I stumbled upon a Reddit confession from a disgruntled gig economy developer - and I felt the anguish, the concern, and the guilt in their words. It wasn’t just a rant. It was a whistleblower’s cry for help from someone burned out, disillusioned, and risking their career to expose the corrupt, unethical algorithms powering these platforms.

I shared it on Mastodon and LinkedIn because their message needs more attention.

The responses said it all. Drivers, riders, customers, and even fellow tech workers - all echoed the same frustration.

This isn’t an isolated problem. It’s a systemic one, where gig platforms and Big Tech operate with the same instincts, the same incentives, and the same ethical blind spots. One extracts your data. The other extracts your labor. Both insist they’re just providing a service while designing systems to take as much as possible. That post encouraged me to say out loud what I’d been circling for a while.

The gig economy and Big Tech are not separate worlds.

They operate with the same instincts, the same incentives, and often the same ethical blind spots. They just exploit different things. One takes data. The other takes labour. Both are built to extract as much as possible while insisting they’re simply providing a service.

Same Logic, Different Surface

Big Tech and gig platforms may present themselves differently - logistics vs. infrastructure - but their core logic is identical: algorithmic control, extraction, and evasion of responsibility.

For Big Tech, algorithms dictate what you see, how long you engage, and what you purchase. For gig platforms, they determine who works, when they work, and how little they earn.

Take Bolt’s 2025 driver incentives as an example. The app doesn’t just connect rides - it shapes behavior through gamified bonuses, streaks that vanish if you log off, and time-sensitive rewards that push drivers to work longer for less. Sound familiar? It’s the same psychological manipulation social media uses to keep users scrolling.

The key difference? Gig platforms don’t just track preferences - they measure desperation. Location, speed, job acceptance rates - all fed into systems designed to calculate the minimum pay a worker will accept before refusing.

A 2024 investigation by The Grocer urged Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat to explain their “black box” algorithms, highlighting how these platforms use real-time demand and worker behavior data to adjust pay and job allocations—often at the expense of riders’ earnings (The Grocer, 2024).

Same playbook, different industry: maximize extraction, minimize accountability.

Profit Without Accountability

Big Tech and gig platforms use the same playbook: dodge regulation, rebrand exploitation as innovation, and shift risk to workers.

In 2024, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat faced increasing scrutiny in the EU for their opaque algorithms that control rider pay, job allocation, and performance metrics. Industry watchdogs and gig workers have demanded transparency, arguing that these “black box” systems manipulate earnings and working conditions under the guise of flexibility. Reports from The Grocer highlighted how these platforms use real-time data to adjust pay and job offers, often to the detriment of workers (The Grocer, 2024). Meanwhile, gig workers across Europe are calling for greater transparency and fairness in algorithm-driven job assignments, emphasizing the need for accountability in how these systems determine wages and working hours (CXO Tech, 2024).

The pattern is clear: profit for platforms, precarity for workers.

Meanwhile, platforms wrap exploitation in marketing buzzwords - “flexibility” for gig workers, “connection” for social media users. But the reality? Algorithms create urgency without improvement.

Same story, different industry: profit flows up, responsibility flows down.

The Cost Is Human

The harm is clearly visible, palpable and it’s systemic.

A 2025 Human Rights Watch report, The Gig Trap, documents how algorithmic wage suppression pushes earnings below minimum wage after expenses, forces workers to skip meals or work while sick, and traps them in cycles of debt and instability (HRW, 2025). Drivers face constant surveillance, unpredictable deactivations, and psychological stress from opaque rating systems. Customers, meanwhile, pay “service fees” believing they support workers - only for those funds to bankroll corporate legal battles against labor rights.

The illusion of choice is central to the gig economy’s justification: Workers can always log off. Users can always delete the app. But when the alternative is financial ruin or invisibility, choice is a mirage.

Reject too many low-paying gigs? The algorithm flags you. Miss an invisible target? Your access vanishes. The system doesn’t just remember - it punishes.

It’s the design and Gig & Big Tech’s playbook - scale over stability, efficiency over dignity - applied to labor resulting in:

A digital economy that treats humans as disposable inputs.

The Reddit confession that sparked this conversation resonated because it named what many of us feel:

This isn’t innovation but more like exploitation.

The gig economy and Big Tech are two sides of the same coin - a system built to serve platforms, not people.

The question isn’t just how we work or what we click. It’s who the digital economy is for. And the answer starts with refusing to accept that exploitation is the price of progress.