How Should Uber Be Regulated?

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When Uber launched, it called itself a technology company rather than a taxi service. This strategic distinction allowed the company to enter urban markets worldwide, operating outside century-old transportation laws.

This disruptive innovation brought unprecedented convenience to consumers and created flexible work opportunities for millions. It also ignited a fierce debate playing out in city halls, state legislatures, courtrooms, and at the ballot box.

So, how should governments regulate a service that doesn’t fit traditional categories?

The Uber debate spans multiple interconnected conflicts. It’s a battle over work definition in the gig economy, pitting the company’s independent contractor model against labor advocates’ calls for employee rights. It’s a clash between free-market innovation promises and government duties to protect public safety through standards, consumer protections, and fair competition.

This has created a patchwork of local and state rules. Driving for Uber in New York City creates vastly different legal realities than doing so in Austin or Seattle. The debate extends into data privacy, civil rights, and ridesharing’s long-term impact on urban congestion and public transit.

The Worker Classification Battle

Employee or Independent Contractor?

The global regulatory debate surrounding Uber centers on one foundational question: Are drivers who use the platform employees or independent entrepreneurs? This answer determines the company’s fundamental economic structure, worker rights and responsibilities, and the entire industry’s legal framework.

The distinction between W-2 “employee” and 1099 “independent contractor” is critical in American labor law. Classification determines access to legal protections and benefits forming the bedrock of the US social safety net for decades.

When companies classify workers as employees, they’re legally obligated to provide protections independent contractors don’t receive. These include adherence to wage and hour laws like minimum wage and overtime pay, reimbursement for necessary business expenses (gas and vehicle maintenance), and contributions to payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.

Employees also receive workers’ compensation insurance for on-the-job injuries, unemployment benefits eligibility if laid off, and protection by federal and state anti-discrimination and harassment laws.

For companies like Uber, classifying drivers as independent contractors provides enormous economic advantages. It allows the company to avoid significant costs associated with payroll taxes, insurance contributions, and employee benefits, plus the administrative burden of managing a traditional workforce.

Uber consistently argues this model is essential to its business and what drivers prefer, offering them flexibility to be their own boss and set their own hours. Uber’s CEO emphasized that drivers “do not want to lose the unique independence they enjoy” regarding potential reclassification.

Labor advocates and many drivers argue this classification is exploitation. They contend drivers lack true independence because Uber controls key work aspects: setting fares, dictating performance standards through its rating system, and deactivating drivers without due process.

From this perspective, the “independent contractor” label is a legal loophole allowing Uber to shift business costs and risks, vehicle maintenance, insurance, fuel, and lack of safety net, onto its workforce, which is disproportionately composed of immigrants and workers of color. This misclassification deprives workers of legally mandated benefits and protections, creating a precarious and vulnerable workforce.

The ABC Test

Historically, determining whether workers were employees or independent contractors involved flexible, multi-factor analysis weighing various working relationship aspects, often focusing on company control degree.

In a landmark 2018 decision, Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court established a much stricter standard known as the “ABC test.” This test presumes workers are employees unless hiring companies can prove all three conditions are met:

A. Control and Direction: The worker is free from hiring entity control and direction in work performance, both under contract and in fact. This examines worker autonomy level. For Uber, this is major contention. The company argues drivers are free from control because they choose their own hours and can work for competing platforms.

Courts and critics point to Uber’s significant work control: the company unilaterally sets fares, drivers can’t negotiate rates, performance is closely monitored via rating system, and drivers can be “deactivated” (fired) for low acceptance rates or poor ratings.

B. Outside Usual Business: The worker performs work outside the hiring entity’s usual business course. This is arguably Uber’s most difficult prong to satisfy. Uber has long maintained it’s a technology company providing a platform connecting riders and drivers.

Courts have frequently rejected this argument, concluding Uber’s core business is transportation. One court found drivers provide an “indispensable service” to Uber, and the company “could no more survive without them” than without its app. Uber couldn’t be “Everyone’s Private Driver” without drivers.

C. Independent Business: The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as work being performed. This requires workers to have their own independent business separate from their work for the hiring company.

Critics argue most Uber drivers don’t have independent transportation businesses; their work exists only through the Uber platform.

