Delivery Drivers Are Using Grey Market Apps to Make Their Jobs Suck Less

This strikes me as a struggle where the terrain is “asymmetrical information.” The company has all the data and uses it to optimize its business, at the expense of the drivers, who are given only enough information to incentivize them to do the thing that is optimal for the company. Meanwhile, the drivers are attempting to obtain enough information to optimize their behaviour for their own, local benefit.

It feels like this dynamic is going to play out more and more as the “gig economy” expands. The gig workers have a demand for information, and the companies try to control the information. Of course people will find ways to sell or rent that information to them.