The @Uber-@Postmates merger will ONLY benefit monopolistic pandemic profiteers focused on growing their power at the expense of restaurants, workers, and consumers.

2/ Both @Uber & @Postmates’ business models are built on trapping restaurants & workers in a predatory payday loan cycle of dependence and destitution.

And both @Uber & @Postmates use the “Break it till you Make It” approach to the law.
3/ @Uber was a vanguard in the business of providing illegal taxi service and misclassifying workers as “contractors.”

@Postmates pioneered the predatory practice of stealing menus and offering unauthorized delivery service from restaurants without their knowledge.
4/ Now, unauthorized deliveries are one of the apps’ favorite bait-and-switch tactics for convincing restaurants to pay 30-60% commissions.

When COVID-19 shut down dining rooms & dozens of cities capped fees to help restaurants, both @Uber & @Postmates lobbied hard to stop them.
5/ @Postmates, in particular, was not subtle about breaking the laws.
https://t.co/IU8QQIiAVC
6/ Merging these two repeat offenders will only hurt struggling independent restaurants, more than 100k of which have closed permanently or long-term due to COVID-19.
7/ Meanwhile, @Postmates & @Uber are burning $$$, backed by deep-pocketed investors who are betting they can monopolize the market, cut wages & hike their already-enormous fees.
8/ In the Q1-Q3 of 2020, @Uber lost $5.7 billion.

And @Postmates lost $105 million in Q1 & Q2 of 2020.

Obviously, their business models have been successful…🙃
9/ It’s time to recognize these eternally cash burning companies for what they really are: Silicon Valley slush funds to promote the abolition of labor rights & normalize the disruption of small biz out of existence.
10/ President-elect Biden’s new antitrust chief should investigate whether the @Uber-@Postmates deal is corrupt and undo this illegal merger.
11/11 In the meantime, there are ways to ensure restaurants & communities can connect through new tech while preventing predatory practices by middlemen.

As @moetkacik explains in “Rescuing Restaurants,” now more than ever, we must #ProtectOurRestaurants👇https://t.co/AjDGkiJqEE

More from Tech

Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.

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