyb has filed five complaints against Scale AI, alleging the company breaches European law by monitoring freelance workers who create training data for AI models. The complaints were lodged in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria. They focus on Scale's Outlier platform, which is used by major technology firms including Google, Meta and OpenAI. Meta owns nearly half of Scale.

Noyb alleges that in some cases the platform records freelancers' mouse clicks and keystrokes every few seconds, and that this information could be used to produce video documenting a worker's entire day. The group says the data collected includes IP addresses, contact details, unique identifiers and information about visited pages, and can be used for targeted advertising. An analysis found 18 third-party trackers used on French freelancers' data, though a noyb spokesperson said there are "definitely more". The complaints also allege that workers must give identity verifier Persona face video and identification documents as a condition of employment.

Noyb is asking courts in the four countries to issue fines, and wants governments to investigate and examine how Scale allocates tasks. The group has a record of success: it won a case against TikTok that led to a €530 million fine, and a complaint that led to a €1.2 billion fine for Meta. These are allegations only, and the source does not include a response from Scale.