Because companies must satisfy all three prongs, the ABC test creates a high bar for classifying workers as independent contractors. Its adoption in California and consideration in other states represents a direct legal threat to Uber’s business model.

Federal Government Positions

While the most intense battles occurred at state level, the federal government’s position has created uncertainty and political volatility. The US Department of Labor interprets and enforces federal labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, governing minimum wage and overtime.

DOL guidance on gig worker classification has shifted dramatically with presidential administrations, creating “regulatory whiplash” for the industry.

Under the Trump administration, the DOL issued a 2019 opinion letter highly favorable to gig economy companies. Analyzing an unnamed “virtual marketplace company,” the DOL concluded workers were properly classified as independent contractors. The analysis focused on worker “economic dependence” on the company, emphasizing flexibility and entrepreneurial opportunity for workers who could set schedules and work for competing platforms.

This position was reversed under the Biden administration. In 2024, the Biden DOL introduced a new rule establishing a more comprehensive, six-prong “economic realities” test to determine worker status. This rule was designed to combat widespread worker misclassification and extend employee protections to more gig workers.

However, this rule faced immediate legal challenges from business groups. In a subsequent political shift, the DOL announced in May 2025 it would no longer enforce the Biden-era rule, creating further confusion.

This constant federal back-and-forth highlights labor regulation’s deeply political nature. For companies like Uber, this instability represents significant business risk, as legal obligations under federal law could change with each election cycle.

Meanwhile, some in Congress seek to establish federal standards. The proposed Empowering App-Based Workers Act wouldn’t settle the classification debate but would create a federal protection floor. It would mandate algorithmic management transparency, require companies to disclose pay structures, and guarantee drivers at least 75% of each fare.

California: The Primary Battleground

Assembly Bill 5

No state has been more central to the fight over Uber regulation than California. As the birthplace of many tech giants and home to the nation’s largest workforce, the state has become the primary laboratory for gig economy policies.

The modern era of gig economy regulation in California began in courtrooms. The state Supreme Court’s 2018 Dynamex decision fundamentally altered the legal landscape by establishing the strict “ABC test” as the standard for determining worker classification.

This judicial ruling was seismic for companies like Uber and Lyft, as their business model was largely incompatible with the new, rigid test.

Labor unions and their allies in the state legislature moved swiftly. In 2019, they passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which took effect in January 2020. The law forced gig economy companies to reclassify their vast independent contractor networks as employees, granting them the full suite of rights and benefits including minimum wage, overtime, and workers’ compensation.

AB5 represented the most significant legislative threat to Uber’s business model in its history. The company, along with Lyft, immediately pushed back, arguing their drivers were properly classified as independent contractors and that reclassification would destroy driver-valued flexibility.

The conflict escalated when California sued the companies to force compliance. In August 2020, a Superior Court judge sided with the state, issuing an injunction ordering Uber and Lyft to reclassify their drivers as employees. Faced with this judicial defeat, the companies announced they would suspend California services, setting the stage for an unprecedented political counter-attack.

Proposition 22

Defeated in courts and legislature, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other app-based companies shifted the battle to the ballot box. They poured historic sums into a campaign for Proposition 22, a ballot initiative they authored to exempt themselves from AB5.

The campaign was one of the most expensive in US history, with companies spending over $200 million to appeal directly to California voters.

Proposition 22 was designed to create a new, hybrid work category unique to app-based drivers. It legally defined these workers as independent contractors, preserving flexibility and cost structure central to companies’ business models. In exchange for AB5 exemption, the proposition offered specific alternative benefits:

Earnings guarantee: A minimum earnings floor based on 120% of local minimum wage, but only for “engaged time” (from accepting a ride to dropping off the passenger), not waiting time.

Healthcare stipends: Quarterly payments to help cover health insurance costs for drivers working certain hours.

Vehicle insurance and other protections: Specific insurance requirements for accidents and other benefits.

In November 2020, California voters passed Proposition 22 with nearly 60% of the vote. For companies, it was a monumental victory. Uber’s CEO immediately declared it a model they hoped to replicate “across the US and the world.”

