Of course. How else would you get all those venture capitalists to invest in them?

The gig economy is nothing new in itself, it was already present, the only thing these companies did is to make them "modern". Here were not uncommon that people got some gig works to have the money for holidays (teenagers) or to round up salary from time to time.
It is not a problem per se.

The problem is that the gig economy is the only way to have a salary for some people, for various reasons.
That let the companies to pay way less because they have a big pool to choose from and have not any obligations (or advantages) to have a stable set of employees and to resort to gig workers only in peak times.
And that is true expecially in place like the US where the llabor laws are ridiculous.

You also have no stability. With a wage, you know what you're getting and your employer can't just cut wages easily. With gig work, you can wake up one day and suddenly they've slashed payouts without any negotiating.

Oh no you see I am the Dasher/Uber driver/whatever who actually makes money. You see....

The big problem with modernization of gig work by these companies is that they're screwing of the gig workers by inserting themselves in the middle and fucking over everybody else involved.

For example: Town car services existed for years before Uber came to the scene. Before Uber you'd have to call a town car service that may be a single person operation, or a small group of people getting together and hiring a calling service.

The idea of the modern, centralized, gig services is not a terrible idea in itself. But running that as a capitalist business is terrible. This is one of those things that should be required to be a government service or a non-profit.

Europe created something called "the platform work directive", or something along those lines. Basically means that platform jobs (i.e. Uber, Wolt, Just Eat) can no longer operate under a so-called "freelance model".

Basically, if it looks like you're hiring employees, you must give them contracts like employees (along with everything that entails).

It's already been agreed upon, so it's a matter of implementation. It's considered a "pillar" of the EU now, so being part of the EU means having the directive. Deadline for the implementation, as I've heard from 3F Copenhagen, should be 2026.

I can't wait.

Whenever these things come up you always hear "then the company won't survive!"

CEO and managers make bank somehow but it doesn't matter that the workers can't live on that wage. It's always so weird how when workers actually take a pay cut, that the businesses get used to it. When the CEOs get bonuses they have to get used to that too.