Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 12/06 – DoorDash Tries Something Radical: Employees

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

DoorDash tests a wildly new business model: employees! Apple launches a Winter War in Russia. Two stories of US telecom companies doing what US telecom companies do: act shady. And Buzzfeed finally hits the public markets. Sponsors: FirstRepublic.com Enterprise.Spectrum.com Links: DoorDash breaks gig worker model to hire couriers as employees in New York trial (Financial Times) Apple Attempts to Stop Developers Promoting Alternative Payment Options for In-App Purchases in Russia (MacRumors) Crypto exchange BitMart confirms hack resulting in loss of $150 million in crypto (The Block) The Verizon app might be collecting your browsing history and more (The Verge) Apple iPhone 13 Rebates Fail to Deliver for Some Buyers (Bloomberg) BuzzFeed Tumbles in Turbulent Debut for Digital Media (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the tech meme right home from Monday, December 6th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. DoorDash tests a wildly new business model, actually having employees. Apple launches a winter war in Russia, two stories of U.S. telecom companies doing what U.S. telecom companies usually do, act shady, and BuzzFeed finally hits the public markets. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. We already talked about how they were considering doing this, but they've officially gone and done it now. DoorDash has apparently high. hired 60 couriers as full-time employees starting at $15 an hour to launch fast grocery deliveries in New York City. Shifting, obviously, from DoorDash's longstanding gig worker model,

quoting the financial times, 60 couriers working full-time for DoorDash's pilot launch in New York City will be hired with set pay and benefits, a departure from the existing gig worker model that the company has spent tens of millions of dollars to protect in the face of legislative pressure. Employees will work for a newly created DoorDash subsidiary named Dashcore, and will rotate between biking orders to customers, but also some, quote, shelf stocking, customer support, and administrative work, end quote. It's a different type of work than what an independent contractor, Dasher does, says Christopher Payne, DoorDash's president. We do know that there's subset of dashers that want more of the certainty in their schedule of full-time employment,

and so we're offering this job to them. I think it will attract. new people to DoorDash." DoorDash's U-turn on its gig model was partly motivated by the need for delivery drivers to be available at the warehouse before an order is placed to shave off crucial minutes of delivery time. The company said the structure was necessary due to outdated employment law. Eventually, Dashcore employees and the facilities would be made available to third-party companies to offer their own white label rapid delivery logistics, Payne said.

The move to open hyperlocal, so-called dark stores. is an acknowledgement that the company's strategy of having couriers travel to existing brick-and-mortar stores, such as 7-Elevens, was being outflanked. It has been unable to match the speed of the vertically integrated convenience deliveries offered by GoPuff and others. It is also a concession that the gig worker model, which has been defended as the preferred status for people who want flexible work as independent contractors, has met its limit with the instant needs sector, end quote. And that's exactly why this is so fascinating to me. Was the whole gig economy trend only possible in the decade or so of a weak job market that came after the Great Recession? Is this an

acknowledgement of a macro trend or is it micro? Is it just look? This is a new way of doing delivery. These workers need different skills and tasks. They need to be on demand but at the company's beck and call while also able to do, you know, light warehouse, resty. and whatnot. For sure, what I've been hearing is that DoorDash and others are worried about the disruption coming up from below by the likes of Gorillas and Joker and Bike. That's pronounced bike I've learned, B-U-Y-K, and also what sort of workers does GoPuff use? Not going down without a fight, Apple is suing Russia's federal anti-monopoly service, challenging an order by that service to let developers inform app store users about the availability of alternative payment options.

Quoting Mac rumors. Apple's lawsuit attempts to challenge Russia's federal anti-monopoly service or FAS, and the request it made to the company in August to, quote, stop abuse in the market, end quote. The FAS's request would allow developers to inform users about alternative payment options for in-app purchases, but Apple is seeking to have this withdrawn by judicial review. The FAS's demand was based on the fact that some users and developers had notified it that some in-app purchases were cheaper outside the app store due to skirting Apple's 15 to 30% commission, but this is not allowed to be highlighted in apps due to Apple's rules.

Apple was given a deadline of September 30th to allow developers to promote alternative payment methods and was cautioned that a failure to abide by the request could result in a fine based on the company's revenue in Russia. In October, the FAS initiated proceedings against Apple for noncompliance. The development is Apple's latest point of contention in Russia. In March, Apple was forced to comply with a request from the Russian government to show users a list of government-approved apps to download during initial device setup. And in April, the company was fined $12 million for violating anti-monopoly rules with the App Store, end quote.