However, the fight was far from over. Opponents immediately challenged Prop 22 in court, arguing it unconstitutionally infringed upon the legislature’s exclusive power to regulate workers’ compensation. In 2021, a Superior Court judge agreed, ruling the proposition unconstitutional. That decision was largely overturned by an appeals court in 2023, which upheld Prop 22.

The case was subsequently taken up by the California Supreme Court, ensuring the legal status of this voter-enacted law remains under intense judicial scrutiny.

The Unionization Push

Even as the legal battle over Proposition 22 continued, labor advocates opened a new legislative front. The 2023 appeals court ruling that upheld Prop 22 contained a crucial detail: it found that while the proposition could define drivers as contractors, it couldn’t prevent the legislature from passing future laws granting those drivers the right to unionize and bargain collectively.

Seizing this opening, lawmakers introduced Assembly Bill 1340 (AB 1340). This bill aims to give app-based drivers collective bargaining rights, a power typically reserved for employees under the National Labor Relations Act, which explicitly exempts independent contractors.

This represents the next evolutionary step in the conflict. If drivers can’t be reclassified as employees, labor groups now seek to grant them one of employees’ most significant powers, the right to form unions and negotiate over pay and working conditions.

Uber has strongly opposed this effort, arguing it’s a backdoor attempt to undermine voter will in passing Prop 22. The company claimed AB 1340 “proposes several changes that are in direct conflict” with the proposition and would “fundamentally alter the way platforms such as Uber operate.”

The company warns such measures would drive up costs, hurt low-income communities, and ultimately reduce driver earnings as demand falls. This ongoing legislative fight demonstrates that even a decisive victory like Prop 22 didn’t end California’s regulation war; it simply shifted the battlefield again.

City-Level Regulation Patchwork

New York City: High Regulation Model

New York City stands at the high-regulation spectrum end, treating ridesharing less like a novel tech industry and more like the traditional for-hire vehicle industry it disrupted. All operations are overseen by the powerful Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC), which imposes strict rules on companies and drivers.

To drive for Uber in NYC, people can’t simply sign up on the app. They must first obtain a valid TLC driver’s license and operate a TLC-licensed vehicle, a process involving significant vetting and administrative hurdles.

The TLC also enforces detailed operational rules. Drivers are subject to strict limits on working hours to prevent fatigue; they’re limited to 10 hours of passenger transport time in 24 hours and 60 hours per week. They’re prohibited from picking up passengers via street hails, must display their TLC license and safety stickers, and must undergo vehicle inspections multiple times yearly.

Furthermore, NYC has pioneered regulating driver compensation, establishing a minimum pay formula accounting for driver expenses and utilization rates. This comprehensive approach treats rideshare services as an integrated part of the city’s public transportation ecosystem, subject to robust government oversight.

Austin: State Preemption Victory

The story of Uber in Austin, Texas, is a dramatic case study in the clash between local control and corporate power, culminating in state preemption use to nullify a city’s law.

The conflict began in 2015 when the Austin City Council, citing safety concerns, passed an ordinance requiring rideshare drivers to undergo fingerprint-based background checks required of taxi drivers.

Uber and Lyft vehemently opposed the measure, arguing their own third-party background checks were sufficient and that fingerprinting requirements were unnecessary burdens discouraging part-time drivers from signing up. The companies backed a political action committee spending approximately $10 million on a campaign to overturn the ordinance through public referendum, known as Proposition 1.

In May 2016, Austin voters decisively rejected Prop 1, siding with the city council and upholding the fingerprinting rule.

In response to their political defeat, both Uber and Lyft made good on threats and ceased all Austin operations within days, creating a vacuum in the city’s transportation market. The standoff lasted a year, until companies took their fight to the state level.

In 2017, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passed House Bill 100, creating a single, statewide regulatory framework for ridesharing companies. Crucially, the law explicitly preempted, or invalidated, all local ordinances, including Austin’s fingerprinting requirement.

Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill, declaring it a victory for “freedom for every Texan.” Uber and Lyft resumed Austin service that same day. The Austin saga serves as the quintessential state preemption example, demonstrating a powerful corporate strategy: when unable to win political battles at local level, lobby higher government levels to override local decisions.

Chicago: Negotiated Compromise

Chicago has charted a more complex, middle-ground path, combining regulation through taxation, specific licensing requirements, and most recently, a landmark compromise with labor unions.

