gig economy

DoorDash Is Acquiring Food Delivery Service Caviar From Square for $410 Million

DoorDash, the delivery service known for screwing over its delivery workers with an elaborate tip-skimming scheme, is reportedly acquiring upscale food delivery platform Caviar in a deal valued at $410 million. Caviar’s parent company Square announced the news during its second-quarter earnings on Thursday. According to its Q2 shareholders letter, the multimillion-dollar sale will be…

Tech News Catie Keck Aug 2

DoorDash Tip-Skimming Scheme Prompts Class Action Lawsuit Seeking All Those Tips That Didn’t Go to Drivers

DoorDash’s years-long scheme to use customer tips to subsidize its workers’ wages is finally catching up to the company. And hot on the heels of renewed outrage about its tip-shaving scheme, a new class-action lawsuit is taking aim at the company for misleading its customers about how their tips were used. Though the controversial tipping…

Tech News Catie Keck Jul 30

DoorDash Says It’s Very Sorry You Noticed Its Tip-Skimming Scheme

Food delivery app DoorDash has, for months, doubled down on its policy of systematically skimming customer tips meant for its fleet of contract delivery workers. That resolve cracked on Tuesday night when CEO Tony Xu took to Twitter to announce some unspecified changes to its compensation model. Here’s how it worked. DoorDash offers its delivery…

Tech News Tom McKay Jul 24

DoorDash Still Thinks You’re an Idiot

In an absolutely depressing bit of déjà vu, DoorDash’s controversial tipping policy—the one that generated a good amount of outrage nearly six months ago—has received renewed attention this week, reminding us that DoorDash and companies like it continue to exploit workers even after ample (but ultimately inadequate) outcry. Coverage of the policy—one that seemed upon…

Tech News Catie Keck Jul 22

Instacart Workers Discover an App Is a Terrible Boss

Instacart has a checkered past when it comes to fair and dignified labor practices, and now dozens of its contract workers are claiming that the company app torments them into accepting shitty jobs or suffering the consequences. Instacart workers are independent contractors whose wage is contingent on the tasks they accept through the app, which…

Tech News Melanie Ehrenkranz Jul 15

DoorDash to Workers: We’ll Screw You Over to Your Face Now

Back in March, following criticism over its wage model, DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu wrote in an internal letter that the company would be conducting surveys and roundtables with its workers about the controversial system. In an update this week, Xu said that even as the company plans to introduce greater transparency about wage…

Tech News Catie Keck Jun 27

I’m Sure Austria Is Really Scared by Uber’s Threats to Pack Up Its Toys and Go Home

Spurred on by looming unfavorable legislation and stock market disappointment, Uber is reportedly playing hardball again, this time with the entire country of Austria. Uber is already banned from operating in a number of cities and countries, often for undermining extant taxi industries in those places. Briefly, Austria joined the list of Uberless locales when,…

Tech News Avery Ellis Jun 18

Workers Came Up With a Brilliant Plan to Use Postmates’ Exploitative Platform Against Itself

Food and beverage delivery platform Postmates has been hard at work making enemies, mainly out of its own contractor workforce. “I used to talk them up as far as being the most reputable company,” courier Chris Palmer told Gizmodo. He says he’s been delivering with Postmates for a year and a half in the greater…

Tech News Avery Ellis May 31

Why Uber Drivers Will Strike Around the World on Wednesday

We’re just days out from Uber making its multibillion-dollar move to the New York Stock Exchange and thousands of drivers from around the world are preparing to launch a series of strikes protests on Wednesday in an effort to fight for better pay and better treatment. Uber, however, expects their driver dissatisfaction problem to only…

Tech News Patrick Howell O'Neill May 7

Hundreds Turn Out to Picket Against Uber Amid 25-Hour Driver Strike

In an outpouring of long-simmering tensions between rideshare companies and drivers whose wages have been on the decline, hundreds affiliated or acting in solidarity with grassroots group Drivers United turned out on Monday to picket an Uber Greenlight hub in Redondo Beach, California. https://gizmodo.com/furious-over-falling-pay-los-angeles-uber-drivers-prep-1833500428 Inciting today’s action was a 25-percent decrease in per-mile rates rolled…

Tech News Avery Ellis Mar 25

Lyft Drivers Protest Falling Wages as Execs Drum Up Investor Money for $25 Billion IPO

Inside the luxury Omni Hotel in downtown San Francisco on Monday morning, Lyft executives and investors wheeled and dealed about the company’s upcoming IPO as the firm’s valuation hit a whopping an estimated $25 billion and climbing. Outside the Lyft investor meeting, 75 drivers and labor organizers protested falling wages, a lack of pricing transparency,…

Tech News Patrick Howell O'Neill Mar 25

DoorDash Has Been Confusing Its Workers About Payments for Nearly Two Years

This week, in a letter addressing individual workers of the food delivery service DoorDash, the company’s co-founder and CEO Tony Xu appeared to finally face brewing tension over the startup’s tipping model. In the letter, Xu said the company would be organizing surveys and roundtables with its delivery workers, independent contractors called dashers, about what…