So, you know, you do want to give credit to Apple when they stand up to bad governments doing bad governmental things. And then they go and do a thing like this. These tweets sort of sum things up, I think. Here's Michael Love. Between the EU and the UK and Russia and South Korea and China and the U.S., eventually somebody is going to give Apple no choice but to abandon the App Store model, so I hope for their sake they've got an internal team pondering what that might look like, end quote. Then there's Der Obisancho, quote, Apple is taking Russia's federal anti-monopoly, to court over being asked to allow apps to tell end users that they can pay for items on their website, thus avoiding Apple's 30% tax. Apple's straight up willing to look like a supervillain over money, end quote.

And finally, here's Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, quote, Apple starts winter conflict with Russia in well-thought-out plan, end quote. Just making note of another one of these, Crypto Exchange Bitmart says it was hacked, resulting in the loss of around $150 million, in crypto after its Ethereum and Binance smart chain hot wallets were breached, quoting the block. Founder and CEO Sheldon Gia later confirmed the incident writing on Twitter, we have identified a large-scale security breach related to one of our ETH hot wallets and one of our BSC hot wallets. At this moment, we are still concluding the possible methods used. The hackers were able to withdraw assets of the value of approximately 150 million USD, end quote.

Zia went on to write that the exchange is, quote, conducting a thorough security review and that all withdrawals are suspended until, quote, further notice. At 7.30 p.m. UTC security researchers Peck Shield first noticed an excessive amount of outbound transfers. It found that a range of tokens had been sent out of Bitmart's hot wallet starting at 4.30 p.m. EST. These tokens included large amounts of meme tokens like Shiba plus half a million dollars in the stable coin USDC. Other commenters have pointed out that funds have all. also been removed on the Binance Smart Chain blockchain 2, which could raise the amount of funds that have been taken. The funds have been sent to an Ethereum mixing service, tornado cash, which will make it harder to track them, end quote. How about a couple of stories about telecoms behaving badly?

According to The Verge, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile all have programs that collect additional data like app usage and web history on their customers. And these programs are generally opt-out operations, so even if you know they're there, you might not even know that you're already enrolled, quote. The My Verizon app might be collecting information about your browsing history, location, apps, and your contacts, all in the name of helping the company, quote, understand your interests. First spotted by input, the program, which Verizon appears to automatically opt customers into is called Verizon Custom Experience and lays buried in the privacy settings on the. the app. The program introduces two different options that appear in the app, custom experience and custom experience plus, each of which varies in terms of invasiveness. Verizon provides additional information about both settings within the app as well as on an FAQ page on its website.

It appears that the custom experience option is a stripped down version of custom experience plus, and as Verizon states directly in the app, it helps Verizon personalize its, quote, communication with you and, quote, give you more relevant product and service recommendations by using information about websites you visit and apps you use on your mobile device, end quote. Meanwhile, Customer Experience Plus has the same purpose to help Verizon provide you with a more personalized experience. However, it not only uses information about the websites and apps you use on your mobile device, but it also says it uses your device location, along with phone numbers you call or that call you to help Verizon, quote, better understand your interests.

This also includes your CPNI, which tracks the times and duration of your calls. As Verizon explains on its site, it might use your information to say, present you with an offer that includes music content or give you a music-related option in its Verizon Up reward program. If it knows you like music, Verizon explicitly states that you, quote, must opt in to participate and you can change your choice at any time, end quote, but it doesn't appear that users are getting the chance to opt in themselves, or perhaps they're doing so unknowingly. After checking the privacy settings in my own app, I found that Custom Experience and Custom Experience Plus were both already toggled on. I don't recall ever turning either of those features on or being asked about that.

