Key Idea: Ask who the customer is. Four ways of being paid — sell, subscribe, advertising, commission — and each builds a different product. Everything else in this topic follows from that one question.
Paper 1
- Part a: define a platform business, or outline tasks and jobs
- Part b: explain why a free service behaves as it does
- Part c: evaluate automation, mobile money or global chains
Paper 2
- Q2: explain a claim about how a company earns
- Q3: compare sources from different points in a chain
- Q4: synthesise sources on platform power or employment
Everywhere else
- Power: the platform sets the ranking and the fee
- Environment: the chain separates value from cost
- HL 5.1: the future of work is this topic extended
Four models, four different products
| Model | Who pays | What the product is built to do |
|---|---|---|
| Sell it | The user, once | Be good at the job — nothing else earns |
| Subscribe | The user, monthly | Be good enough not to cancel |
| Advertising | An advertiser | Hold attention, which is not the same |
| Commission | Both sides of a trade | Keep both sides dependent |
Each side is there because the other is, so a competitor must attract both at once; cost per user barely rises with scale; and the platform sets the ranking and the fees while competing under them.
Automation: tasks, not jobs
What decides which tasks go first
- Predictability, not difficulty — a skilled, rule-governed, richly recorded task goes before an unpredictable physical one.
- Volume — a task done a thousand times a day is worth automating; the same task twice a week is not.
- Whether the data already exists — work that already produces a record has supplied its own training examples.
- And what is lost — entry-level tasks go first, and they were how people learned the job.
Important: Not how many jobs, but who loses tasks, who gains them, and whether the two groups are the same people. They are rarely the same people.
Exam-style questions
Contrast the position of a seller on a platform with that of an employee of the platform.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Examine the view that platform work is better described as employment than as self-employment.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Quick check
The four models Sell once, subscribe, advertising, commission.
Why does 'free' change a product? The advertiser is the customer, so the product is built to hold attention rather than to be useful.
Tasks or jobs? Tasks. The job that remains is a different job, with the easy parts removed.
Where is value captured in a global chain? At design and at the sale — the two steps with the fewest people.
Exam tips
- Write the business model into your first sentence: 'this is an advertising-funded service, so…'.
- Say 'tasks, not jobs' early in any automation answer.
- Walk the supply chain step by step. It is the fastest route to a structured global answer.