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Tomislav Medak 2024-11-05 11:41:50 +01:00
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title = "Smartphone Trees"
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*First heard on the net in 2020. Brought to bonfires in Berlin and Orléans 2024.*
In 2020, passers-by in a suburb of ███████ saw a bunch of old smartphones hanging from the tallest branches of the trees surrounding a Whole Foods store. Among delivery drivers competing for orders, the word had spread that placing a phone as close as possible to the stations where deliveries originated would enable them to gain a split-second advantage over other drivers. The plot involved syncing those phones with their actual working phones, and combining this with a software monitoring Amazon’s dispatch network, to be allocated more gigs. In a few cases, some drivers would place multiple phones in a tree and then hand out delivery requests to other drivers for a cut of the proceeds. A 2020 report mentioned that it was mostly a coordinated effort by desperate gig workers whose other jobs, for example as Uber drivers, had dried up because of the pandemic lockdowns.