How Tech Firms Like Uber Hide Behind the ‘Platform Defense’

The state of California is set to pounce, so—big surprise!—Uber is playing Silicon Valley’s favorite get out of jail card: the "platform defense.” As in, “Judge, I couldn’t have committed the crime, I was a platform at the time.” In the process, however, Uber may have helped energize critics who insist that Big Tech companies be held to account for their toxic negligence. In the face of such an attention-focusing cost estimate, Uber’s top lawyer, Tony West, proffered an ingenious defense: The company’s drivers aren’t employees, even under the proposed new law, because Uber’s main business isn’t driving people around. The company, he told reporters on Wednesday, “is serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces.” Thus, West said, the whole ride-hailing project would fall “outside the course of Uber’s usual business,” as the law stipulates. @Uber will absolutely comply with the law—but the law does not ‘require contract workers to be reclassified as employees.’ I made that clear on a call today with your reporters.” Uber is a platform company, not a ride-hailing company—that’s their story and they’re sticking with it.