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DoorDash Tasks

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> Tasks and the new app are currently available in select places in the U.S., excluding California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado.

Anyone know why that is?

(Claude thinks it's because those places have gig worker protection laws such that "classifying Dashers as independent contractors for non-delivery work is most legally risky")

Probably exactly that. Those places have minimum wage laws for gig workers.

I have no idea but when reading the article my mind immediately went to businesses having dashers take photos of competing businesses as some type of weird crowdsourced corporate espionage.

I read it as "secret shopper/diner" kind of deal, so corporate can fail that local franchise for failing some rating for the burger...

Those jurisdictions stifle innovation. Thankfully, the vast majority of the US does not do that. Door Dashers in 99% of the US will now have a button to click that will put more money in their pockets. Very good!

Pretty sure Task rabbit operates in said jurisdictions, so it's not that.

Innovation in what exactly?

It's right there in the article. An innovative idea in the field of distributed labor, enabled by technology is being launched in the 99% of the US that allows ideas to be tried freely. I'm happy to see it!

Worker protections are good, actually.

Right up until it protects you out of a job, like California’s fast food minimum wage: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34033/w340...

This paper has not been peer reviewed and is written by a conservative leaning academic. I'm sure you knew both of those things though

It’s a solid paper. Are you able to put aside your irrational biases and consider other views?

Is your position that making fast-food labor more expensive increases fast food employment? Because that's really a unique take.

I mean, yes, trivially? That only hinges on two factors: what share of a fast food business' overall expenses actually go to labor costs, and, y'know, how much extra demand is enabled by ensuring even the poorest workers make enough to afford fast food once in a while.

Takes like yours used to baffle me, until I realized that the US was founded on enslaved labor and to this day there remains a silent expectation in some circles that there must be a laborer class which should be as inexpensive and disposable as possible, and is fundamentally distinct from the consumer class. A lot becomes clearer all at once when you realize that to some, there's a whole segment of the population that is not expected to benefit from the economy, only serve it.

Historically, such worldviews have in the long term tended to bring sharp misfortune to those holding them. I'm hoping for a better outcome here, though.

Fast food workers are included in the consumer class.

As for slavery, the poorly educated believe that it was a uniquely American phenomenon. Slavery was a global institution practiced by every civilization, nation, and culture on earth. In fact, it’s still alive and well in multiple places. The US abolished it fully in 1865. Products produced by slaves accounted for around 15% of our GDP at its peak.

You learned something today. I’m proud of you.

>launched in the 99% of the US

>excluding California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado.

I question your basic math skills if you conclude that those jurisdictions amount to only 1% of the U.S.

Those states have more worker labor protections that apply to gig workers.

Piecemeal labor! Shift work! SRO’s! Unlicensed taxis!

I can't imagine what these innovators will come up with next.

* Child labour - Return the right to work to everyone

* Slavery - End the unjust and anti-competitive prison system monopoly

* Restore the rights of oppresed White Nationalists - The right to hire whom you please

* End the unjust prohibition of "rape" in marriage - Be free to do what you want with your property

The best part is that if my phone dies, I have no way to hail an unlicensed taxi and I'm well and truly stranded.

There was a startup that did this in the mid 2010s named Magic, but was just via SMS. I used it a few times to get random things done, and it was really useful when it was cheap, then it became mega expensive.

I don't quite get how that would work. They were completing tasks to train models but via sms? Can you elaborate?

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magic

It is a VA firm.

There's two seperate things DoorDash seems to be doing: "Tasks" in the physical world (taking photos of inventory on shelves, closing Waymo doors), and then some seperate app for training AI models.

As for Magic, they were an SMS-based virtual assistant. They still exist today. They went downhill. https://getmagic.com/

> closing Waymo doors

They can't reverse and brake?

Interesting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks

Uber has also been offering MT-like tasks as gig work. https://www.uber.com/us/en/ai-solutions/

Meta doesn’t even need to use this, they’re just going to be constantly recording all video and audio from those rayban glasses ;)

Smart move, Zuck.

I wonder who can give tasks. And how do they combat potential abuse cases. Surely there is lot of tasks that can be exploited for more nefarious purposes. Or just simply exploiting those that would do the tasks.

lol for a moment I read 'potentially combat tasks' and I thought ICE

> restaurant showcase their menu by taking real photos of their dishes,

Not sure if I follow all that! What’s a real photo? So, no one from a restaurant can take a photo of their own dish which they just made?

> helping a hotel make sure a delivery driver can find a drop-off location by taking photos of the hotel entrance

Hotel staff can’t update Yelp, Google Maps location with the info? Or can’t drivers call the hotel or location? Also, it seems to be a very infrequent occurrence, Once per driver maybe?

DoorDash already does this for items in stores to help the next person find that item. Its still hit or miss, as some of the pics are now years old, so they do need updating.

