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Comment by sqrt17 | Hacker News Reader

With the raise of all these "platform" companies - basically some inbetween that solves some QA and paperwork issues, we see that (i) there are "natural" monopolies/monopsonies developing (e.g. people don't look further than Amazon marketplace, companies giving out all their work via upwork, people watching only Youtube videos) and then (ii) that these platform companies start behaving in abusive and/or arbitrarily damaging ways.

Does anyone else think that this should be an issue for targeted regulation? No one would accept a company taking over the road network and then randomly trashing people's cars for incomprehensible reason, yet people seem to be dreamy-eyed and naive about these new inbetween platform companies and seem to think that the market will solve itself. (Which is - as may be known - not the case with monopolies)

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The problem here seems to be twofold: ambiguous policies, and little care for transparency and communication.

On the policies side: Upwork doesn't seem to have real written rules in place on at what point too many jobs for one company puts them at risk of violating the CA freelancer law. This makes it easy for a person to inadvertently place their livelihood at risk by doing what Upwork would otherwise be encouraging them to do -- more business through Upwork.

On the transparency side: Once someone breaches this invisible line, Upwork doesn't feel the need to communicate it to anyone. That would be expensive, and it seems to cut against Upwork's interests, so the wire is tripped silently and the party on either side of the transaction basically goes mad with confusion while they try to figure out what happened, until they finally exhaust themselves and give up.

Each of these is inexcusable and absolutely needs to be civil offense. The stories of people silently and irreversibly shut down by impenetrable platforms and then not able to even reach a human who can explain what went wrong are legion with internet-based services. Now that those services form the basis of a large swath of working people's livelihoods, this absolutely needs to end. Part of the cost of doing business should be clear rules and clear lines of communication when the rules need to be enforced, and an appeals process staffed by humans, or else these companies should be forced to pay out for lost income.

In some cases these platforms are market response to regulations already in place, like in Finland where I live freelancers use a billing service which basically employs them for the duration of their freelance work, because it's easier and sometimes even cheaper than forming your own company and working with the clients directly. So in those cases, it would be preferable to work on the regulation that created the first problem, not to add more regulation to solve a problem that was created by the market reaction. But having said that, there should be sensible regulation that protects individuals against bad business practices and abusive corporations for sure.

I'm always happy when someone brings up regulation in the context of IT. I'm a big proponent. Everything from closed-source to monopolies and ads. I find it weird that it's not talked about more often. I wonder why that is. In some ways it's a relic of the American free-market capitalism, but that can only be part of the picture.

See comments above from ~hughjd, ~jseliger, and myself: there's a good chance that it's regulation itself that created this particular kafka-esque situation.

State tax/regulatory authorities disfavor contractor relationships, even when clear-eyed counterparties prefer it.

That's probably why the buyer does all their contracting through Upwork – it's a bigger risk to do it any other way – and also why Upwork has certain patterns-of-intense-work they must either block, or convert to the government's preferred payroll-relationship.

If someone disagrees or thinks this is an inappropriate comment, I'd prefer an argument, rather that a downvote. I don't think that what I said has any negative effect on the discussion.

You seem to have a very simplistic view of how voting works. Why would you assume downvoting is a feedback mechanism to signal negative posts only? People downvote for all sorts of reasons.

I for instance downvoted your comment, for supporting a blanket regulatory attitude across the IT spectrum. It's tantamount to proposing a single programming language across the whole stack. That portrays a very narrow view of the world. Not to mention it can lead to being counterproductive.

Do note, human communication is a complex endeavor. We employ all kinds signals and techniques for information exchange and a simple downvote in an online forum is a perfectly valid signal, albeit an ambiguous one.

> blanket regulatory attitude across the IT spectrum

That's jumping to conclusions. I didn't elaborate at all what kind of regulation I support or how granular. I now feel that my comment wasn't up to the standard, because it has a bad mix of off-topic and terse "snarkiness".

As to the usage of downvotes, of course you can use it however you like, just like you can dismiss anyone you like whenever. I'm referring to a common _regulation_ in communities, that a comment shouldn't be dismissed if you don't like it, but only if it has a negative effect on the discussion.

What do you hope to achieve by downvoting those you disagree with? Force their opinions to the bottom of the discussion stack? I.e. silence them? That's what you're effectively doing, and it's not conducive to a healthy community.

I rarely downvote those I disagree with. And when I do, my goal is to have them reconsider and question their position and not at all to silence them.

I fail to see how I jumped to conclusions. You clearly stated that vis-a-vis regulation:

> I'm a big proponent. Everything from closed-source to monopolies and ads.

If this is not an extreme pro-regulation attitude then I don't know what is.

And just to be clear, comments are clearly superior to downvotes, though we'd hardly get any work done had we written replies to all comments we disagree with; thus, occasionally replying via downvotes.

your comment does sound a bit snarky though. you might want to elaborate how you see the benefit of regulations and their discussion.

greetings, eMBee.

I do see how my comment was snarky, thanks for pointing that out. Also in many ways it's off-topic. Your clear headed response helped me see that.

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