A blindness to boundaries is not uncommon for Silicon Valley
April 23, 2017 11:57 AM   Subscribe

Uber’s C.E.O. Plays With Fire - Mike Isaac (NYT) Inside Uber, Mr. Kalanick began codifying the pillars of the company’s culture. He particularly admired Amazon, the e-commerce company that espouses 14 leadership principles including “learn and be curious” and “insist on the highest standards.” So he created 14 values for Uber, with tenets such as being “super pumped” and “always be hustlin.’”

"For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple’s engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had secretly been tracking iPhones even after its app had been deleted from the devices, violating Apple’s privacy guidelines."

Previously, Susan Fowler
Previously, Waymo/Otto LIDAR suit
Previously, Uber's first MeFi FPP
posted by CrystalDave (157 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just a reminder that if you want to delete Uber, don't just delete the app, delete your account.

http://www.delete-uber.com will take you straight to their account deletion page.
posted by SansPoint at 12:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [21 favorites]


Fuck Kalanick, fuck Uber, fuck the fucking "gig economy" and then fuck Kalanick again because fuck him, that's why.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:49 PM on April 23, 2017 [115 favorites]


If I'm the rest of Silicon Valley's leadership, I'm very nervous right now about the fire at Uber. It's now so out of control that it's starting to jump to other businesses down there.

I don't feel bad for the VCs, though. They pumped this thing up without asking whether they were ever going to get their money back.
posted by dw at 1:02 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


He got called to Tim Cook's office for a (somewhat) stern talking to?

I can't imagine any iOS app developer getting away with the crap Uber pulled. Many have gotten the boot over MUCH less.

Apple has to share some of the blame here.
posted by paulcole at 1:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [77 favorites]


They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of Lyft’s business. (Lyft, too, operates a competitive intelligence team.)

Well, time to say fuck unroll.me too.
posted by Karaage at 1:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [46 favorites]


TOO BIG TO DELETE FROM APP STORE.

Apple comes out of this looking almost as bad as Uber.
posted by srboisvert at 1:04 PM on April 23, 2017 [37 favorites]


So he created 14 values for Uber, with tenets such as being “super pumped” and “always be hustlin.’”

That sounds like he lifted points from an MLM presentation. Jesus Christ.
posted by sbutler at 1:04 PM on April 23, 2017 [40 favorites]


Also, what in the actual fuck. I am of the opinion that there should be criminal penalties for this kind of intentional privacy violation, penalties that go beyond a talking-to from Tim Cook.

You'll be happy to know that's coming in May of 2018, courtesy of the EU.

Most global companies are preparing for it now, in order not to be made an example of.

Uber would stand to lose up to 4% of their global profits if they pull this crap after that date.

And I believe residents of Germany already have these rights/protections.
posted by offalark at 1:12 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


Apple comes out of this looking almost as bad as Uber.

WORSE. The entire point of Apple's Curated Store/"Walled Garden" is to prevent and punish bad-faith actors.

Since Apple failed to -- in good faith -- punish Uber's bad-faith acts, then Apple isn't acting in good-faith either.

AND a great class action case may exist from all the developers kicked off for similar/lesser TOS infractions.
posted by mikelieman at 1:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [73 favorites]


” So he created 14 values for Uber, with tenets such as being “super pumped” and “always be hustlin.’”

It was either that, or create a big neon sign to permanently float over his head saying "Avoid me". To me they have the same effect.
posted by DreamerFi at 1:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]


Apple has to share some of the blame here.

Indeed. Nothing would have sent a stronger signal from Apple that these things shouldn't be done, than for Uber to get removed from the app store unceremoniously by a mid-level functionary, with no more notice than an email reading "banned for TOS violations".
posted by fatbird at 1:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [57 favorites]


"A blindness to boundaries" is really quite the euphemism for "a tendency to ignore social and legal norms and behave like sociopaths"
posted by rmd1023 at 1:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [60 favorites]


He got called to Tim Cook's office for a (somewhat) stern talking to?

I can't imagine any iOS app developer getting away with the crap Uber pulled. Many have gotten the boot over MUCH less.


It's like there's some kind of... togetherness among the... group of gazillionaire tech CEOs.
posted by indubitable at 1:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]


Uber would stand to lose up to 4% of their global profits if they pull this crap after that date.

What is 4% of blood from a stone?

Uber lost $2.8B worldwide last year(not even counting the money burned in China). Saudi investors are subsidizing every ride, a party that will have to end eventually.
posted by paulcole at 1:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


What is 4% of blood from a stone?

GDPR will fine up to 4% of gross revenue, not profit. Being upside down financially won't save them.
posted by dw at 1:39 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]


WORSE. The entire point of Apple's Curated Store/"Walled Garden" is to prevent and punish bad-faith actors.

Since Apple failed to -- in good faith -- punish Uber's bad-faith acts, then Apple isn't acting in good-faith either.


I hadn't thought about it like this before, now it sounds like their problems are just as bad as the ones with the SSL certificate system. It all works well enough when most of the people are following the rules, but once you get a CA as big as, I don't know, Symantec for example, signing fraudulent certificates for "testing", shit breaks down and browser vendors get all wary of breaking huge numbers of high traffic sites for their users.
posted by indubitable at 1:42 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


GDPR will fine up to 4% of gross revenue, not profit. Being upside down financially won't save them.

Thanks for the refinement, dw.

It's enough of a hit that my company at least is hiring someone whose sole job is to implement the requirements and make sure we pass the audit. So traditional businesses at least are taking it seriously.
posted by offalark at 1:48 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


If Apple leaves Uber in the app store after these revelations, they're, and I'm not being hyperbolic, as bad in their arena as Trump and company are in theirs. Either you have "laws" or you don't. Selective enforcement is bullshit.

(A defense of this, Apple fans, is not "Google does the same thing!" I have no idea if they do, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Google would be just as awful if they have the same rules for their app store and allowed Uber a free pass.

This would even be OK if all of the fucked-up-ed-ness was spelled out when you installed the app, in clear language. "This app cannot be uninstalled, ever. It will relentlessly track you and steal your private data. We're OK with that because one trillion dollars in the bank is not enough.")
posted by maxwelton at 1:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]


fuck the fucking "gig economy"
Precacity is for CLOSERS ONLY.
posted by thelonius at 2:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think Uber may be one of the few apps that could stop being supported by Apple, and some people would think about switching from iPhone to Android. It would, I think, be a relatively small percentage of the iPhone user-base, but it would be a portion of the user-base that Apple cares about a lot: younger people who live in big cities, who have disproportionate cultural influence and who are likely to replace their phones a lot. I think that Apple needs Uber as much as Uber needs Apple, and I don't see Apple kicking Uber off the App Store unless there is a lot more anti-Uber sentiment among the consumers that Apple cares about.

Which fucking sucks and makes me think that my next phone should not be an iPhone. But my next phone is a purely hypothetical prospect, and I'm still using my first smartphone, which I bought in January 2014, so there's really no reason for Apple to care about what I think.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:09 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


If Apple leaves Uber in the app store after these revelations, they're, and I'm not being hyperbolic, as bad in their arena as Trump and company are in theirs. Either you have "laws" or you don't. Selective enforcement is bullshit.

This seems a bit much. Kalanik made the pilgrimage to Apple, grovelled, and most importantly, the app stopped doing it. Apple doesn't care about reforming Uber, they care about apps following the rules. As much as I'd love to see Apple bestow a death penalty, that's not Apple's business. They care about compliance.
posted by fatbird at 2:11 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm looking forward to digging into this, but this early paragraph stands out,

In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered. He has flouted transportation and safety regulations, bucked against entrenched competitors and capitalized on legal loopholes and gray areas to gain a business advantage. In the process, Mr. Kalanick has helped create a new transportation industry, with Uber spreading to more than 70 countries and gaining a valuation of nearly $70 billion, and its business continues to grow.

I can only assume that there's a red-faced, middle manager type MAGA hat reading this and thinking "Good for you. Go get em, Travis!"
posted by codacorolla at 2:12 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


So he created 14 values for Uber

Unless I'm doing google wrong, they appear to have scrubbed any and all lists of the complete 14 from the web. Who can blame them? "Always hustlin'" and "super pumped" are by themselves enough to prove a CEO worthy of whatever multi-million-dollar salary he gets, there's no need to reveal the rest of the secrets. But information wants to be free, so here is the complete list:

Celebrate CITIES
Always be HUSTLIN'
SUPER pumped!
Let's UBER it!
Step on some TOES
They'd have to CATCH you first
Pwn it for yourSELF
Meritocracy for the Ubermensch
Principled Confrontation
Champion's Mindset
Drivers drive, builders BUILD
Greed is chaotic-good
If this sticker is blue, you're driving too fast
BIIIIIG bold bets
Make money, make MAGIC
posted by sfenders at 2:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [79 favorites]


In the process, Mr. Kalanick has helped create a new transportation industry

You can only believe that statement if you have your head established firmly in Mr. Kalanick's colon. Beyond the app, there is nothing new about what Uber is doing. Mr. Kalanick's greatest talent, beyond being a douchey bro, is convincing people who should know better, that he knows what he's doing.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]


Good god, I didn't think I could be any more disgusted with this person.
posted by biogeo at 2:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


The 14 points replaced the earlier D.E.N.N.I.S. system.
posted by drezdn at 2:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [43 favorites]


Being "Super pumped" is a corporate value?