Interesting. Seems similar to what Premise Data tried to do, and maybe would have succeeded had it not been for their slimeball CEO cratering their reputation https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surve...

So they’re training a model

So, Quri (2009, now part of Trax), which was the startup copy of Proctor & Gamble's retail intelligence operations. But now like a sponge for any AI budgets not earmarked for hardware.

Neat product expansion. Isn’t this what store employees are already doing though? Maybe it’s more for building datasets.

i think it's just a formalization of this https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig...

It's essentially mystery shopping. There's a pretty big disconnect between what a large corporate HQ thinks occurs at their stores and what actually occurs at their stores.

Its mystery shopping without any of those pesky minimum wage requirements

Mystery shoppers were often paid in cheaper groceries, one time payments, etc (at least in the early 2000s). Mystery shoppers wasn’t a full time hourly job.

Nobody said mystery shopping was a full time job.

Are they supposed to open the food in order to take photos of it?!

No, it's just an inventory check.

I had a terrible thought while out on a hike the other day. I'm almost loath to post it on HN because I worry some idiot is going to read it and think it's a good idea. On the other hand, if I thought of it, it's just a matter of time before someone else does.

Here is the idea: programmers may move to a DoorDash like model as well in the future. You may have full time employment but it will be at a much lower base salary than in the past.

Instead of working on "stories" you will work "contracts."

So someone wants feature X or system Y, that's a contract. You get paid on delivery.

Meaning, since it will become possible to build more complete / fleshed out things with enough requirements and so forth with the use of AI, the best programmers will really be the best 'coding drone operators.' Whoever can get the most jobs done in the shortest amount of time at the highest quality for the least tokens, they'll rule the roost.

Real compensation will then happen in terms of boosts to the base salary for getting contracts done, similar to how many execs are paid a low salary and then are expected to earn their keep by the bonuses and equity the earn for delivering results. (Yes, I know, delivering results, har har).

Congratulations, you invented Upwork!

Yes, sadly. Except what I'm imaging would be even worse.

So... contractors? I don't understand how what you're describing is any different.

It's the same except much worse.

Labour getting ever-granular in the age of micro-loans and RentAHuman.

> "Dashers have a new way to earn on their own terms"

The classic meaning inversion of precariousness and lack of benefits as a virtue.

Neither of these two things are something that DoorDash as a company can realistically do anything about.

If only there was some other kind of employment model where people had regular shifts and they were paid consistently and transparently. Unfortunately I also do my office work by logging into an app at 6AM every day and bidding on a white collar job for a mystery amount of time and money

I am pretty sure that DoorDash employs quite a few of people for their tasks at hand.

Notably not the people who actually make the company money, though.

DoorDash lobbies heavily against laws that would regulate labor, or classify its workers as “employees” and thus require they be covered by the minimal protections our country offers.

If the politicians are bought out by evil DoorDash's lobbying, why don't the voters just vote the politicians out? Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?

Ignoring the easy second line, the answer to the first line is: we have two political parties in the US. What if neither are doing what the voters want?

Then people should stop being dumbfucks and engage in local (which are frequently non-partisan) and state elections and primaries, and stop pretending that "the president didn't fix everything and make this a socialist utopia, so both parties suck" is a useful or vaguely intelligent criticism.

> Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?

You have to be kidding.

In the current US political system, the hard part would be finding examples of a politician doing anything but.

To be fair, it’s not really their fault that there are people who want to treat work that normally would be considered a way to pick up a few bucks during free time as a full time career.

Sure, go ahead and make fast food delivery a highly regulated line of work that pays $30/hour with benefits. Just don’t be surprised when it no longer becomes economically viable for DoorDash to continue operating.

DoorDash not being able to continue operating doesn’t bother me one bit. They aren’t curing cancer, and a society with fewer food delivery options based on extorting poor people to turn their vehicle’s equity into less cash than it’s worth will still be a fine society. But I would be perfectly fine if they continued to exist and simply provided some basic guarantees like subsidized healthcare for their employees.

The question is what happens if these sorts of micro-contract work arrangements are outlawed... is the expectation that these businesses will instead hire these people full time, thus increasing full time employment?

Maybe, although it seems unlikely. These sorts of tasks aren't going to be worth most companies hiring someone to do it full time. Instead, the work simply won't be done and the business will just be a little less efficient and responsive.

The other alternative is that someone would start a specialized service providing each of these types of tasks, and hire full time workers to do the work, and then contract out the services directly.

Is that better for the workers? Maybe for some, they will have full time employment. But will they make more money? Maybe, but now there is a new company extracting profit, with overhead and all the related costs.

Is that a better world for the average person? I don't know. I just don't think the answer is as simple as saying DoorDash obviously makes it worse.

I would say that it is less that DoorDash makes it worse than it is that DoorDash's model removes any incentive for making it better.

A lot of that is about medical insurance. Employers generally have to offer subsidized health plans to full-time employees. If we could break that policy linkage between employment and health plan coverage then it would reduce the importance of classifying workers as employees versus independent contractors.

