I don't think the reasons you are listing are valid at all.
1. If they can game it, they should. If that's a problem, then Shipt should fix their algorithm.
2. It's fine to data wrangle your way to an automated model for e.g. your company's growth projection or for predicting where you can best expand to find more customers. It's not okay to use it to unilaterally change pay agreements with your workers or "contractors".
3. The right of an individual to know what they're getting paid for their work outweighs any company's nebulous claim of its algorithm being a trade secret or something vague like that. Can you imagine businnesses actually operating like this? "You can't know what we'll pay you for this job, its ~~seeeecret~~. Just trust us."
It's amazing that anyone would even try to say that.
From now on I'm going to pay my rent according to a secret algorithm of my own devising and my landlord will just have to hope I'm generous this month. I can't have him gaming the lease agreement by only providing the things it says!
Why is this the case? It's well known that ML models are almost always gameable if you know the weights. What right do you have to their algo?
Why not? The contractors know before directly accepting a contract it's value, they can choose to not accept it if they think they're being underpaid?
Except this is how things work at basically all companies? Compensation decisions are secret and only known at offer time, I don't think I've worked for a single company where the specific executive decision reasoning for an offer is given.
1. If they can game it, they should. If that's a problem, then Shipt should fix their algorithm.
2. It's fine to data wrangle your way to an automated model for e.g. your company's growth projection or for predicting where you can best expand to find more customers. It's not okay to use it to unilaterally change pay agreements with your workers or "contractors".
3. The right of an individual to know what they're getting paid for their work outweighs any company's nebulous claim of its algorithm being a trade secret or something vague like that. Can you imagine businnesses actually operating like this? "You can't know what we'll pay you for this job, its ~~seeeecret~~. Just trust us."