Late-Night Livestreams for Farmers: How Much Sincerity, How Much Script?

Although we frequently talk about being “trapped in the algorithm,” it hardly slows algorithms from embedding themselves ever more deeply into daily life. But do internet creators, delivery couriers, e-commerce hosts, media professionals, and ride-hailing drivers—those who work with algorithms on a daily basis—truly lack their own perceptions and understanding of how they operate?

Duan Shichang, a postdoctoral researcher in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, began “going undercover” with e-commerce livestreaming teams in 2021. During his stint, he worked as a sales streamer for nine months, pitching products ranging from salted duck eggs and garlic to tea and cold noodles… Spanning four years, this ethnographic study of algorithms and labour found that frontline entrepreneurs and workers, despite feeling bound by algorithms, are actively seeking ways to break free. They are systematically distilling practical insights into how these systems actually function. In today’s algorithm-driven landscape, desperate to win the visibility that secures their livelihoods, they are hard at work generating their own “algorithm gossip”.

The next time you happen to scroll across a weather-beaten orange farmer tending their crops, know that behind the agricultural livestream served up to your feed lies a constant push-and-pull: rural e-commerce pioneers and labourers navigating a continuously evolving algorithmic web.

In this episode, we join Duan Shichang as we step into rural livestreaming sets across Hangzhou and Henan. We’ll explore: why the elderly woman selling salted duck eggs might just be a professional actor; how algorithms “commodify hardship”; and beyond the anxiety over traffic, how these shrewd and adaptable “new-generation farmers” forge an emotional community through what might seem like superstitious exchanges of know-how, riding the digital wave. This is more than a business driven by traffic—it’s a story of shifting rural identities and self-redemption in the age of digital capitalism.

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Duan Shichang

Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Xiamen University; postdoctoral researcher in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He focuses on the platform economy and e-commerce livestreaming—an early-career academic shuttling between urban and rural landscapes, China and the Netherlands, and communication studies and anthropology.

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Yu Yang

Editor at Foodthink. An editor who spends their days glued to the backend dashboard, wrestling with traffic anxiety and algorithmic bafflement.

Xiao Jing

Foodthink host, focusing on food culture and sustainable living.

Li Ye

Newly appointed project officer at Foodthink and the newest host of Food Talk. Binges agricultural support livestreams and has made repeat purchases, though still left wondering whether the farmers were truly helped.