Fuck you and your 14 pieces of flair.

Sweet Elvis, I hope this fucking company is consumed in an epic conflagration that melts it to slag, and that everyone who gave this asshole money gets fucked hard and fast in the wallet because they will have deserved it.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [26 favorites]


Uber lost $2.8B worldwide last year(not even counting the money burned in China). Saudi investors are subsidizing every ride, a party that will have to end eventually

Okay, I'll be the token Uber/Kalanick apologist (and not for his treatment of women or for his douchiness). Uber is scaling in accordance with the Amazon philosophy, which is to lose a lot of money until you're so big that you don't and have destroyed a lot of brick and mortar businesses which did some of the same things you do but not as well / efficiently. It is not at all clear that they will fail.

In the process, Mr. Kalanick has helped create a new transportation industry

You can only believe that statement if you have your head established firmly in Mr. Kalanick's colon. Beyond the app, there is nothing new about what Uber is doing. Mr. Kalanick's greatest talent, beyond being a douchey bro, is convincing people who should know better, that he knows what he's doing.


Uber really did transform urban transportation. Cab companies are a shitty, politically powerful, protectionist, hidebound constituency which have consistently made money by exploiting cab drivers and overcharging customers for a mediocre service. Trying to do the same thing better and more efficiently (though, of course, continuing to fuck over the labor via the "gig economy") using the powerful portable computers everybody's been carrying around since 2007 was a genius move.

And as to why Apple didn't kick Uber off the App Store for tracking phones -- well, in addition to pissing off people who have iPhones and use Uber in major cities, Kalanick seems pretty Jobsian to me -- an aggressive, immoral douche canoe who is also a visionary and pushed some game-changing technology into existence by force of will and not a few dirty tricks. Tim Cook is very familiar with the personality type and probably has a little more tolerance for it than some.
posted by killdevil at 2:42 PM on April 23, 2017 [26 favorites]


But information wants to be free, so here is the complete list:

I can't tell whether this is satire or not.
posted by AFABulous at 2:42 PM on April 23, 2017 [69 favorites]


Greed is chaotic-good

Even before I got this far, I was guessing that Kalanick had a secret shrine centered around a poster of Gordon Gekko covered in dried semen.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]


Beyond the app, there is nothing new about what Uber is doing.

That's kind of like saying email isn't new because we had paper mail before it.

Uber and Lyft are a very different experience from taxis. And they require: an app, servers that match you to nearby drivers, a driver recruiting team, customer support, and payment processing.

In my not small urban area, prior to Uber the taxi experience was: call cab number, maybe it's just one driver with a cab, maybe it's a dispatcher. Receive promise that driver will show up in 20 minutes. Wait by door/at curb for driver for 30 minutes, never sure where they're actually on their way, hop in car, maybe car is great, but once in a while you seriously question whether the car or driver is safe, feedback mechanism is to call local licensing board which is great if you actually want to go through that.

It's OK to not like Uber the company, but "just an app" undersells just how much better it is from a rider perspective versus what came before.
posted by zippy at 2:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [42 favorites]


I don't use Uber, since it only started barely existing here a few months back and I have no need for them.

I'm a big Apple user but not a fan boy. I'm pissed at them - they should have killed the app and asked questions later.

But I'm really really really pissed at unroll.me.
posted by Jimbob at 2:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


Even before I got this far, I was guessing that Kalanick had a secret shrine centered around a poster of Gordon Gekko covered in dried semen.

He's a massive Ayn Rand acolyte, by all accounts, so close.
posted by acb at 2:59 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have a friend who works and Uber and I kind of want to call him and tell him I think he's an asshole.
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:04 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just got through reading Thucydides and Plutarch. In them olden days they used to ostracise people who got a little too fancy for their fancy pants, just to take the shine off 'em. For ten years.

I'm not saying we should do that with these tech bros, but... we should totally do that to these tech bros. Let 'em "hustle" bananas on some unpopulated tropical shithole for a while.
posted by klanawa at 3:07 PM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]


It's OK to not like Uber the company, but "just an app" undersells just how much better it is from a rider perspective versus what came before.

Before Uber, I never took a cab in Seattle for the listed reasons -- phone someone (if you can remember whom to phone), wait forever, have to explain your house directions yet again.

Then Uber meant I could open my phone, whack the screen, and a car would show up in X minutes. And they had a map.

In response, the local cab companies have launched their own apps. They're adjusting their model, thinking bigger, and getting the city to be less monopolistic about taxis.

Uber is a horrible, horrible company that cannot die soon enough, but that app changed the UX game with taxis. It was a fundamental upsetting of the service design of the cab industry. I hope Travis is banned from running anything larger than a Dairy Queen ever again, personally, but I appreciate how Uber made real the idea of getting a service where you are at the touch of a button. No, the idea was always there, but Uber showed a successful service design model for others to imitate, and it laid the framework for the last few years of UX/service design advancement in the software industry.
posted by dw at 3:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [28 favorites]


I just deleted my un.roll me account. Who do I contact to be sure un.roll me truly is gone and not tapping my mailbox, in particular my google data?
posted by jadepearl at 3:22 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've just asked unroll.me help that question on Twitter, jadepearl. No response yet. But going into your Google app security settings and removing permissions for unroll.me so they can't access your account would be a good start.
posted by Jimbob at 3:29 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


After looking up what unroll.me was: legitimate question, what did people think was its business model? If you're not paying for it you're the product being sold, always. The advertising model isn't enough to sustain any company short of Google and Facebook and hasn't been for a while.

My thoughts on Uber: I detest them as a company of course (and I've never felt so smug about voting No in the Austin ridesharing referendum and kicking them out), but I think the bigger issue with ridesharing is that it's managed to paper over, among many influential minds, just how fucked transportation is in America.

This was really brought home to me during SXSW when all these entrepreneurs just went absolutely mad about how difficult it was to get around without Uber. And like... that's my everyday. I live here with no car. Even when Uber was around I couldn't afford it. And I live dead center of the city in an area that is serviced extremely well by city standards, so I can only imagine how much worse it is for people who live in neighborhoods that aren't.

People lamenting that Uber is a necessity just come across as incredibly tone-deaf to me. Support public transportation, not exploitative companies.
posted by perplexion at 3:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [68 favorites]


People lamenting that Uber is a necessity just come across as incredibly tone-deaf to me. Support public transportation, not exploitative companies.


Supporting public transportation might get you a marginally better situation 10 years from now. We can do both.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:40 PM on April 23, 2017 [15 favorites]


Uber really did transform urban transportation. Cab companies are a shitty, politically powerful, protectionist, hidebound constituency which have consistently made money by exploiting cab drivers and overcharging customers for a mediocre service. Trying to do the same thing better and more efficiently (though, of course, continuing to fuck over the labor via the "gig economy") using the powerful portable computers everybody's been carrying around since 2007 was a genius move.

This. I hate Uber as a company, and don't use them, but they were clever enough to pick one of the few industries where the consumers generally stand up and applaud if someone offers them a choice. Any choice. I wish it had been a nicer company who won the market, but they aren't wrong about the consumer demand for a solution-- particularly as car ownership drops. This battle is playing out in Hong Kong right now and while I don't want to see the taxi drivers pushed out, the existing protection has led to a lot of corruption and working conditions which really aren't appreciably better for the drivers. The local taxi hailing app doesn't really help since they don't provide many of the aspects customers want (predictable pricing, maps, online payments, feedback on the ride, etc.)

I don't blame Apple for handling them differently, I really don't. Consumers want this service and in some cases depend on it. Apple isn't going to stick strictly to its rules when huge customer demand works against them. It's not really reasonable to expect them to do otherwise. They did more or less what I would expect them to do in this case. Can you imagine the reaction if they had done otherwise?

