The so-called sharing/gig economy is under fire – in California, anyway, with State Assembly Bill 5 (AB5). “Under the new “ABC” test (which is part of the new law), an individual is presumed to be an employee, unless the company can prove all of the following: A) that the worker is free from control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed,” The National Law Review explains.

There’s very little genuine sharing going on in the so-called sharing economy. Sharing/gig economy unicorn DoorDash had to change its tipping model after it was discovered that tips that were meant to go to the workers were being kept by the company. Even after they promised to change that, Vox reported that DoorDash was still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop. Now it’s Instacart that’s in the crosshairs for taking that page from the Bad Behavior in Tech playbook. “’You have demonstrated a pattern of behavior as CEO of eviscerating our pay and pirating our tips,’” Instacart independent contractors wrote in an open letter to CEO Apoorva Mehta, ahead of a three-day walkout, Mashable reports.

Meanwhile, according to Forbes, California Destroys $1 Trillion Gig Economy With New Law.

California already has a law on the books to protect gig economy workers. Senate Bill 459 (SB459) passed in 2012, made it unlawful for companies to wrongfully classify workers. “Yet, the law hasn’t been used to challenge worker misclassification at any of the gig platform companies such as Uber or Lyft,” Forbes reports. “The (new) law targets app-based services to reclassify their independent contractors as employees in 2020… The stark reality is hundreds of thousands of independent contractors in California will become employees under the bill. Everyone from manicurists, dancers, journalists, writers, bartenders and delivery drivers will be impacted.”

If it is enforced at all.

When the tech industry first came along, it was something hitherto unseen on the planet and mirrored no other industry that had preceded it, so its company founders were given something of a long leash.

Which they have abused and continue to abuse on all front, focusing on power, corporate growth and profits, to the exclusion of all else. The Lords of the Files do have their own rules, which they seem to invent and enforce at whim. The original intent of the internet was that information would be available and readily accessible to all – and that the power would be in the hands of the users, although quite the opposite has happened and continues, unabated. According to a report from Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy group, The Internet Is Less Free Than It Was a Decade Ago.

Now the regulators are stepping in and the results may be far more Draconian than were regulations prior to the emergence of the tech industry.

The tech sector has so far not only failed to police itself, for the most part, but also tends to thumb its nose at legislators, including Congress itself: In case you missed it, Apple and TikTok refuse to testify to US Congress about their business in China. Reports Reclaim the Net, “Both companies have faced growing scrutiny over their business relationships with China during the last month. Days ago the US government opened a national security review of TikTok after US senators raised concerns about the company’s ties to China. Apple was also recently slammed by Hawley and other US senators for removing a popular Hong Kong protest safety app from its App Store – a decision which many suggested was being made at the behest of Chinese censors.

And the pursuit of the yuan.

Tech is under scrutiny these days from all sides and note to self: once the regulators get involved, they don’t merely regulate: they tend to take a sledgehammer to the problem.

Time for a tech ego correction and take note: the phrase ‘the buck stops here’ does not mean that it goes into your pocket, and that applies pretty much to the Lords of the Files across the board, for whatever agenda they may be uniquely pursuing. It may have been fun while it lasted, but it seems that at long last, the gig (sic) is up.

Onward and forward.