In case itās not clear to some, youāre referring to the company whose name I will not spell out due to disgust, but itās the crowdsourcing company that canāt count to six before misspelling its own name. Iām half tempted to add their name to the forumās banned word list.
The only way to have made money from this company over the past year has had nothing to do with freelancing for them but to have bought shares of their stock. Now here they are running their first Super Bowl ad that is financed on the backs of their freelancers living in poverty and, in general, working for far less than minimum wages.
I keep reading about the new āgig economy,ā and how itās here to stay. All the articles seem to have glowing things to say about it ā like how it frees up people to work at home whenever they want and enables them to be their own bosses. I keep reading articles containing references to people who claim to make six-figure incomes from crowdsourcing through this and other similar companies. Yeah, right.
Seemingly, few people have caught on yet that these are slimy companies that have done nothing but figure out ways to use the internet to bypass labor laws while skimming big fees from people trying to earn enough money just to put food on the table. Their 700% increase in share prices largely mirrors an equivalent percentage drop in income from an entire segment of the economy thinking they can make a living heading down this path.
What Iād really like to see is a Super Bowl ad with a successful corporate CEO showing off his new crowdsourced $150 website, then juxtaposing that with the third-world freelancer living in squalor who spent a month of 18-hour days working on it. Maybe that could be followed up by another ad with another business owner talking about their great new visual branding package put together by a Los Angeles Film School graduate doing crowdsourcing work in an attempt to supplement her waitressing income with enough money to clothe her kids while paying off her student loan.