I was about to write and wonder why a less evil company wasn't winning at this game, but I realise I kind of know why. Uber has been found illegal in Hong Kong but they just keep coming. They exploit every loophole they can and push and push to keep their foot in the door. I'm not sure a company who didn't have that attitude could really succeed in these markets since the grip of the taxi companies is very strong. That comfort of playing in the grey areas makes them succeed, but it also makes them a company where I don't want to spend my money.
posted by frumiousb at 3:44 PM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]


As was pointed out on twitter, at some point you have to start asking about the ethical practices of the engineers who keep saying yes to implementing this shit for uber.

I would add to that in the form of asking about the morals and ethics of the board of directors and investors. The company has become so toxic they should either fire the entire management structure or just cut their loses, shut the whole place down, and sell the assets.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 3:44 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


This article is amazingly well researched. Mike Isaac is nearly unique in his ability to get insider gossip and information about the culture of Silicon Valley companies. AFAICT he gets it by working really hard, cultivating connections and building a reputation as a trustworthy journalist. Good for him.

I used to be a big Uber fan. The service is terrific. But the man who owns and runs the company is a sleazeball. It's really that simple, the founder is a bad person. The result is a corrupt company.
posted by Nelson at 3:54 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


Can you imagine the reaction if they had done otherwise?

If Apple immediately removed the app from the store until Uber fixed the problem, it would not have affected the existing users with the app on the phone, isn't that correct? To my recollection, when Apple has previously pulled apps from the store due to breaking the rules (eg. apps that had secret emulation systems built into them) if you already had the app on your phone, you were fine. They should have pulled the app from the store, made the problem public so people knew Uber were to blame, and the pressure then would have been on Uber to fix the problem. You know, rather than let the privacy breech continue.
posted by Jimbob at 3:55 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


Sorry, but I still can't really get on the Uber hate wagon. The article describes a personality I might not want as roommate or relative. But other than that, I really can't find a whole lot about him to really care much about. Sure, he's an asshole. Which gets him bronze level membership in the biggest club on the planet. "Blindness to boundaries" is something I hope everyone has in some way or another. And some of those boundaries he's crossed were sorely in need of crossing, with few people in a position to do so. And breaking Apple's rules?!? Am I really supposed to be outraged about that?

People lamenting that Uber is a necessity just come across as incredibly tone-deaf to me. Support public transportation, not exploitative companies.

This sounds far more tone deaf to me. The Uber/Lyft business has been a boon for mobility around here. If it has hurt anyone, it's been cab companies, which still has a tendency to no-show calls. They deserve any hurt they're feeling. I see people across a wide swath taking advantage of service that simply didn't exist a few years ago. It doesn't seem to affect public transportation all that much, still as crowded as it's always been. But really, if it did, would that be the worst thing in the world? If a service like Uber is putting a hurt on public transportation, it would probably be because it's poorly implemented.

I'll save my outrage over Kalanick for when he actually makes transportation around here worse.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


The article describes a personality I might not want as roommate or relative. But other than that, I really can't find a whole lot about him to really care much about.

You...have been following all the relevations over the past few months, yeah? Blatantly dishonest dealings. Deliberately designing their systems to evade law enforcement. Showing customers one price, drivers another, and secretly pocketing the difference. Subprime car loans for drivers. Mass privacy invasion. This isn't about one guy's personality, this is corruption at the deepest level. But, hey, wouldn't want to inconvenience you.
posted by Jimbob at 4:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [76 favorites]


It sounds like the arguments in support of Uber can be generally distilled down to one sentence: "The ends justify the means."
posted by some loser at 4:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [23 favorites]


(and I've never felt so smug about voting No in the Austin ridesharing referendum and kicking them out)

Oh, THATs why my Lyft app didn't work when I was there in Feb. welp, the bus from the airport worked just fine though I thought I was sketchy when the taxi back to the airport had me pay on Square instead of the machine in the cab ($30 from the convention center at 7am on a weekday).
posted by tilde at 4:19 PM on April 23, 2017


I'll save my outrage over Kalanick for when he actually makes transportation around here worse.

So, the day after the last competitor not subsidised by Saudi sovereign funds has gone out of business?
posted by acb at 4:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]


Sorry, but I still can't really get on the Uber hate wagon. The article describes a personality I might not want as roommate or relative. But other than that, I really can't find a whole lot about him to really care much about. Sure, he's an asshole. Which gets him bronze level membership in the biggest club on the planet. "Blindness to boundaries" is something I hope everyone has in some way or another. And some of those boundaries he's crossed were sorely in need of crossing, with few people in a position to do so. And breaking Apple's rules?!? Am I really supposed to be outraged about that?
Among the boundaries he's crossed are strikebreaking in NYC during the airport protests, cutting the pay of drivers who already suffer shitty pay by being part of the "gig economy", espionage on users, stealing self-driving car technology from Google, and let's not forget the massive sexual harassment suit they're facing down.

Breaking Apple's rule is minor in comparison.

Look, are we better off now that Uber has broken the taxi monopoly? Yeah, probably.

But we are _not_ better off with Uber. There's other alternative services. Use them. Don't give your money to a company with such disgusting business practices. Use Lyft. Use your local app. (In NYC, there's a driver-owned taxi app called Juno that I've been using. Cheaper than Uber _and_ more ethical!)
posted by SansPoint at 4:25 PM on April 23, 2017 [40 favorites]


It sounds like the arguments in support of Uber can be generally distilled down to one sentence: "The ends justify the means."

Well, sometimes they do. For example, you're not going to break the legislatively-firewalled century-old taxi monopoly in a lot of cities without some underhanded tricks. I thought the whole "greyballing" thing (wherein Uber served up a fake version of car locations to local regulators looking to catch them in the act of undermining the local taxi cartel without official permission) was deviously fucking brilliant.
posted by killdevil at 4:29 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Uber is scaling in accordance with the Amazon philosophy, which is to lose a lot of money until you're so big that you don't and have destroyed a lot of brick and mortar businesses which did some of the same things you do but not as well / efficiently. It is not at all clear that they will fail. … Uber really did transform urban transportation. … Trying to do the same thing better and more efficiently (though, of course, continuing to fuck over the labor via the "gig economy") using the powerful portable computers everybody's been carrying around since 2007 was a genius move.
Except it was already being done by a number of companies prior to Uber. Taxi Magic and Cabulous are two that I believe already existed, and I remember the absolute thrill of watching a little car icon move on a digital map and then suddenly appear outside your window when the iPhone was barely six months old. Once you have ubiquitous phones with location services, ride hailing is practically a foregone conclusion.

I’m not sure what Uber’s genius move has been, but here’s an excellent five-part series from Naked Capitalism that tries to answer the title question, Can Uber Ever Deliver? My recollection of the answer from each part is roughly:
  1. No
  2. No
  3. No
  4. Well…
  5. Maybe, if Uber can subvert democratic norms and drive out all competing forms of transportation
I don’t see it, though. The self-driving car has not developed fast enough, and the article points out that even when Amazon was losing money, they were already building up the experience and doing the activities to turn that around. The author of the series, a transportation industry analyst, doesn’t see the same path for Uber. The fundamentals of the taxi industry are really well-understood and Uber has not demonstrated any way out or through. They’ve demonstrated a tremendous amount of chutzpah and managed to shift enormous volumes of externality like fleet maintenance and profit elsewhere, but that water will only stay in one side of the pool for a limited time before it sloshes back. Uber is fucked because they’re stuck on a choice of their own making: their drivers are “entrepreneurs” for the purpose of shifting these costs, so Uber has denied themselves protection from competing apps like Lyft. It’s a ticking time bomb for them.
posted by migurski at 4:33 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]


Before Uber, I never took a cab in Seattle for the listed reasons -- phone someone (if you can remember whom to phone), wait forever, have to explain your house directions yet again.

Then Uber meant I could open my phone, whack the screen, and a car would show up in X minutes. And they had a map.


You know the map is a lie, right? They just make it up so it looks like they have lots of cars nearby. In my experience, the arrival time estimate has never been remotely reliable either.

It's really baffling to me to hear people rave about the Uber experience vs the cab experience because it is so wildly contrary to what I've seen personally. When I lived in Chicago my wife would often try to call an Uber while I'd try to hail a cab and I always—100% of the time—got us a cab before Uber got us anything. That cab had not only an identifying number but a posted copy of the driver's license—including full name and address—and usually a camera as well. I felt much, much safer in these cabs that in some random car with a driver who'd only give his first name. The prices were comparable (granted, Chicago has fairly low taxi rates). Hell, even in my podunk town now I can hail a cab on the street without too much trouble most of the time (and Uber doesn't exist). If you do live somewhere that cabs have to be called in advance, there has been an app to do so everywhere I've ever been.

