The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell

The problem is if you shut down these sites you’re only making it harder for people like Erica who now cannot make money on the side to pay bills.

That's the point of social safety nets.

Throwaway account because very paranoid.

Current employer at Walmart-like job (not Walmart) stopped hiring employees with fixed hours. Now they only hire for Uber-style gig work. Once you get hired, you sign up for shifts on an app. If there are no open shifts, you can't work.

The plan is to transition all current employees, even full-time, to this gig work.

Yeah, I always worry about Mechanical Turk turning into The Matrix where human brains are just server farms.

That's how I feel when I have to complete those hellish recaptcha 2 challenges. I can't imagine doing something like that for longer than 15 seconds.

This is truly depressing, third world country type employment.