The COVID-19 pandemic has locked many people at home. This is the time when remote work is gaining popularity. For many, this is also the time when they have to change their occupation.
Landing a permanent remote job is not an easy task, especially in a new field. Ideal option is freelance, where multiple gigs (temporary jobs) allow the freelancer to polish skills and develop reputation.
Freelancing is often considered a precarious type of work, where all parties are vulnerable to fraud and breach of obligations. Therefore, some mediation is required to punish violators by reputational or financial means.
In the early years, online marketplaces were very user-friendly and doing their best to gain market share. Unfortunately, after a series of acquisitions, the remaining market leaders have monopolized the niche. Antitrust law prohibit full mergers, but some gentlemen's agreement may have place. They don't care to attract freelancers anymore, rather to squeeze out every penny the can out of those who remain loyal.
It is difficult for a new company to enter the common market because the diversity of potential partners is what attracts users to the marketplace. And even if one newcomer will grow strong enough to gain decent market share, what will prevent it from getting as greedy as the others?

Then what am I proposing here?
Simply to exclude the squatter from the chain and to crowdsource the creation and maintenance of a free distributable platform for freelance economy. There are many examples of successfull crowdsourcing, Linux and plenitude of free software projects, wikipedia, etc.
The main purpose of the existing platforms is to squeeze more money from customers. Imagine how much better it would be if the focus was on usability.
For example, many customers like that UpWork improves the quality of applicants and fear that without filters there will be too many spam messages from unqualified job seekers.
Upwork achieves this by charging freelancers a fee ($0.3-$0.9 per bid).
As an alternative, I would suggest to introduce an employer-adjustable minimum editing time. During this time, the applicant can not apply for another job, and his application is not visible to the employer, so he has time to study the vacancy and correctly formulate his proposal. However, this is just an example. I believe there are many brilliant minds out there who can come up with even better ideas.
As far as money management is concerned, participants may have to use third parties like PayPal. Maybe block-chain technologies will gain popularity and smart contracts will become widespread. Hopefully, however, we never have to hear stories like this where Freelancer.com sabotages KYC verification as an excuse to withhold freelancer's hard-earned money.

This petition is the first stage, the purpose of which is to draw attention to the problem and is a "call to brains". I'm in no way trying to monopolize this, if you feel you can reach out more effectively, please do.
The second stage will be discussion. This will require some kind of forum, where we will discuss ideas and build teams. Feel free to offer yours. Don't underestimate the power of discussions. When people feel that their ideas have a good chance of implementation, they can become very passionate. I recall 2015, the Liberland forum, where people were expecting a new country to emerge. What a surge of creativity it was!
Just consider how many bright minds and skilled professionals there are among freelancers. And what a nice part of the portfolio would be to contribute to the very marketplace where they will connect with their clients.

Every dictator knows that if he wants to maintain the status quo, he must keep busy those who can initiate change.
Luckily for us, the greed of the freelance market leaders has surpassed their wisdom, and we've got a chance to change things for the better.
Please sign this petition to show your support and share it to spread the word.