this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
863 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
85333 readers
4441 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You have no idea how helpful DoorDash/Ubereats is for people with health issues and no support network. I'm not going to share any of my details but I'd be in a much worse situation if I couldn't rely on DoorDash for meals.
Yes, before the invention of DoorDash people with health challenges just died. No one could order food and have it delivered by cabs or the restaurant. Not like pizza places did delivery at all let alone base their whole business model around it. Really just a good thing such Uber and Dash companies came along to be super valuable middlemen charging a fee to everyone involved.
Pizza every day isn’t great.
And those other contexts were not as pervasive as DoorDash has become.
I worked delivering food when I was young, all food was able to be delivered way back. It was not just pizza and very common, DoorDash and the like have just gaslit everyone into thinking they are needed. I remember the small town I lived in even had a program to pay for cabs to get groceries for people with limited mobility (this was in the 90's). We have abandoned working systems like meals on wheels in favor of for profit middlemen.
DoorDash supplanting meals on wheels is terrible. I don’t mean to argue otherwise.
I think awareness of the options was really low, though. And that’s probally what I’m speaking to. And I expect my ignorance was shared. I see your point though. And I can see how I was speaking from ignorance there.
While maybe more people are aware of a way to deliver food and basic supplies in the era of DoorDash, I never really meant to defend them. It just made sense to me that the pervasiveness of DoorDash is improving access. But it’s definitely not improving affordability. Not at all, holy shit.
That is the truly insidious part, people did know and use delivery often back in the day. It was in movies (remember the Chinese take out boxes all the time, those where delivered), it was promoted in every grocery store and was many a young persons first job. But like all things its gone in a weird way, now no one seems to deliver anything out side of being a contractor for an app. Our charities have changed in a similar way, less on the ground help (when I was 12 I helped a version of meals on wheels that had over 6 active vans in a city of 30,000) and more on remote support and fundraising. Not saying they are not trying to do good work, but what people expect in their community now is kinda depressing in its tiny underwhelming way.
Your right it is driving costs up, and also not always improving access outside of major cites. Here is a personal example; I used to be able to get food delivered at my house in a small rural town (1400 people) from the nearest city (25 min drive away). It was more money since you had to pay for the extra distance, and the delivery people did not like it (it cut down on tips spending 50+ min driving for one call) but it was possible. Now I don't have that option, the Dashes/Ubers/Justeats just don't even try. It might be that no one would take that job, it might be they never thought of it. Oh and we have as a town had to fund and support a local handibus non profit to deliver things to or drive to appointments people with mobility issues (for whatever the reason is).