It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."
posted by enn at 4:53 PM on April 23, 2017 [33 favorites]


This guy is a shitty person. Unfortunately, his company does a really good job of getting me places I need to go. This is not an abstraction -- I have used Uber to get places that, not long ago, would have compelled me to rely on a taxi, to my detriment. Cabs have a tendency to take forever to arrive. Cabs cost a lot more than Uber. This isn't a matter of my being inconvenienced. It's a matter of straight up not being able to get someplace. Uber has made my life about a million times easier, but more than that, it's allowed me to do things I just couldn't have done at all before it existed. I wish it behaved a lot more ethically, but being real, Apple is a pretty sleazy operation, too. They're all sleazy. Am I supposed to join the Amish or what?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:56 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


Nothing would have sent a stronger signal from Apple that these things shouldn't be done, than for Uber to get removed from the app store unceremoniously by a mid-level functionary, with no more notice than an email reading "banned for TOS violations".

Nothing would get Apple sued faster, is why they don't do this. The App Store walled garden is the hugest part of their current success, they're going to walk carefully when attacking someone big enough to hit back. It's been a long time since they were firing out policies like the no-off-app sales one that hit Kindle or the no-non-apple-subs that caused lots of media including the FT to pull their apps. Google apps don't languish in review any longer.

So sure, they'll yank the little guy's app, even if it is popular. But the rich kids get a nice chat with Tim instead.

Anyway, it's the email company's behaviour that has me really creeped out here.
posted by bonaldi at 5:01 PM on April 23, 2017


It's really baffling to me to hear people rave about the Uber experience vs the cab experience because it is so wildly contrary to what I've seen personally. When I lived in Chicago my wife would often try to call an Uber while I'd try to hail a cab and I always—100% of the time—got us a cab before Uber got us anything.

Taxi service (and probably Uber service, too) varies by region. Although they were fantastically expensive, cabs were timely and abundant when I lived in DC. In Cleveland, they are neither. But Uber is both here. That might be because people here are underemployed, obviously.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."

What is exciting for me about Lyft and Uber is that they would actually pick me up in shitty neighborhoods. When I lived in West Oakland it was always a crapshoot whether or not the cab I called was going to show up. If I was in the City I didn't feel like I had to beg for a ride across the bridge (something SF taxis didn't enjoy because they can't pick anyone up on the other side). I don't usually have to give a Lyft or Uber driver directions, either! Taxis in the Bay Area have historically been awful. There is a lot to be excited about WRT Lyft and Uber, if you live anywhere like I do. Uber is a completely shitty company, and I don't like either ones' insistence that drivers are "contractors", but my life as a woman without a car in the Bay Area is much different now that I have a mode of transportation that fairly reliably picks me up ANYWHERE late at night and takes me home.

PS: very very few of my drivers are white (like me). I honestly don't remember the last white driver I had.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:11 PM on April 23, 2017 [32 favorites]


Hell, even in my podunk town now I can hail a cab on the street without too much trouble most of the time (and Uber doesn't exist).
What podunk town is that? I live in a small city, not a podunk town, and hailing a cab on the street is not a thing that exists. It literally can't be done. You call a cab, and there may or may not be a cab available if you don't book in advance. I'm not a fan of Uber, but the cab situation is not great in a lot of places.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [18 favorites]


It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."

Come on now, that's an outrageous remark. "I've never had trouble with a cab company so everyone who says they have must be racist?" I heard nobody here saying anything like this.
posted by frumiousb at 5:27 PM on April 23, 2017 [27 favorites]


When I lived in Chicago my wife would often try to call an Uber while I'd try to hail a cab and I always—100% of the time—got us a cab before Uber got us anything.

Yeah, I mean, if I still lived in NYC and was trying to get around Manhattan I might be able to hail a cab better, but I can stand on the side of a Seattle sidewalk and literally die of starvation before a cab came along and picked me up. The environment is not the same all over by a long shot.
posted by corb at 5:46 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


Uber needs to be banned from the App Store like yesterday.
posted by Artw at 5:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Regarding Silicon Valley's issues with boundaries, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard Valley types say "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" I'd be stinking rich. Every time I hear it I think "Not if you care about people other than yourself."
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:56 PM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]


Uber had what was needed to take down the conspiracy of monopolists and bureaucrats against the public interest that was the taxi and black car industry. I hope there are a DOZEN more Travis Kalanicks out there getting ready to pull out the stops and put all the other conspirators out there into their well-earned graves, or that Kalanick can get to them himself in due time.
posted by MattD at 6:00 PM on April 23, 2017


Not everywhere that Uber serves is like Chicago or Austin, with multiple transportation options.

Uber serves six cities in Montana. None of those cities have bus service on Sundays and most have bus services that ends at 6 p.m. on every other day. The bus lines are mainly centered on the downtown district and a few shopping areas. I live 1.5 miles from downtown Missoula and three blocks from one of the busiest streets in Montana (Reserve) and it's still a mile from my house to the nearest bus stop. Which won't get me home after 8 p.m.

We have two taxi companies, that between them, have total of six cars. If you want a taxi on a weekend night or early in the morning, a one-hour wait is not uncommon. An Uber ride costs me half of what the same taxi ride costs. I've learned to never summon Uber until I am standing outside waiting for them, because an Uber will show up in 4-6 minutes.

I have seen a real shift with people who would never have used a taxi, with the slow wait time and high prices, now using Uber for transportation when they want to go out and party instead of driving. Uber has set up designated pick up and drop off areas for concerts and football games at the University of Montana and lots and lots of locals and people in town for events use Uber now instead of driving, drunk. Remember, you can't get a public bus or other public transport anywhere after 6:00 on a weekend in Missoula or any other city in Montana.

Uber needs to get rid of their CEO. But some of us still need and want Uber, because there is no other comparable choice in our city.
posted by ITravelMontana at 6:12 PM on April 23, 2017 [26 favorites]


Can anyone help me understand this paragraph?

For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple’s engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had been secretly identifying and tagging iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a fraud detection maneuver that violated Apple’s privacy guidelines.

How was the app "camouflaged"? Unless it's named Uber people would be unable to find and install it, right?

Also, how can they identify and tag phones after the app has been deleted? Unless Apple had major security holes they never disclosed, that would be impossible for an app to do once it's gone from the phone?

And how are these two things connected? How does a "camouflaged" app help with tracking people that decided to delete the Uber app?
posted by ymgve at 6:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


Ladies and gentlemen, we have found "Trump 2.0," who will attempt to enter politics in the next decade or two. Let us hope that California will give him all the votes he deserves.
posted by Napoleonic Terrier at 6:23 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


My guesses:
1. They're hiding the nefarious functionality from anyone on Apples campus-- maybe those in the app testing/review departments.
2. By saving a combination of device ID factors that are indepdendent of user data, they can create a device fingerprint of sorts. Then new accounts are checked against the collection of stored "fingerprints."

Also, the 2 are only connected in that by doing 1, they can get away with an app that can do 2.
posted by paulcole at 6:24 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


My guess is that the fingerprinting functionality was disabled near the Apple campus - Uber would simply act as if they didn't know that the same physical phone had been wiped and had the Uber app reinstalled.

The "tracking" is a bit of a misnomer -- Uber didn't have the ability to gain information about phones with the App uninstalled. The thing they were doing (that irked Apple) detected this sequence of events:

- An iPhone associated with account Alice has the Uber app installed.
- The phone is wiped.
- Uber is installed again, this time on an account registered to Bob.

Then, Uber was able to tell that Alice and Bob were potentially the same person. This is presumably to combat the sort of fraud in which the same person signs up for many accounts to collect as many "new user" bonuses as they can (the Uber press release describes it in terms of credit card fraud, but I suspect that's not the thing they're most worried about).

Apple has some motives to disincentive this sort of thing (it makes it harder for people to resell iPhones, and it cuts Apple out of the loop if some set of companies wanted to get together and share app usage data with one another), but they only sort of weakly apply to what happened here, which explains why they weren't as up in arms about it as they could have been.
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 6:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


*looks at Uber list sfenders posted*

wtf like they wanted to stir the Enron scandal in their morning coffee
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 6:31 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hopefully Apple's review process now includes "lie to the app about the location" to avoid "carefully behaves well at Apple" circumventions.

"Tracking" phones felt like a poor choice of word in the original article to me, too: it seemed much more about Uber trying to uniquely identify phones. Obligatory Gruber.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


I now see that there's more details near the end of the article, but it's still weird. If by "fingerprinting" they mean "get the UUID" then that is an app-specific identifier that will not persist when a phone is reset or the app is deleted, and as far as I can see IOS does not have a way for apps to even get the UDID which is unique for the device and persists across resets.

Also, since IOS is permission-based as far as I understand, Uber would have to ask for permission before they would be granted access to other fingerprintable information about the device. Any Apple employee would see that "this app, when submitted to the app store, requests access to X, Y and Z". I don't see how geofencing circumvents that.

