[...]
3. Develop a strategy to defend against disintermediation [...]
4. Consider building a data moat
It's worth reading this because it's unusually frank about the deliberate exploitation customers and suppliers and essentially advocates MITM economic attacks by splitting trusted suppliers and consumers from each other and establishing and maintaining convenience, economic, and information asymmetries in order to milk the market for profit.
We need more things like craigslist and less, much much less, of this sort of thing. Verticalization can create value, but as described here it is far more about extracting it, by commoditizing and centralizing what were previously distributed peer-to-peer relationships. The argument is that these verticals are more economically efficient, but this is only true in the sense of maximizing the dollar value of each transaction (and taking a commission); this comes with significant negative externalities for the participants - loss of privacy, loss of transparency, loss of negotiating ability, loss of autonomy, and loss of opportunity.
They're not creating a marketplace, but a company store in which the management has been automated away. Because it's distributed, striking is impossible and the only way workers in the system have any relief is to organize off-platform and then attempt legal action, via a court system which the corporation can stack directly (through hiring very high priced legal representation) and indirectly (through lobbying and campaign contributions).
Craigslist created a marketplace and charged a small fee for very high-value transactions selling vehicles or hiring for employment. This is just a land grab.