One of Chicago’s key regulatory tools is its Ground Transportation Tax. The city levies a per-ride tax on every trip, with additional surcharges for rides originating in high-traffic areas like downtown, airports, and McCormick Place.

In addition to taxes, Chicago imposes specific requirements on drivers and their vehicles. Drivers must obtain special chauffeur’s licenses requiring online courses and must not operate vehicles older than certain ages without semi-annual inspections. Vehicles must also pass annual inspections at approved facilities.

The most significant Chicago development came after years of organizing by driver alliances. In 2025, facing a potential City Council vote on a strict “Rideshare Living Wage and Safety Ordinance,” Uber reached a historic agreement with labor groups. The company agreed not to oppose statewide legislation granting rideshare drivers the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.

This compromise headed off the stricter city-level ordinance, which Uber warned would force layoffs, and instead paved the way for a statewide framework for driver organizing. Chicago’s journey illustrates a potential “third way” for cities, using financial levers, safety rules, and ultimately negotiated peace with labor to achieve regulatory balance.

Seattle: The High-Cost Experiment

Seattle provides a clear case study on direct economic trade-offs of regulations designed to boost driver pay. The city’s approach is defined by its “Fare Share Ordinance,” a law requiring rideshare companies to pay drivers minimum amounts per minute and per mile for every trip.

The economic consequence has been stark and immediate. Seattle is now the most expensive city in the United States to take an Uber, with average 30-minute rides reaching $60.

Uber has publicly pointed to city regulations as the direct cause of these high prices. In a statement, the company said, “These high costs are the result of some of the most extreme app-based regulatory policies we’ve seen in the country… These laws were intended to raise earnings for drivers, but instead, they’ve made one of the most expensive cities in America even more unaffordable to use rideshare.”

The Seattle model forces a direct public conversation about regulation costs and benefits: it successfully raises driver pay, but at the cost of making the service significantly more expensive for consumers, raising questions about who should ultimately bear the financial burden of a “fair” ride.

Safety, Privacy, and Access Issues

Background Check Debates

One of the most persistent public concerns about ridesharing is passenger safety, often centering on driver background check thoroughness. This issue highlights a fundamental difference between rideshare companies and traditional, government-regulated taxi services.

Uber and other platforms typically use third-party companies like Checkr to conduct background checks on prospective drivers. This process involves searching motor vehicle records and criminal history using names and Social Security numbers. These checks look for major driving violations like DUIs or reckless driving, plus criminal convictions for violent crimes, sexual offenses, and theft, usually within a seven-year lookback period.

Companies favor this method because it’s fast, inexpensive, and can be done online, allowing for “frictionless” onboarding of new drivers crucial to their supply model.

Many local governments and safety advocates argue these name-based checks are less reliable than fingerprint-based background checks that have long been the taxi driver standard. Fingerprint checks are run against state and federal (FBI) criminal databases and are considered more comprehensive, as they’re tied to unique biometric identifiers and less susceptible to issues like alias use.

According to a US Government Accountability Office report, the regulatory landscape for background checks is inconsistent. As of 2024, 45 states and the District of Columbia have enacted statewide laws requiring criminal background checks for rideshare drivers. However, these laws vary significantly in requirements. Most states permit companies or third parties to conduct checks, while only a few require fingerprint-based searches.

The federal government has also taken interest, with passage of “Sami’s Law” in 2023, which directed the GAO to study background checks and safety features for both ridesharing and taxi services.

Surge Pricing Controversies

Dynamic pricing, more commonly known as “surge pricing,” is one of Uber’s most visible and controversial features for consumers. The company’s justification is rooted in basic supply and demand economics. When demand for rides in specific areas temporarily outstrips available drivers, due to rush hour, bad weather, or major events, the algorithm automatically increases fares.

According to Uber, this price signal serves two functions. First, it notifies riders that demand is high, allowing them to either pay higher prices or wait for prices to potentially drop. Second, higher potential earnings act as incentives to attract more drivers to that area, increasing supply to meet high demand. Once more drivers are on the road and supply-demand imbalance is corrected, prices are supposed to return to normal.