To the above poster:
Then, Uber was able to tell that Alice and Bob were potentially the same person. This is presumably to combat the sort of fraud in which the same person signs up for many accounts to collect as many "new user" bonuses as they can (the Uber press release describes it in terms of credit card fraud, but I suspect that's not the thing they're most worried about).

But this matching (if at all possible) would happen at Uber's servers - Apple devs would only see a stream of information about the current state of the phone, which I guess half of the apps are doing too - how did Apple know Uber were correlating information on Uber's servers?
posted by ymgve at 6:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think it's unlikely the the fingerprint here refers to any sort of generated uuid, but rather just getting enough bits of information out of side-channels to uniquely identify a phone.

But this matching (if at all possible) would happen at Uber's servers - Apple devs would only see a stream of information about the current state of the phone, which I guess half of the apps are doing too - how did Apple know Uber were correlating information on Uber's servers?

Some Apple engineer probably noticed that they didn't get new riders bonuses if they installed the app at home, but were getting them at work.
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 6:47 PM on April 23, 2017


My first thought was "MAC address, duh". Then I learned that iOS7 and onward masks all outward MAC addresses as 02:00:00:00:00:00...

But, it seems, there's a workaround. Perhaps this is what Uber was doing and Apple caught the API violation?
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Actually, it looks like there's a simple way to access the information by using system libraries in a way they're not intended to be. (I think in later iOS versions, this should be blocked via sandboxing?).
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 6:54 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Uber: by sociopaths for sociopaths. Who cares who gets hurt as long as you get where you want to go?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:58 PM on April 23, 2017 [18 favorites]


Found another article with more details about the tracking.

Apparently I assumed Apple was much more proactive about security than they actually are. I had assumed fine grained API permissions was something that was built into the iPhone since version 1.

But everything points to Uber being 100% unable to track your phone when there is no Uber App installed, even if you had one previously and that detail seems to be a misunderstanding.
posted by ymgve at 7:04 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was a little more anti-Uber before I found out that the most lucrative time for Uber drivers is early morning... and that's because so many people use Uber for their *daily commute*.

Maybe these car-less folk could use Lyft instead with no great loss, but it seems myopic to deny that Uber really is performing a vital economic function for many people.
posted by subdee at 7:09 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also from the article that ymgve posted:
Unroll.me CEO Jojo Hedaya said that it was “heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service.”

He made no indications that it would alter this practice in the future.
World's smallest violin for the heartbroken data broker, please.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [19 favorites]


Including my high school students, by the way... they use it to get to school on time.
posted by subdee at 7:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Here in Seattle, I called the previous day to schedule a cab a couple years ago, and he called me a pickup time, literally screaming, that my house didn't exist. It turns out that he was on the other side of a major road and there was no direct-through route (this happens in Seattle). He then cursed at me and hung up. I tried Uber for the first time - I had to get to a doctor's appointment and a bus wasn't an option - and they showed up in ten minutes and got me there. (Never using Orange Cab again, ever.)

Since then, my knee has gotten worse, I don't drive (and until I get a knee replacement and eye surgery may not be able to), and sometimes I use Uber and sometimes I use Lyft and sometimes I look at Taxi Magic and get told there's no taxis available inside 20 minutes. Which is why I use Uber and Lyft. Moving more to Lyft now, despite being more expensive.
posted by mephron at 7:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


Regarding unroll.me; I will admit to being extremely naive. First, I assumed it was just some random simple service someone had made, not another fucking VC-funded shitpile. Extremely stupid assumption to make in 2017, I know. Secondly, I assumed they were making money with data about the sorts of things I subscribe to and unsubscribe from. I did not think they would literally be reading my emails and sending invoices they find in there to a third party. Because that would be beyond the fucking pale.
posted by Jimbob at 7:21 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


I wonder if unroll.me will sell your emails to your jealous spouse to look for signs of cheating. Could be a lucrative field, VCs please contact me through memail.
posted by indubitable at 7:33 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


ArbitraryAndCapricious: "I think that Apple needs Uber as much as Uber needs Apple, and I don't see Apple kicking Uber off the App Store unless there is a lot more anti-Uber sentiment among the consumers that Apple cares about. "

I'd really like this to get as much traction as the United Airlines beating a passenger thing has recently.

killdevil: "Uber is scaling in accordance with the Amazon philosophy, which is to lose a lot of money until you're so big that you don't and have destroyed a lot of brick and mortar businesses which did some of the same things you do but not as well / efficiently. It is not at all clear that they will fail."

The barriers to entry are really low for cab service and there isn't much if any network effect; I really doubt this going to be a successful.

oneirodynia: "If I was in the City I didn't feel like I had to beg for a ride across the bridge (something SF taxis didn't enjoy because they can't pick anyone up on the other side)."

It's kind of harsh to pillory the cab companies for this as it's because they are following the law and Uber isn't.
posted by Mitheral at 7:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


You know the map is a lie, right?

I was referring to Uber drivers having navigation systems in-app, not to the procedurally generated cars on the demand map. The point being they can drop me off at the house without me explaining for the millionth time that no take a right next to the SIGN damnit this is a parking lot
posted by dw at 7:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm going back up a ways but:

Meritocracy for the Ubermensch

what
posted by Existential Dread at 7:39 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah, that line made me think the "leaked" list is fake. Sure, the CEO might suggest something that dumb and offensive, but it would be shot down the first time a PR/HR person looked at the list.
posted by ymgve at 7:43 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll save my outrage over Kalanick for when he actually makes transportation around here worse.

Hey, who remembers this story: Uber’s Denial Of Liability In Girl’s Death Raises Accident Accountability Questions. A man tragically struck and killed a 6 y/o girl while logged into the Uber app but not actually driving to or carrying a fare. Uber denied any liability in the girl's death because the driver in question was not carrying a fare. After a lawsuit from the family and
...amid widespread criticism over its response to Sofia's death and questions about its insurance policies, a few months later the company announced it would cover drivers who had the app activated but had not yet accepted a ride.
A company as willing to play it fast and loose as Uber is will not only fuck over its drivers and users, it'll fuck over bystanders and the community at large as much as required to reach its goals. Those gray areas reach out to and include the bodies in the gears of the apparatus. It may be convenient for you, but only as long as you are providing the capital and support it needs to grow. If you're in the way, then Kalanick and the rest of the Ubermensch will roll right over you.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:47 PM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]


Re: the notion that this is one man's personality rather than a company issue; there's a phrase in management, "The tone is set from the top."
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I see a lot of people talking about how Uber is so much cheaper than taxis. The only reason for this is because Uber is subsidizing every ride, burning through their investors money like it's going out of fashion. Drivers are getting put more and more under the squeeze. Eventually, soon, that cash will run out, and what do you think will happen then?

I see a lot of people talking about how they prefer Uber to the corrupt taxi monopoly. What, based on all the evidence we have, do you all think Uber is trying to build?
posted by Jimbob at 8:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [34 favorites]




Whatever happened to the ability of VCs to force out dumbshit / pathological founders? Did Zuckerberg set the example of founder-CEO for life with special shares and everyone else is following suit?
posted by benzenedream at 8:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm one of those people who refuses to use Uber—and Lyft, frankly, given how both companies treat their should-actually-be-employees people—and if I can't get somewhere in Seattle by bus, train, bike, or my two feet then I'm not going. And I also get that's not a feasible stance to take for a lot of people and that mobility enhancement is an awesome thing.

But why, oh why, I devoutly wonder, is there no money to be made in treating everyone in the transaction fairly and forthrightly, paying employees as actual employees, providing good service, not pulling a fast one on everyone involved in the entire process, and just generally being a "good corporate citizen?"

I'd love to sign up for a taxi-with-an-app service that manages to pull that off. Apparently that's not a profitable endeavor.
posted by fireoyster at 8:24 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


This isn't all about dudebros looking exploiting drivers to get the cheapest ride to the club.

I don't think this is an indictment of ride-sharing apps, but an indictment of Uber specifically. A ride-sharing app is a fantastic innovation that can indeed provide mobility to those who lack it, and provide access to transportation in areas that lack it.

These are at best peripheral motivations for Kalanick and Uber; their primary motivation is to provide a 10x to 20x return on investment capital to the VCs at Kleiner Perkins and elsewhere who've poured money into the company. In order to get that return, they've decided to break a few arms and drive over quite a few toes. Uber has raised, according to CB Insights, $12.5bn since 2009. They've been convincing their investors to invest such an astounding sum of money based on the promise of a return at IPO of $125 billion. That's obscene and absurd. They have to break every rule they can find in order to get that number.

