The "innovation" is not paying or treating their employees well--sorry, their "gig workers"--and pocketing the saved money so it can go to the shareholders.
No they can't. Do you really think someone who is working multiple gig jobs just to make less than minimum wage can decide instead of paying rent or putting food on the table they'll instead allocate that money to their brokerage account and buy shares? Get real.
Gig work is a modern form of indentured servitude. Instead of a person with a whip telling you to work or die it's an app.
If someone is working multiple gig jobs they are making more than minimum wage. The unions and labor groups that promote this propaganda are just deep-pocketed as any corporation, at least the corporations do something useful.
They accomplished it by removing the only American “safety net” for our completely broken health and other infrastructure: having an employee-employer relationship.
As long as healthcare and job are intimately tied, these “hacks” are exploitive at large.