Madeline Lamo, the librarians at Gallagher Law Library, and Patrick Davidson provided excellent research and editing. The Uber Policy Team also provided helpful comments, which we try to address throughout the paper. The authors would like to thank Christo Wilson, Yan Shvartzshnaider, and Michelle Miller at Nayantara Mehta and Rebecca Smith at the National Employment Law Project participants in the Berkeley Law Privacy Law Scholars Conference participants in the Loyola Law School faculty workshop participants in the University of Pennsylvania IP colloquium and danah boyd, Stacy Abder, Shana Kimball, Janet Haven, Julia Ticona, Alexandra Mateescu, Caroline Jack, and Shannon McCormack for thoughtful insights, comments, and feedback. ** Researcher and Technical Writer, Data & Society Research Institute. Wayne Gittinger Assistant Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law. To be effective, legal interventions must (1) reflect a deeper understanding of the acts and practices of digital platforms and (2) limit the incentives for sharing economy firms to abuse their position. Yet, the regulatory response to date seems outdated and superficial. This Essay argues that consumer protection law, with its longtime emphasis on restraining asymmetries of information and power, is well positioned to address this underexamined aspect of the sharing economy. However, preliminary evidence suggests that sharing economy firms such as Uber may already be going too far, leveraging their access to information about users and their control over the user experience to mislead, coerce, or otherwise disadvantage sharing economy participants. These firms reveal their monitoring activities only selectively. Sitting between consumers and providers of services, however, sharing economy firms have a unique capacity to monitor and nudge all participants-including people whose livelihoods may depend on the platform. This Essay, coauthored by a law professor and a technology ethnographer who studies work, labor, and technology, furnishes such a critique and proposes a meaningful response through updates to consumer protection law.Ĭommercial firms have long used what they know about consumers to shape their behavior and maximize profits. Missing from the literature, however, is a fundamental critique of the sharing economy grounded in asymmetries of information and power. This creates economic and other value but raises concerns around racial bias, safety, and fairness to competitors and workers that legal scholarship has begun to address. Sharing economy firms such as Uber and Airbnb facilitate trusted transactions between strangers on digital platforms.
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