The enterprise agreement itself does not require any showing of an employee-employer relationship as defined by the local jurisdiction.

But if you read the rest of the agreement, you will find more requirements about who these apps may be distributed to, and they make this case pretty much a slam dunk in Apple's favor. For example, Facebook cannot possibly agree that they would be liable for what users of these research apps do, nor can they claim the ability to retrieve these devices if the relationship ends.

So, no - simply issuing a tax form won't solve this for Facebook.

That's fair, but Doordash, Square and Instacart don't have that ability either. They're distributing their apps via the same sideloading mechanism.

At least the way I'm reading Apple's terms, those cases fall more cleanly into the Employee category (which includes 1099 contractors, as defined in the terms).

The requirement to issue 1099s kicks in at $600/year. The panelists were well below that and weren’t paid in cash. The not-paid-in-cash thing doesn’t matter for reporting requirements, but I would guess it probably gives an extra layer of legal protection if the panelists decided to claim they are in fact employees.

It's blurry but the fact that the payment is solely for them to install the app and give away their privacy is a pretty strong indication. That's quite different from a delivery service where the relationship is that they're delivering food, and the app is just one tool they use to do the job.

My interpretation is that this should be fine; just as I'm pretty sure it's OK to design MDM software for your employees that all but spies on them.