Week 9 Notes

Gig Economy

 * Sharing Economy: any form of temporary work or asset sharing that is operated through digital transactions over the Internet.
 * Examples: rental scooters and rental streams


 * Gig Economy: refers to momentary or temporary form of work for just one performance
 * Platform Economy: the tendency for commerce to increasingly move towards and favor digital platform business models
 * - Digital platforms that users obtain goods through subscriptions.
 * - Examples: Netflix, Hulu, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart
 * - Categories:
 * Asset Sharing
 * Airbnb, Vrbo, Wework, Turo
 * Ride Sharing
 * Uber, Lyft
 * Work Sharing
 * Mechanical Turk, TaskRabbit
 * Delivery Sharing
 * DoorDash, Amazon Flex

How do organizations who operate under a sharing or gig business model differ from traditional businesses?

 * Pros
 * Have no boss → more independence
 * Engagement through the application instead of real life confrontations
 * Work on own schedule
 * Little to no ownership of actual commodities (only the platform)
 * Low cost labor (excluding platform)


 * Cons
 * No social protections (sick leave, vacation, health care, payroll tax, etc.)
 * Can bring loneliness since there is no coworkers/managers
 * Need lots of resilience and discipline (not waking up late, convincing clients why you are the best, etc.)
 * Platform determines what you charge; may limit earning power
 * Future is uncertain; currently there is a lawsuit against Uber for workers’ rights


 * The benefits of platform as a product free a sharing business model from the financial burdens of acquiring assets, paying workers, and building products.
 * Build identity that matches user/general public
 * To an extent, there doesn’t have to be physical locations for these companies
 * In the beginning, there was a promise...
 * As a result, revenue is free to build effective sustainable practices
 * Proponents argued how democratizing work placed the individual under control
 * Unburdened by ineffective regulation

Uber

 * Focus was to make ride hailing as easy as possible; just a tap away
 * Launch time is in the middle of recession time
 * Premise - develop an app that connected to a broker and had a ride prepared for them in the span of a few minutes
 * Increase in access for people with disabilities
 * Acts a broker to find a driver for the user
 * More choices with convenience, plan ahead
 * A lot of pushback from cities who placed value on taxi medallions
 * Dropped in value from $1.3mil in 2014 to $250k in 2016
 * Utilized user interest in this concept to push back against public utilities in cities
 * Benefits
 * Unrivaled convenience for riders
 * Lower costs for riders
 * Flexible work for drivers
 * Cons
 * Decimated medallion system in all major US cities
 * Increased traffic congestion
 * Negative effects on climate, ~20% increase in fuel consumption over personal vehicles
 * Workers have little to no protections or guarantees of reliable / sustained income
 * Uber & Lyft spent 168 million dollars for propaganda to fight back against worker rights legislation in California.
 * Not classified as employees → no benefits
 * Caused US public transportation decline and demotivates public transportation infrastructure development.
 * Kidnap related safety of the passenger
 * Driver responsibility for the actions of the rider

Airbnb

 * focused on making affordable housing shared by the beds
 * Released during the height of the housing market collapse in 2008
 * By 2014, global reach, brand redesign, move towards ‘community’
 * Started as an intimate temporary shelter experience, not a glorified hotel it is now.
 * Benefits
 * Lower cost than hotels
 * “Safer” space
 * More opportunities to be near desired destinations
 * More opportunities to stay in and explore unique living spaces
 * Cons
 * Uses community organizers to facilitate political action in support of its interests over the public
 * The Airbnb Effect
 * Displaces actual homeowners and increases cost for housing.
 * Privacy issues (hidden cameras, mics, etc.) and little to no regulation or repercussions.
 * More difficult for regular person to purchase homes
 * Transitions away from community-driven and diverse interactions to landlords monopolization
 * Fake listings provides dangerous interactions
 * Host receives additional costs from renter damages

Which of the following most accurately conveys your sentiment towards Airbnb?

 * A: It's a great service with many benefits - 43%
 * B: I have no feelings - 29%
 * C: I have concerns about the operations of the company - 28%

Which of the following most accurately conveys your sentiment towards Uber?

 * A: It's a great service with many benefits - 45%
 * B: I have no feelings - 10%
 * C: I have concerns about the operations of the company - 45%

“The sharing economy is new, but the laws are old.”

 * Current lawmakers do not understand new concepts
 * Thus the latter should have the power to do what they want to do
 * They have the power to change the direction of their company as they see fit
 * By the time proper legislation is passed, the company can move in a different direction that bypass these rulings.

Uber (internet)

 * Motivates drivers to take action through their online mobile application
 * Mid-action modal dialogs that require engagement:
 * DeBlasiosUber.PNG


 * Propaganda tools built into the app

Airbnb (local)

 * Engages users to take action to host their homes as Airbnbs via community organizers and their website
 * Emphasized the aspect of community organization via litigation and politics
 * Gathered and sent people to overwhelm the lawmakers
 * All were hosts who just didn’t want more regulations placed on them.
 * Astroturfed a fake community movement to prevent legislation that would affect commercial home ownership for Airbnb.

Both Uber and Airbnb’s actions are shaping a post Web2.0 society.

 * Without equal levels of access and funding, it is difficult to build comparable grassroots initiatives that represent the interests of the broader communities in which platform-based organizations operate.

Similarities

 * Use pop ups in-app to inform users
 * Use ads/billboards to promote company “goals”

It’s not all bad.

 * We need to examine the evolution of sharing platforms to understand the consequences to society.
 * The ways in which these platforms evolve have enormous civic and societal implications.
 * Our understanding of implications and consequences will inform how we can increase societal benefit while reducing societal harm.

Benefits

 * Online accessibility (being inclusive)
 * Access to critical information from disinformation
 * Commercialization
 * Data privacy
 * Streaming media
 * Algorithms and Algorithmic Justice
 * Privacy and Security
 * Access to Global Interests

Harms

 * Disinformation and misinformation
 * Deceptive designs
 * Unrestricted content
 * Data breaches

Digital Platform as Public Utility

 * When new platforms grow large enough to become essential services? We have historically converted them to public utilities
 * Case study: Facebook (Evolving through digital platforms)
 * Competition between digital platforms trends towards natural monopolies
 * The ‘backbone’ upon which these platforms exist derives from public investment
 * Some of the fees used to develop these public services should be given back to the company.
 * Public incurs the risks of innovations, while small breakthroughs are hoarded by private companies.

Digital platforms: a basic human right?

 * Universal Basic Healthcare
 * Universal Basic Income
 * Universal Basic Digital Services?
 * -Free high speed internet
 * -Social ownership of digital platforms
 * -Transfer of wealth from tech companies to the public
 * -The actions of the public generate wealth which returns back to the company
 * -Generate wealth for the many instead of the few
 * -Public has a voice in how the data that they are generating are used.

What does this look like in practice?

 * Matters of control and censorship are not driven by profit, but by community
 * Make the underlying platform public, open use of the platform to for-profit companies
 * New mechanisms for public investment reduce the dependency on advertising (data collection)
 * Change incentive structure for investment from value capture to value creation