You don't have to be a sociopath to build a ridesharing app. You likely do have to be a bit of a sociopath to build a multibillion dollar company in under 10 years.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [15 favorites]


The crazy thing (to me) about Uber and all that investment is that, as far as I can tell, rideshare is an almost completely fungible business. The almost instantaneous sprouting of rideshare businesses in cities that Uber and Lyft left demonstrate that.

To justify that level of investment you ought to be showing that you'll have a virtual monopoly (with associated gouge-level pricing) on a nearly essential business. Amazon has to ship physical stuff, so does Tesla, and Apple too. The barriers of entry to those business models are really high. But rideshare is literally just software infrastructure and mindshare.

I'm clearly not a business genius but I just don't get it.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 8:38 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


You know the map is a lie, right? They just make it up so it looks like they have lots of cars nearby. In my experience, the arrival time estimate has never been remotely reliable either.

The arrival time estimate has always been within a minute or two for me. And I'm kind of surprised to hear the map is procedurally generated. I live somewhere not well served by Uber, and depending on where exactly I pull up the map from, there are sometimes no cars nearby at all (like, the closest one is 15 minutes drive away) and sometimes there is one or two. If there is one, the movement of the car on the map seems to correspond pretty well to its arrival time. And sometimes it takes a wrong turn on the way to me, which I wouldn't program in if I were Uber making a made-up map.

When I lived in Chicago my wife would often try to call an Uber while I'd try to hail a cab and I always—100% of the time—got us a cab before Uber got us anything.

I have many times called a taxi or pre-booked one, only to have it never show up at all, then to call them back and find they had lost the booking. I have also called one only to have it pick up someone who wasn't me, from half way along the street I am on on its way here. And I have never had to wait less than 20 minutes for a taxi. Uber, on the other hand, has never lost a booking, has never not picked me up, and the longest I've waited is 15 minutes - usually it's 7 or 8.

That cab had not only an identifying number but a posted copy of the driver's license—including full name and address—and usually a camera as well. I felt much, much safer in these cabs that in some random car with a driver who'd only give his first name.

When I make a cab booking, I don't receive information on the cab number or the driver's name. I could take a picture of it when I'm in the cab, or note it down, but I don't, generally - that feels awkward. If I have a bad experience, I think it's unlikely I would have sufficient details to report it properly. With Uber, that information is all saved to my phone automatically.

The prices were comparable (granted, Chicago has fairly low taxi rates).

From my house to our local airport it's about $160 by taxi. Uber is about $85. From the train station to my house a taxi is about $15, and they also generally won't come out for that, because it's such a short distance (which is a problem if you have luggage, or a disability). Uber is $6 and has never refused a pick-up.

If you do live somewhere that cabs have to be called in advance, there has been an app to do so everywhere I've ever been.

Our cab companies have online booking if you book the day before. You don't get any confirmation that your booking was successful (at least you didn't, last time I used it). If you are booking day-of, they only guarantee you a pick-up if you call. They have an automated voice recognition system on their stupid phone system that can't understand my accent.

It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."

I have never had a white Uber driver as far as I recall. (I am white). I don't know what class the drivers are, but I don't get a sense that there is a huge demographic difference between people driving for taxis and driving for Uber here.

All that said, I did delete the Uber app last time Uber was in the news for its nonsense. I just wish that the taxi companies would adopt some of the technological improvements Uber has brought into the sector.
posted by lollusc at 8:42 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm kind of surprised to hear the map is procedurally generated

Perhaps you haven't been paying attention: we've known since July 2015.

I like Uber's convenience too. I hate the cab companies. But Uber is a disgusting company run by an amoral founder. They sexually harass employees, abuse customer privacy, abuse their drivers, and ignore all regulation.

My compromise at the moment in San Francisco is to take Lyft instead.
posted by Nelson at 8:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


fireoyster: "But why, oh why, I devoutly wonder, is there no money to be made in treating everyone in the transaction fairly and forthrightly, paying employees as actual employees, providing good service, not pulling a fast one on everyone involved in the entire process, and just generally being a "good corporate citizen?""

See all the comments about how affordable Uber is; this sort of service isn't something people are willing to pay for even in the Uber case where every ride is subsidized by their VC partners.
posted by Mitheral at 8:55 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Maybe...having a personal driver drive you to the location of your choice in a modern motor vehicle with all its associated running costs at a moment's notice...does come with significant costs?
posted by Jimbob at 8:58 PM on April 23, 2017 [24 favorites]


It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."

My slightly racist mom, who is from Miami, advised me when I went away to college, "Always tip, those Cuban cab driver will stab you if you don't." After a few months in Pittsburgh I told her there were no Cubans, all the cabbies were Polish American. She replied, "just make sure to tip, they'll probably stab you too."
posted by peeedro at 9:22 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


I signed up for Uber and used it once, pretty much under pressure from a friend of mine who has proselytised about them for months and the promise of a free fare. I deleted it from my phone shortly afterwards. But seeing that link to deleting my account, I followed it, gave my reason as that I'd have done this months ago if I'd thought of it, and said 'yes' to deleting my account.

They really don't want you to do that, though. After deleting an online account ordinarily, I'd expect at most a pre-generated message accepting my request, but the first response was to say they needed to know more about why I wanted to delete my account before they could move forward, and the second (to my response "I don't use your app, please delete my account.") told me they were happy to help, if I had any concerns they were listening and they just really wanted me to know that I couldn't take it back. Ending with a cheerful "Let me know how you'd like to proceed!"

If you were listening, you would have deleted my account. I've told you three times now. This shouldn't be this hard and is incidentally reinforcing all the crap everyone says about you. Goddamn.


enn: It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."

That's a stupidly broad and negative assumption to make, dismissing everyone who disagrees with you as only being motivated by race or class. In my neck of the woods, like with cab drivers, the Uber drivers are by far more likely to be non-Caucasian. My friends who like/d Uber would point to things like the ratings system as presenting a real consequence for a bad driver (or, for that matter, passenger), as well as the points others have made above: a fresher reputation for security, availability, navigation abilities and cheaper pricing.
Me, I distrusted the union-busting and embracing of the gig economy, the frequent surge pricing especially good at kicking in when I wanted to travel and erasing any savings, and what felt like the same lack of accountability as a dating app. Wanting an alternative to cabs isn't at all a bad thing, but I've felt quietly vindicated in what could have been considered a 'get off my lawn'-style reaction for over a year now, as horror stories both personal and about the company have come steadily rolling in.

And, of course, now they won't delete my account.
posted by gadge emeritus at 10:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yesterday morning I took my first and last ride in an Uber. My regular cab company wasn't answering the phone so i got an Uber. I asked for a round trip. The driver took me to a gas station, & drove off as soon as I got out of the car. Did I mention it was pouring rain down hard? Stood in that gas station for an hour.
posted by broken wheelchair at 2:30 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Uber: They'd have to CATCH you first
posted by cp311 at 5:00 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Apple has some motives to disincentive this sort of thing (it makes it harder for people to resell iPhones

Apple also force recyclers to shred any iPhones/iPads/MacBooks rather than reusing parts. I'm guessing that the rationalisation is that computers contain personal information, and have multiple components which may have stored residual personal information, and thus should be regarded as contaminated once used and, when no longer in use, should be securely destroyed in the way that papers, discs and such are.
posted by acb at 5:19 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Unroll.me CEO Jojo Hedaya said that it was “heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service.”

He made no indications that it would alter this practice in the future.


The good news is that the fire made of fires that Mr. Hedaya has ordered is being delivered.
posted by acb at 5:21 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Taxis were totally useless here for decades and Uber has really changed the way that you can navigate the city but I did delete my app last month due to the company's behavior. The old taxi company here was/is corrupt, arrogant and completely inept at actually providing ride services. Your chances of actually getting a taxi to show up were easily less than 50% even if you lived near the central part of the city and forget it if you were anywhere else, especially in a black neighborhood. Uber is corrupt and arrogant but at least they seemed to know how to run a ride service and actually bothered to show up when you requested them.
posted by octothorpe at 6:14 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]




That article seems to suggest that's a weird Texas amendment rather than something Uber or Lyft asked for though?
posted by corb at 6:33 AM on April 24, 2017


When I lived in Chicago my wife would often try to call an Uber while I'd try to hail a cab and I always—100% of the time—got us a cab before Uber got us anything.

I have many times called a taxi or pre-booked one, only to have it never show up at all, then to call them back and find they had lost the booking.