While the company frames this as efficient market mechanism, critics raise several concerns. The practice has been accused of being price gouging, especially during emergencies or holidays when vulnerable consumers may have few other options. There are also transparency concerns about how surge multipliers are calculated, leading to fairness questions.

Some economists have raised antitrust concerns, questioning whether centralized pricing algorithms, which all platform drivers adhere to, could facilitate implicit price-fixing, where competitors (drivers) agree on pricing structures rather than competing on price.

Data Privacy Problems

In the digital economy, data is currency, and Uber collects vast amounts of it. The company’s privacy notice details extensive information scope it gathers from both riders and drivers, including names, contact information, profile pictures, government-issued IDs, precise location data, trip histories, device information, and even communications between users.

This trove of sensitive data has placed Uber at the center of significant privacy controversies and drawn scrutiny from advocacy groups and government regulators.

Uber’s history is marked by privacy scandals damaging public trust. One of the most notorious was the “God View” tool, an internal system allowing company employees to track user real-time locations, reportedly used to track journalists and celebrities without consent.

The company has also suffered multiple major data breaches, including a 2014 incident exposing 100,000 drivers’ license numbers and a 2022 breach by a hacker affiliated with the Lapsus$ group, who gained “full access to Uber.”

These incidents have led to significant pressure from privacy advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation. These groups have called on Uber to implement stronger privacy protections, including strict limits on internal data access, robust security measures, and greater transparency about government data requests.

Interestingly, Uber has demonstrated sophisticated ability to use privacy advocacy language to advance its own commercial interests. When faced with data-sharing mandates from cities like Los Angeles, which required mobility companies to report trip data for urban planning purposes, Uber resisted.

Instead of framing opposition purely in business terms, Uber helped form a coalition called “Communities Against Rider Surveillance (CARS)”. This coalition, including some civil liberties groups, reframed the debate as a fight to protect rider privacy from government surveillance.

This strategy allowed Uber to position itself as a consumer rights defender, effectively partnered with popular social cause language to fight a regulatory battle over operational oversight.

Accessibility Challenges

A critical civil rights dimension of the Uber regulation debate revolves around accessibility for people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination by public transportation services, and while Uber classifies itself as a technology company, it’s still legally required to provide reasonable accommodations.

However, the company’s reliance on independent contractor networks using personal vehicles has created significant and persistent challenges for riders with disabilities.

Two major issues have been the focus of legal action and advocacy. The first is denial of service to blind and low-vision riders who use service animals. Despite clear legal protections, there have been widespread reports of drivers refusing to transport passengers with guide dogs.

This led to a nationwide class-action lawsuit brought by the National Federation of the Blind. In a groundbreaking 2016 settlement, Uber agreed to implement stricter policies, requiring drivers to explicitly confirm their obligation to transport riders with service animals and deactivating any driver found to have knowingly denied rides for this reason.

The second major challenge is the systemic lack of wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAVs). Because the vast majority of drivers use standard personal vehicles, riders who use wheelchairs, particularly motorized ones, often face extremely long wait times or find no accessible vehicles available.

While Uber has launched UberWAV in some cities, coverage remains inconsistent. This issue has also led to legal action. In 2021, the US Department of Justice sued Uber for violating the ADA by charging “wait time” fees to passengers with disabilities who needed more than two minutes to get into vehicles.

In a multi-million-dollar settlement, Uber agreed to waive these fees for riders who certify they have disabilities and to compensate over 65,000 affected users.

Competing Economic Philosophies

The Free Market Argument

From a free-market perspective, often championed by think tanks like the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute, Uber’s rise is a clear victory for innovation and consumer welfare. This viewpoint argues that for decades, the urban transportation market was dominated by a taxi industry protected by anti-competitive regulations.

The most notable was the medallion system, which artificially limited taxi numbers on roads, creating false scarcity. This scarcity drove up taxi medallion values, benefiting a small number of owners, but led to higher prices, lower quality service, and less availability for consumers.

According to this argument, Uber succeeded because it offered a superior product, more convenient, often cheaper, and more reliable service, by operating outside this regulatory regime. Government attempts to regulate Uber are therefore seen as protecting the entrenched, politically connected taxi industry from a superior competitor.

