The gig economy, for all its limitations, has significance as an exemplar of where capitalism is heading. Platforms and apps do the work of connecting demand (people looking to hire someone to do a job) to supply (temp workers willing to perform that job for a price set by the platform). Because the economic transactions happen within and through the platform, companies are able to benefit by taking a cut from each transaction, through advertising, or by extracting data from the transactions that they can then sell to third parties, all the while washing their hands of any messy contractual obligations between themselves and the users (some platforms simply charge giggers to bid on jobs, regardless of whether they get the job). This is monopsony in action.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 220