My wife once called a Chicago cab company needing an immediate urgent ride and the dispatcher said "Oh Honey, that's not how it works".
posted by srboisvert at 6:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


My comment was in reference to a comment earlier about supporting both mass transit and as ride-sharing complementary services as opposed to supporting one over the other. My comment is to show that supporting ride-sharing here in Texas is currently serving to explicitly exclude gender non-conforming people, which is not an improvement over the situation here in Austin IMO. (Uber and Lyft currently do not operate in Austin because they do not agree with our municipal laws governing background checks for ride-sharing drivers)
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:58 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I live near a lot of students and every time I see an Uber or Lyft, I think "slow, social poison." The horridness of the company Uber is only the shit icing on the cake.

But they will win. Watch. For many Americans, convenience tops EVERYTHING.
posted by mrgrimm at 7:21 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


hey unroll.me, fuck you.
posted by chavenet at 7:31 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's interesting that of all the complaints about Uber/Lyft/etc, I never hear my biggest gripe: the amateur cabbies in my area disobey every traffic law, constantly.

Parking in traffic lanes, unsignalled u-turns, wrong way driving, general blocking of traffic in congested areas, blowing through crosswalks, blocking the box, cruising down bike lanes - it's infuriating.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 7:47 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Try hailing a wheelchair-accessible Uber car almost anywhere in their market. Go ahead -- I'll wait.

Meanwhile, the local cab companies are legally required (ADA Title III) to operate some number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Uber, etc., hand-wave that requirement away by saying they're "not a cab company" and thus push that cost onto the cab companies. Uber, etc., take only the most profitable routes and customers for themselves. It's discrimination, plain and simple, and is a great exemplar of how these companies operate. This sort of behavior pops up all over their business model.

So I hope you'll forgive me if I don't shed a tear for a company that really helps some people at a deliberate, discriminatory cost to others. They don't deserve my tears and they don't deserve anyone's dollars.
posted by introp at 7:48 AM on April 24, 2017 [33 favorites]


I got the heebiejeebies from unroll.me the first half dozen times it was recommended to me. I did sign up, against my better judgement, but it almost immediately stopped working and now all it does is mail me "Unroll.me Has Stopped Working" emails every 48 hours. It may actually be because I declined to give it all the permissions it wanted in the first place.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:10 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I love seeing Uber defenders change the topic every time something can't be addressed. "Uber didn't create any industries" gets met (twice in this thread) with "yes they did so transform the local transport industry!!".
posted by the agents of KAOS at 8:27 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Uber is a horrible, horrible company that cannot die soon enough, but that app changed the UX game with taxis

Right. I will agree with that statement. Uber has a superior app. But saying they created a new transportation industry is self-serving Silicon Valley bullshit. They are a taxi company, which is not new.

Also, for the people talking about how Uber revolutionized transportation in their town, I again call bullshit. That weird dude who smells funny who always sits by you on the bus? They're still there. They're still taking public transportation. What Uber has done is transform urban transportation for the sufficiently affluent and able-bodied.

Since Uber loses money on every ride, consumers aren't paying the real cost for their transportation. How, exactly, do people think Uber can provide a superior product at lower cost than an existing taxi company? This is simple math and Uber's doesn't add up. Uber needs us to believe they are super-innovating industry makers while they try to make self-driving cars a thing because if we get wise to the bro behind the curtain before they've squeezed out all of their existing competition, they are fucked.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [16 favorites]


After Uber and Lyft packed up their balls and left Austin, a whole slew of other ride-sharing companies have cropped up/moved in. I've heard mixed reviews, as you'd expect. But the one general complaint I heard repeatedly in the beginning was that the remaining/new companies were more expensive than Uber and Lyft.

And that complaint really chaps my ass: Uber and Lyft were cheaper because they have the capital to operate at a loss in order to undercut and force out the competition.
posted by tippiedog at 9:08 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


Or What Big Al said immediately preceding my comment.
posted by tippiedog at 9:09 AM on April 24, 2017


There is something really fucking rich about anyone who ever uses a personal car - especially someone who drives or parks in a city - labeling my transportation choices (which include lyft and, yes, occasionally uber) as destructive.

I'm not specifically calling out anyone on this thread - I don't know which of y'all have cars - but it's a frustrating pattern I've seen too many times.
posted by R a c h e l at 9:26 AM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'll save my outrage over Kalanick for when he actually makes transportation around here worse.

As long as the trains run on time...
posted by kjs3 at 10:20 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


What Uber has done is transform urban transportation for the sufficiently affluent and able-bodied.

Hi, friend. It appears you are recruiting disabled people to come to your side in an internet argument. Before you continue, have you spoken to any disabled people to ask if they use Uber or Left? Have you asked if maybe having that available to someone who doesn't drive, or can't drive due to a disability might actually have made their lives a whole lot better?
posted by Space Coyote at 10:38 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


I wonder if Uber's ultimate goal was to sell the company? I've never used it and, aside from the recent articles about their corporate misbehavior, haven't researched the company. But this sounds like classic start-up behavior, where you spend a ton of money to build up your customer base, so you can point to a spreadsheet and tell potential buyers, "Look how promising our product is!" Then somebody like Google buys you because they're working on self-driving cars, and can build on your one revenue stream and customer data to make it profitable.

Uber's model makes sense in that context. It definitely doesn't make sense in the Amazon template of "spend investor money like it grows on trees, and hope Wall Street ignores the fact that you're not profitable for the next decade or so". Amazon used that time to develop other products. What would Uber do to actually make money, if their flagship product is a loss leader? What *could* they do, that other companies aren't already doing much better?

Uber has exposed an unmet demand in a previously highly regulated market, but now that we know that it's there, potential competitors can wait for Uber to flame out and then build a better house on the same foundation. As others pointed out, their model is unsustainable, because venture capitalists aren't gonna keep subsidizing everyone's taxi rides in perpetuity just to be nice. I'd say that, among Uber's many sins, one of their more serious ones was to buy into their own hype and think that just having your name in the paper, and being a company that everyone's heard of, is enough. That you don't actually need to be profitable to make money. It seems like this is a lesson that Silicon Valley start-ups almost never actually learn.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:40 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Travis Kalanick has done something awful?

This is shocking! This is not acceptable behavior inside Uber! Uber is committed to the highest ethical standards! This is the first he's heard of such a thing! There will be an immediate investigation! Those found responsible will be fired!
posted by flabdablet at 10:53 AM on April 24, 2017


Uber has exposed an unmet demand in a previously highly regulated market…
Maybe, maybe not? From a followup in the Naked Capitalism series, the author points out that the apparent demand for Uber and Lyft could just as well be an indication of how artificially cheap VC-subsidized taxi rides are during a time of heated competition between two big providers:
Like the claim of massive efficiencies from deregulation, Thompson imagines that Uber operates totally independently of the basic economic constraints every other company faces. Other companies cannot permanently expand the overall market unless the industry can (or will soon be able to) earn profits on all the added capacity, but Thompson thinks evidence of billions in losses could not possibly have any bearing on his claim the Uber has massively expanded demand. To claim that an industry that currently loses billions every year has permanently increased demand is akin to claiming that volume stimulated by a ruinous price war better is a better reflection of underlying demand than the lower volumes observed under stable, profitable market conditions.
I use ride services when I'm feeling rushed or flush. If the subsidies disappeared and the prices jumped back to taxicab levels, I would use them significantly less and shift back to car shares like Zipcar. At that point, Uber might attempt to retreat back to its initial black limo model though its creditors would no doubt prefer to kill it outright.

Meanwhile, other companies are trying to get in on the action. An Enterprise Rent-a-car lot near me in Oakland is switching over to a mostly-Uber model, where they host an Uber office to offer weekly rentals to drivers and take a cut of the fares. There are three such locations in California. For Enterprise, with its existing fleet management experience, this is probably a smart move.
posted by migurski at 11:06 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Uber is awful etc etc but I wonder about this one specific thing: has drunk driving decreased in cities where Uber/Lyft is widely available? I know people who are more likely to take an Uber than a taxi if they've been drinking because you don't have to communicate with the driver, you can fall asleep in the back seat, it costs less than a taxi, and it's MUCH easier to get an Uber at 2 am than a taxi.

yes, drunk drivers deserve to be tarred and feathered and quartered blah blah blah but in the real world, that is the calculus that people are making: people weigh the expense/hassle of a taxi vs. taking the risk of getting caught driving drunk.
posted by AFABulous at 11:18 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


If I'm understanding this conversation correctly, the phone tracking Uber is/was doing is very common in the app industry. I've written the code to do it for a couple of large, well known companies. I had no idea it was against Apple's rules and I wonder why more companies haven't been taken to task for it. It's almost a necessity for doing proper data analysis - as previously mentioned fraud is rampant in China and some other areas, and China specifically manufacturers a lot of unlicensed devices that re-use identifiers dozens or hundreds of times. If you really dig into the data there's all kinds of crazy wild-west stuff out there.
posted by skintension at 11:20 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Before you continue, have you spoken to any disabled people to ask if they use Uber or Left?