In a certain Euroland country an analogous delivery company just awards the driver minimum hourly payment on certain agreed before hours if they're clearly working but circumstances had them earn less. Minimum wage requirements stifle nothing.

Inability to do something != needing to take advantage of the situation.

It's also unlocking economic value that was impossible to realize in the old model. If you're sitting around your house with nothing to do for an hour you can now earn money in ways you couldn't before.

"value"

"Earn money" most markets are so saturated with drivers, nobody is making above minimum wage.

A laughable concept; absurd on its face. Just like the idea that uber is just suburban mums taking one or two trips on the way back from school.

It will absolutely be a full time, below minimum wage job that desperate people do. The same as uber, delivery drivers, and the entire rest of the gig economy

Not how Uber works now. Uber drivers love the flexibility and the ability to choose their hours. That’s the main draw of tue platform.

Fungibility means anything can be framed as economic value. Prisoner labour is also unlocking economic value, as is child labour.

Also who are these non-theoretical people who in this economy can afford to sit around but are suddenly economically motivated by gig economy offerings?

To me it's a typical symptom of a bad economy. If you go to any third world country you'll see such jobs easily. People just gathering scraps to make ends meet because getting money is hard. If it were really "their own terms" they wouldn't do that kind of job at all.

Introducing DoorDash Deskilling.

Funny to see how creatively tech marketing teams are spinning their push for a permanent underclass in America.

No employment contracts. No benefits. No protections. Unpredictable wages. But hey, it's great because in this new model people have "flexibility" and "freedom".

It's also appears to be a hustle side job employer in PR regarding employment MO, while clearly trying to capture the market for deliveries in weekday work hours.

Definitely won't be abused by burglars, stalkers and spies.

Relevant: https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/premise-data-confirms-sec...

If you haven’t figured it out by now the future of all work is transfer learning and encoding human action so that all possible action is mechanized and commoditized.

I’ve been obsessed with this problem for the better part of 20 years

The fact that we’re finally starting to see it realized is very exciting

Straight out of Black Mirror.

It’d be nice if folks like yourself were equally obsessed with the systemic harms that would come about from solving or addressing this problem rather than charging full-speed ahead into the unknown at everyone else’s expense.

Problems aren’t solely technological in nature, nor are their impacts and solutions. Never forget the humans behind the models.

What’s that look like in your mind?

It's understanding impact before taking action, especially on issues at scale (like labor displacement/replacement technologies). It's being vocal about shaping society in ways that reduce harms that naturally occur from inventions and technological revolutions instead of pawning it off to "other experts" or the workers themselves. It's engaging stakeholders beyond your comfort zone and social circles to build consensus, shape movements, and mitigate damage done while amplifying the good that would come from such a profound change. It's slowing or stopping work if society refuses to adapt, or targeting your output to harm those blocking the transformations needed to protect the commoners and guarantee prosperity is shared equally instead of hoarded. It's ostracizing those who choose to pursue such selfish ends while remaining willfully ignorant of (or worse, deliberately working towards) the harms they'll cause to others, applying negative pressure to influence positive reforms or warning others of the harm they'll incur by engaging in such socially-hostile behaviors.

At its core, it's about understanding (the metaphorical) you are not a single person but a cog in a much larger machine, and that your actions reverberate throughout that machine in ways that are largely predictable, at least for a reasonable number of next-order impacts. Putting aside emotional intelligence like empathy and compassion for a bit, the practical intelligence needed to solve these tasks at a scale where robots or machines can displace labor implies a similar capacity to understand the harms and impacts of said solutions on a populace. To focus solely on solving the problem before you rather than acknowledging the impact it will have beyond you is to willfully reject accountability in favor of achievement, and we have enough vainglorious chuds in technology as-is.

I wrote a whole ass paper covering all of this that got significant coverage and discussion here on HN if you search for it

https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html

So I’m pretty sure I’ve got it covered. Good ideas though

You asked me a question, and I answered. You didn't say, "could you read this paper of mine and see where we might differ or what my blindspots are", you just gave me a throwaway one-liner that, in hindsight, seems to have been little more than a tee-up for this exact response.

I'll add said paper to my reading list, at least.

Definitely not a tee up cause whether you read it or not it’s fine by me just a follow up since you took the effort to write it out

If you want the deeper math then read my GTC paper

I read that, and it’s one thing to advocate for relaxation over scarcity when, say, the Gini index shows decreasing inequity.

But the organized right-wingers regularly talking about scarcity. The unelected deep state DOGE operatives who have never run for office. Does contradicting the narrative about scarcity necessarily mean undermining the top billionaires?

That’s up to the masses. I’ve done what I can so far and so far its working

You should be concerned and not excited. This future might be near than we can imagine and we're just accelerating things without thinking about the consequences.

What specific consequences are you anticipating?

Horrific dystopian take.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com