Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs

Gig workers are a genuine and serious regression in workers rights and employer vs. employee power balance. These "jobs" should not be allowed to exist, at all.

Tech companies have figured out a way to subvert the protections all other employees are subject to. I see absolutely no reason why they should be allowed to do this.

I really do not understand why governments aren't working hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.

Once you actually read the article .. you see a similar kind of thing to complaints about Youtube or bank demonetization. People are accused of fraud, and have their access withdrawn - but nobody will explain what they allegedly did, because that would leak information about the fraud detection.

It's a kind of automated low trust economy. The drivers don't trust the apps, and the app doesn't trust the drivers, so the thing has to be held together by surveillance and micromanagement.

There is room for a food delivery horror game. Procedurally generated delivery instructions that never make sense. Contact support, have a real voice chat with a LLM that leads nowhere. Don’t make quota? Get hunted and eaten by The Manager. All for tips that don’t pay your crippling medical bills nor allow you transition into better jobs. The horror writes itself.

Unionize. Collective action is the only way to stand up to Uber and co.

i'm surprised that more gig work delivery folks haven't tried to 'go independent' and become a new sort of personal assistant: select a handful of good clients and get them pay a retainer for you to drive around doing their busywork all day.

for the driver, consistent pay and the ability to weed out bad clients. for the client, you'd get a trustworthy assistant that should be able to take on a wider range of things that a single app wouldn't do. it may not be as fast as an on-demand delivery apps, but for most things that doesn't really matter.

> A few hours later he received an email explaining that the app company had “taken the decision to revoke access” to his account because he had been elongating his journey to the pickup point, taking longer than reasonable. It didn’t add up, but there was no straightforward way to find out more.

>It wasn’t until weeks later, when he exercised his legal right to request data held about himself, that he was told something completely different: the app company believed he had tried to manipulate the system to undeservedly earn extra fees for waiting at restaurants to pick up orders.

>This had been spotted by team members, the app company claimed. An apparent algorithmic intervention was now being described as a human one. But when Myron looked back at his pay records, he could see none of the fees he was accused of taking. It was discombobulating.

On top of putting the risk of demand for the business changing onto employees… it seems these companies can pass on the risk of even being accurate or honest with those employees.

That's AI working as intended. Your labor isn't considered, only efficiency and profitability. We all better get used to it.

I found this firsthand account of a gig worker trapped by the algorithm pretty compelling: https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/the-gig-economy

I don't know if food delivery apps will be here to stay long term, their economics just don't work. It seems that everyone involved looses, the tech companies are constantly running in the red, the restaurants get screwed and the drivers get screwed.

Long term, food delivery will still be a thing but likely run by restaurants and smaller local apps.

I was really hoping one of the P2P apps would take off. There's no real reason why we need a middle man injecting themselves and taking fees. The apps just get better marketing.

We literally just need an app to connect restaurants to couriers.

The behavior of service work employers only makes sense when we consider that it's all geared towards the profits of owners and shareholders. There are few or no worker-owned companies, nonprofits or even corporate charters that make workers a priority. So without viable competition, profit-driven (as opposed to wage-driven) companies will continue to dominate.

We need a new mental framework for organizing companies to be worker-owned:

https://www.noemamag.com/overthrowing-our-tech-overlords/

Worker-owned companies would receive a seal of approval from employees so they know where to apply, and companies that exploit workers would risk losing their seal and having their employees jump ship.

To use courier apps as an example: since there is little complexity in matching vendors with delivery workers, then a worker-first app should be able to compete. After all, it's pretty easy to save millions of dollars when employees vote on who gets bonuses and their sizes, rather than just paying the board (CEO, CFO, etc) whatever it skims for itself.

There's still the chicken-and-egg problem of needing users in order to scale. But I think we've been looking at it as a tough sell for too long, instead of offering a product (consistent employment and income with low constraints and commitments) that workers are eagerly looking for already.

It is not complicated why this is happening. Even very low wage jobs in wealthy countries pay 10x what people can make in poor countries. The gig economy advances a race to the bottom for wages, in particular because there is zero identity verification or language skills needed for most of these guys.

Of course the number of deliveries that must be completed in an hour increases. Of course the pay per delivery decreases. Of course the delivery bikers are constantly running red lights and getting killed. Of course the shoddy ebikes are burning down the tenements. That is the logic of the market: more, cheaper, all the time.

My assumption would be that the orgs aren't quite sure how they work either.

"Hundreds of delivery riders injured as food app boom creates 'deadly cocktail'"

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-deli...

I'm in the US, if these apps are going to depend on customers tipping for their drivers to get a reasonable wage, then tipping/delivery fee should be required. If people aren't willing to pay the drivers for their labor, they shouldn't place the order.

Searching for deeper meaning in some javascript gluecode bug made by an intern, now thats whathehackernews worthy.

As long as they have a deep bench of zero barrier to entry replacements this likely wont change

I worked as a courier, running anything, sometimes it was this crazy route, picking and dropping envelopes, businuses and banks, in a set order, othertimes some little box, or a 10000gallon water tank, hot asphalt anyone? Had an ancient 1 ton dully, with hoist, built 390 that would set off car alarms, if I dropped it back a gear and made it jump. Never did meet the people doing dispatch, payed cash, wierd rules on getting paid.Liked my truck, didnt like doing courier so much. It was very strange before someone tried to automate it, what I am saying.

> Why, when the restaurant is busy and crying out for couriers, does the app say there are none available?

Good thing they test their developers so hard on DS&A. We don't want to let in those substandard developers who don't have a grasp on the advanced theoretical underpinnings on how to bring food to people.

The developers who freely, voluntarily, and willingly work on these projects, min-maxing human suffering to add 0.01% to a cell in a spreadsheet somewhere, deserve everything that's coming for them.

This is a feature, not a bug. The goal of the algorithm is to reduce the labor cost of delivery.

Welcome to our shiny AI future, folks.

Eh, I feel the same way about google search

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