Proponents argue many traditional regulations are made obsolete by technology. For example, the need for government-led safety inspections and driver vetting is lessened by Uber’s own internal systems, such as its two-way rating system, which creates powerful reputational incentives for both drivers and riders to behave well.

From this perspective, government intervention stifles the very innovation benefiting consumers. Instead of forcing new technologies into old regulatory boxes, government should question outdated rules themselves and allow free markets to flourish.

Challenger Capture Theory

A more critical academic theory offers a different lens through which to view Uber’s political strategy. This model, known as “disrupted regulation” and “challenger capture,” argues Uber is not simply a free-market actor seeking deregulation. Instead, it posits a two-step process by which powerful tech “challengers” actively reshape regulatory environments in their favor.

First, the challenger doesn’t lobby to deregulate existing industry; it simply disregards existing rules altogether. Uber entered cities claiming to be a “technology company,” not a transportation company, and operated in defiance of taxi regulations, often triggering cease-and-desist orders it ignored.

This allows the company to build large customer and driver bases, creating powerful constituencies and making its service a de facto part of urban fabric before regulators can effectively respond.

Second, once established, the challenger uses immense resources, including vast lobbying sums, sophisticated legal teams, and unique ability to mobilize users directly through its app, to influence creation of new, dual regulatory regimes.

This new regime is characterized by “challenger capture,” where the challenger successfully defends its core business interests (low costs, large supplies of non-employee drivers, and dynamic pricing) by securing weak regulations for itself, while old, stricter regulations often remain in place for incumbent industry (taxis).

This creates uneven playing fields permanently tilted in the challenger’s favor. This theory provides more nuanced explanation than simple innovation-versus-regulation narratives, suggesting powerful tech platforms are potent political actors rewriting market rules to their own advantage.

Urban Impact Studies

A crucial part of the regulatory debate hinges on ridesharing’s real-world impact on city life. While Uber and Lyft were initially promoted with promises of reducing car ownership and easing traffic congestion, growing research suggests the opposite may be true.

Multiple studies have found ridesharing rise is correlated with traffic congestion increases, particularly in dense urban centers. One reason is that significant portions of rideshare trips aren’t replacing personal car trips. Studies in major cities have found between 49% and 61% of rideshare users would have otherwise taken public transit, walked, biked, or not made trips at all.

This indicates ridesharing is pulling people away from more sustainable transportation modes and putting them into cars, thereby increasing vehicle miles traveled and contributing to public transit ridership decline.

Furthermore, the business model nature itself contributes to congestion. Studies have shown that for large percentages of time they’re on roads, as much as 42% in one study, rideshare vehicles are “deadheading,” meaning they’re driving empty while waiting for or traveling to their next fare. This additional, non-revenue-generating driving adds to the number of cars on streets.

These negative externalities, increased traffic, weakened public transit, and potential environmental costs, strengthen the case for government regulation. Cities may feel compelled to intervene with policies like vehicle caps, congestion pricing, or per-ride fees to manage these impacts.

The Flexibility Paradox

This leads to a central paradox in the gig economy. The “flexibility” that is the cornerstone of the independent contractor model isn’t absolute freedom. It’s freedom exercised within tightly controlled digital ecosystems.

Uber consistently argues drivers are entrepreneurs who value the ability to choose when and where they work. However, the company’s own algorithmic management system heavily shapes and constrains that flexibility.

The algorithm uses tools like surge pricing to direct drivers to specific areas at specific times, effectively managing supply to meet demand. It employs performance metrics like “acceptance rates” to penalize drivers who too frequently decline unprofitable rides, compelling them to serve platform needs.

Some analyses suggest the algorithm is designed to ensure drivers hit target hourly wages, which functions more like managed pay than open market transactions. Drivers are often kept in the dark about trip destinations or full fares before accepting, severely limiting their ability to make independent business decisions.

Thus, drivers aren’t truly independent actors. They’re free to log on, but once they do, their behavior is powerfully guided by digital incentive and penalty systems designed to optimize platform efficiency and profitability, not necessarily their own.

This challenges the entire “be your own boss” narrative and is the central argument for those who believe that, in economic reality, drivers are employees operating under sophisticated forms of algorithmic control. The debate over how to regulate Uber ultimately reflects larger questions about work, technology, and power in the digital economy.

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