Tech News Catie Keck Mar 15

Lyft’s IPO Banks Big on Self-Driving Cars, Shits on Its E-Scooters

Lyft finally filed for an IPO on Friday, a long-expected move for the ride-sharing company that has been racing to beat its larger competitor Uber to the public-offering punch. Aiming for a $20 billion valuation, Lyft’s newly filed IPO prospectus claims 39 percent of the U.S. ride-share market, a 17 percent jump in two years.…

Artificial Intelligence Patrick Howell O'Neill Mar 1

Instacart Shamed Into Treating Workers With Modicum of Decency

Instacart has repeatedly come under fire for the working conditions its contractors labor under. Today it finally agreed to stop engaging in what critics called tip theft, and all it took was a public shaming. In case you’re in the subset of people who goes to physical stores and buys things your own damn self,…

Tech News Avery Ellis Feb 6

Uber’s Arbitration Policy Comes Back to Bite It in the Ass

Over 12,000 Uber drivers found a way to weaponize the ridesharing platform’s restrictive contract in what’s possibly the funniest labor strategy of the year. But first: a bit of background. One of the more onerous aspects of the gig economy is its propensity to include arbitration agreements in the terms of service—you know, the very…

Tech News Avery Ellis Dec 5

Amazon: What If You Thought of Doing Manual Labor for Us as More of a Workout

On Monday, Amazon’s PR department touted the story of a woman who allegedly lost a ton of weight working for its Flex delivery service. In the company’s framing, Flex isn’t a dystopian project to reduce shipping costs by letting an army of expendable, plainclothes contractors compete to score “last-mile” delivery gigs. It’s a fun workout!…

Commerce Tom McKay Dec 3

Uber Just Asked the SEC Permission to Give Its Drivers Equity

From the day Uber started offering its ride-sharing service, it’s been fighting with drivers and governments over its lack of benefits and low wages. On Thursday, it signaled that it wants to give drivers a peace offering in the form of a piece of the company. Axios obtained the full letter that Uber sent to…

Tech News Rhett Jones Oct 12

UN Study Finds Average American Crowdworker Earns Less Than $5 an Hour

Concerns over the economic realities of gig workers have largely focused on more public-facing firms like Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, and Instacart. A study released yesterday by the International Labour Organization—an agency of the United Nations—suggests pay and work arrangements are as bad or worse for those working on “microtask” platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Microtasks…

Tech News Avery Ellis Sep 21

Five Years Later, Google Express Is No Closer to Beating Amazon

September 25 will mark five years since Google first launched Shopping Express, the e-commerce offering meant to challenge Amazon’s dominance. But despite Google parent company Alphabet’s staffing brain trust and impressive coffers, Express has done little to reinvent fulfillment—in fact, according to several current and former workers, it’s been running much the same playbook as…

Tech News Avery Ellis Aug 29

Uber Plans IPO in 2019, Wants to Be ‘Amazon for Transportation’

Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced Wednesday that the ridesharing company that has been clouded in controversy for the last few years is finally ready to go public, and intends to do so in the second half of 2019. Khosrowshahi first mentioned the target timeframe for Uber’s planned initial public offering (IPO) while speaking to…

Tech News AJ Dellinger May 31

DoorDash Is Acquiring Food Delivery Service Caviar From Square for $410 Million

DoorDash Tip-Skimming Scheme Prompts Class Action Lawsuit Seeking All Those Tips That Didn’t Go to Drivers

DoorDash Says It’s Very Sorry You Noticed Its Tip-Skimming Scheme

DoorDash Still Thinks You’re an Idiot

Instacart Workers Discover an App Is a Terrible Boss

DoorDash to Workers: We’ll Screw You Over to Your Face Now

I’m Sure Austria Is Really Scared by Uber’s Threats to Pack Up Its Toys and Go Home

Workers Came Up With a Brilliant Plan to Use Postmates’ Exploitative Platform Against Itself

Why Uber Drivers Will Strike Around the World on Wednesday

Hundreds Turn Out to Picket Against Uber Amid 25-Hour Driver Strike

Lyft Drivers Protest Falling Wages as Execs Drum Up Investor Money for $25 Billion IPO

DoorDash Has Been Confusing Its Workers About Payments for Nearly Two Years

Lyft’s IPO Banks Big on Self-Driving Cars, Shits on Its E-Scooters

Instacart Shamed Into Treating Workers With Modicum of Decency

Uber’s Arbitration Policy Comes Back to Bite It in the Ass

Amazon: What If You Thought of Doing Manual Labor for Us as More of a Workout

Uber Just Asked the SEC Permission to Give Its Drivers Equity

UN Study Finds Average American Crowdworker Earns Less Than $5 an Hour

Five Years Later, Google Express Is No Closer to Beating Amazon

Uber Plans IPO in 2019, Wants to Be ‘Amazon for Transportation’

Marshall Acton III Home Speaker Drops to a Record Low, the Deal Countdown Has Already Started

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Russia Allegedly Swung at VPNs but Accidentally Hit Its Own Banking Sector Instead

Ryan Coogler Is Shifting ‘Animorphs’ Into a Disney+ Show

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