[gexla]

Extractive is more about the relationship than money.

It's extractive because the service gains power by becoming the platform. Users go to the app to view food items and order. The app becomes the experience of the restaurant. The service also becomes a major centralized competitor to everyone in the region. How are you going to compete with a service which is fighting a war of attrition backed by millions from Softbank? Rather than many restaurants having delivery drivers, all the drivers then become gig workers. And perhaps this is just the beginning. Where else might this service expand once it has a solid logistics platform in your area?

I don't have to think much about winner take all in the social media space. Services like Door Dash, Grab, Uber, etc are taking winner takes all economics to your home town. They have the power to become transformative and we're placing a lot of trust in them to do things right. And they're doing this with questionable transparency, as the article pointed out. How do we know this isn't some massive scam which threatens to upend communities by imploding after they have transformed the way we work and our daily habits?

It's too much power IMO.