Thousands of Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers in New York City and Los Angeles are on strike fighting the impact of technological innovation on their industry and earnings. These entertainment writers are in many ways the original gig workers. Even for unionized writers, job security never lasts more than a few weeks. Much like other gig workers including Uber drivers and DoorDash delivery workers, technological innovations driven by Silicon Valley firms have been used to drive down wages and to justify rewriting the terms of employment in the industry to workers’ detriment. Where taxi drivers saw their work moved onto apps like Uber and its independent contractor model, writers saw their shows moved from broadcast networks to streaming services — with entertainment bosses insisting that residuals, the compensation writers receive on reruns and other future revenue generated from their work, no longer need to be paid.

At their core, the challenges facing both kinds of workers are driven by Silicon Valley’s ethos of rule-breaking in the name of “disruption” that is slowly impacting every sector of the economy. The impact of tech firms on Hollywood began in the 2000s, resulting in the 2007–8 strike, which ensured that streaming services like Netflix and other internet-based media would be covered by the WGA contract.

The primary sticking points of the current strike are about technology. As the WGA West published their list of demands and the companies’ counter proposals, the main issues are the extent to which streaming residuals are based on the number of streams and the preservation of writers rooms (a demand that is about ensuring minimum levels of staffing for writers), which have been threatened by streamers’ movement to shorter seasons than broadcast shows, as well as a ban on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the script generation process.