As Andrew Paul of input notes, he only discovered the feature after mistakenly opening a promotional email from Verizon that describes the new program. To opt out of the custom experience altogether, open your My Verizon app and then hit the gear icon in the top right corner of the screen, scroll down and select manage privacy settings beneath the preferences heading. On the next page, toggle off custom experience and custom experience plus to erase the information that Verizon already has collected about you through the program. Tap custom experience settings and hit reset. The company says that it won't sell your information to advertisers and that it will, quote, use it only for Verizon purposes, but it's still unnerving either way, end quote. Apparently, in April, T-Mobile

started enrolling customers in a similar program, and AT&T openly states that it collects web and browsing information too. You know, folks, this really would explain a lot of weirdly specific ads I've been getting on Twitter lately? And many customers are complaining that T-Mobile and Verizon have failed to deliver on promised rebates for promoted Apple products in, I guess a straightforward manner, quoting Bloomberg with a bit of background on why this is important. There was a seismic shift in the mobile phone industry about eight years ago. That's when U.S. wireless carriers started eliminating subsidies. Deep discounts offered in exchange for a contract forcing new iPhone buyers to confront the true cost of their devices. Consumers, consumers,

had sticker shock. Gone were the days of the iPhone costing $199. Instead, prices soon soared above $999. And that changed the way people thought about upgrades. Paying $200 for a new iPhone every two years isn't a challenge for a tech enthusiast. Shilling out $1,000 is something else entirely. Still, Apple and the carriers had a plan to keep sales flowing, letting users pay off their devices with monthly installments. All of the major carriers began promoting such plans while Apple touted its annual iPhone upgrade program and a monthly installments feature for the Apple card. More recently, Apple and the carriers took an approach straight from the old school retail playbook. Rebates. Those additional discounts were especially

aggressive this year, perhaps because the iPhone 13 and Apple Watch Series 7 didn't represent major upgrades from previous models, end quote. So if you read the piece, the author then goes on to document their struggles to get their rebate from T-Mobile for an Apple watch they sent in, only to see the rebate denied, as quote, Apple returned as ineligible. Apparently, tweeting and getting on the phone to customer service can get you your, as much as hundreds of dollars in credits sorted out. But you know, who wants to do that? Both Verizon and T-Mobile say they're working on straightening this out, but customers are reporting that this is happening with Apple Watches and iPads bought through carriers, not just

iPhones. Finally, today, congratulations are in order. The one great media company of the social media era, the startup that at one time looked like it might transform legacy media itself. BuzzFeed. Finally, after many years of travails, went to public today, or at least landed in public markets. BuzzFeed rose by as much as 45% on its NASDAQ debut after raising less than expected from a SPAC, quoting Bloomberg. BuzzFeed's debut as a public company marks a major milestone for the online media company that Jonah Peretti co-founded 15 years ago. It's also a sign of how other digital media companies could perform on the public market. Among today's crop of large online publishers, BuzzFeed is the first to have its shares trade.

The big thing digital media needs for consolidation is a strong public company, and we wanted to be the first, Peretti said in an interview. BuzzFeed's road to the public markets got off to a tough start, however. The company planned to raise $288 million in cash through its merger with a blank check company, 895th Avenue Partners Incorporated. Instead, most of that business's investors opted not. to participate in the transaction, an option available to participants in special purpose acquisition companies like 895 Avenue. That had left Peretti with just $16 million of the original intended

funds as the company readied its debut. Paredes said BuzzFeed would likely have done an IPO if the pandemic hadn't disrupted its business. He called the SPAC, quote, a means to an end. Pretty said he expected investors would pull their money out because the market for SPACs has cooled. It, quote, won't meaningfully change our strategy, he said. noting that BuzzFeed will still have money raised from a $150 million convertible note. That's part of the transaction. As a public company, BuzzFeed can also use its stock as a currency to buy other businesses, he said. Pretty predicted the company would be making more acquisitions as a public company,

including potentially subscription-based publishers. This gives us this new platform to do a lot of things that were impossible to do before as a private company, he said. It's an exciting moment for us, end quote. Succession was amazing last night. No spoilers, but, you know, filming in Tuscany, Lake Como, though that was probably supposed to read as Lake Lugano. They probably filmed it in Como. And those last few scenes, it was just all around amazing. But you know what has really hooked me this past weekend? That Wheel of Time show on Amazon Prime, I was not intending this at all, because I've avoided the Wheel of Time books all my life.

But I gotta say, that show has me hooked. The first book in the series is being delivered by Amazon as we speak. So anyway, interested in some high fantasy, I would give Wheel of Time a go. It might get crappy by Book 13 or whatever. There's like 27 books or something like that. But the show right now, which is focusing, I believe, on Book 1, is, you know, pretty lit. So why not? Talk to you tomorrow.