I'll be honest and say no. It has been over a decade since I worked professionally with people who have disabilities. But I will stand by my statement. When we say Uber is "transforming urban transportation", let's be clear that it is only for a specific group of people. If you can't afford Uber's fares or your assistive devices won't fit in the driver's car, you are taking public transportation.

Which isn't to say the services provided by Uber can't be used by many people with disabilities (as long as they can afford them), and that's great. The truth is urban transportation must include a whole variety of public, commercial and private transportation options. Uber is intrinsic to none of them. Should they go out of business, another company will fill the need.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 11:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Before you continue, have you spoken to any disabled people to ask if they use Uber or Left?

Yes. The most commonly occurring themes are that the drivers won't take wheelchairs or service dogs.
posted by Lexica at 11:51 AM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]


Is it common to continue the tracking after a user has uninstalled the app?

It's common to retain the data you previously had, ie the various identifiers you have for that phone and their activity. Of course you can't track the phone directly since your app is no longer on the phone, but you can link what you've previously collected to third party data; eg one of your ad partners says "this phone clicked on your ad" and you can cross reference it and know that they used to have your app and uninstalled it on X date. And you can do targeted ad campaigns on phones that uninstalled in the last month or whatever. If/when they reinstall your app you have a link between their new account and old one, or just a continuation of the new one, if you want that.

It's a bit of an ongoing battle between what's possible, what's allowed, and what you might get into trouble for.
posted by skintension at 11:58 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


And FWIW there are definitely different standards applied depending on how much revenue you're bringing to Apple or Google. You can literally called up your rep and say "we brought you X millions of dollars last month, can you bend this rule for us?" and more often than not the response is yes.
posted by skintension at 12:00 PM on April 24, 2017


the author points out that the apparent demand for Uber and Lyft could just as well be an indication of how artificially cheap VC-subsidized taxi rides are during a time of heated competition between two big providers

So, people are using it because it's cheap, easy and novel? I could definitely see that. Harkening back to the days of 1999-2000, when everyone and their angel investor was launching their e-commerce website and trying to entice people to shop online, it was a fucking amazing time to get free shit. Like, order $10 worth of bullshit on Newsite.com, get $30 worth of freebies. I got so many scented candles, full-size bottles and jars of Philosophy products, cat toys, shampoo and conditioner, it was awesome. And of course it only lasted about a year because duh, companies can't afford to give away tons of stock forever, and a lot of companies went under because they just couldn't get to that magic sticky point with a sufficient customer base.

And I feel like Uber is right in that zone.

But at the same time, the question I'm wondering about is if the average taxi fare is Too Expensive, and whether an Uber replacement could *profitably* undercut existing taxi companies while also paying their employees a fair market wage. That's the demand I'm thinking about there. I mean, if the taxi industry has gotten complacent enough where they can just decide not to serve entire swaths of a city, take an hour to show up, arbitrarily not show up for customers, etc. etc. as one gets to do when one dominates the market, then that obviously leaves an opportunity for a competitor to exploit that vulnerability in the taxi business. But I don't think Uber is sticky enough for people to stay with it even if they stop being competitive in comparison to traditional taxi fares, especially not with a ton of press about what a shitty company they are.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:00 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


And FWIW there are definitely different standards applied depending on how much revenue you're bringing to Apple or Google.

I'd actually be curious to know how those conversations go, because in my experience with dealing with Apple-the-vendor, they are the most special of special snowflakes, and are super demanding about receiving all kinds of concessions. I can't imagine someone actually being able to beat Apple at that game, especially on their own platform.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:10 PM on April 24, 2017


Everything I’ve read suggests there’s not a lot of wiggle room in taxi fares after accounting for vehicle maintenance, fuel, and driver income. This ties back to the original Travis Kalanick topic for this post: Uber’s ability to raise 16x Amazon’s pre-IPO funding is a more a function of Travis’s bluster and ability to push a tech boom narrative than it is a reflection of real value. The industry is really simple, there’s not a lot of economic space for substantial reorganization, and once the smartphone genie is out of the bottle it’s very easy to copy.
posted by migurski at 12:13 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Talk about trying to reinvent the wheel.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:23 PM on April 24, 2017


And of course it only lasted about a year because duh, companies can't afford to give away tons of stock forever, and a lot of companies went under because they just couldn't get to that magic sticky point with a sufficient customer base.

But Uber is not subsidizing fares just to make themselves 'sticky.' They're trying to drive out the competition, be it taxies or other rideshare companies.
posted by tippiedog at 12:24 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I can't imagine someone actually being able to beat Apple at that game, especially on their own platform

The companies I'm talking about all have more revenue than Uber and are profitable. The only problems I've seen is when Apple won't give us a store feature when we ask for it... Pretty annoying to have to change your launch date for them. I'd be surprised if you're operating at the same revenue level and they are giving you grief?

* note: nothing I say is about nor represents my current employer
posted by skintension at 12:39 PM on April 24, 2017


Uber is awful etc etc but I wonder about this one specific thing: has drunk driving decreased in cities where Uber/Lyft is widely available?

This article had several papers exploring that - 1, 2, 3, 4
posted by typecloud at 12:45 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


But Uber is not subsidizing fares just to make themselves 'sticky.' They're trying to drive out the competition, be it taxies or other rideshare companies.

I guess I see that as a method of achieving stickiness. But they haven't achieved that yet, at a point where now their corporate misdeeds are accumulating in a big enough pile to make them look like a bad bet.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:58 PM on April 24, 2017


It sure feels like some portion of the "Uber experience" that people get so excited about boils down to "the driver is more likely to be of my own race and class."
Answering anecdote with anecdote is questionable, but this is entirely the opposite of my experience using ridesharing apps in Chicago. (I only use Lyft now, but nearly all the drivers work for Uber as well.) I've yet to get into a cab driven by an African American who grew up in Chicago, but they make up around 60% of the rideshare drivers I meet. While supporting the specific ethnic communities that dominate the taxi industry isn't at all a bad thing, the ethnic diversity among rideshare drivers is really nice to see. It's a lot closer to the actual demographics of the city. With the exception of a few recent immigrants working far outside of their training, I've yet to meet a rideshare driver who I'd naively identify as a member of my own race and class.

I'm all for celebrating worker's rights ahead of convenience, but the cab companies fail miserably on both counts. The medallion system is an open invitation for worker exploitation and their service is terrible. Paying three times as much for a cab that more often than not can't find your destination and also pays its workers peanuts is a shitty deal for everyone. At least in the US. In places where taxi drivers have genuine rights and cab companies don't have long standing monopolies, things may be very different. (Also, complaining about the television commercials that now fill every cab is catty, but they sure are annoying.)

In short, fuck Uber. But fuck the taxi industry also. Taking lyft and paying the difference between your ride and a cab far as a tip is a shitty compromise, but it's the least bad option I can come up with. (Aside from taking public transit. But sometimes you're late for your meeting and carrying heavy things.)
posted by eotvos at 1:07 PM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


My grandparents are finally opening up to the idea of permanently giving up their car - this is a very good thing - thanks to the independence they've found with Uber. They haven't had good luck with taxis - not reliable enough, some communication/navigation struggles, plus they're significantly more expensive. Can't do Lyft - doesn't work with their phone number (a documented issue that Lyft doesn't seem interested in solving). Not aware of any local apps, and besides, I'm not in their city and couldn't walk them through using it the first few times. Bus (and bus/rail) is ok for some trips, but not all - it's physically taxing for one grandparent to walk the two blocks to the bus stop, and the other grandparent finds navigating bus routes confusing and stressful when alone. Doubly true when either is recovering from a procedure, which seems to be true too often these days.

Uber has some corporate problems and abuses its employees in ways that we desperately need government checks on. That said, those that refuse to recognize that it provides a superior service in many ways are being willfully obtuse. Undercutting or no, in many situations Uber has made travel from Point A to Point B significantly better and cheaper than with traditional cabs or public transit or car services or what-have-you. As a customer, I like when things are cheap, even though I also believe prices should reflect the cost of doing business right - with appropriate benefits and protections for employees, customers, suppliers, etc.

There are many things about the model - the fact that it works seamlessly in unfamiliar places, the fixed price customers know up front, the relative ease of traveling with heavy loads, the updates customers can see on a map, the way customers can look up destinations they're not familiar with, the way GPS is there so customers don't have to be, the flexible ways to contact drivers, the streamlined communication with Deaf drivers, the low barriers to entry for drivers - that Uber does right (admittedly, only if your definition of right aligns with my definition of right). Many of those are things that Uber was the first to offer, or at least to offer widely.

Like with so many other predatory systems, such as sweatshop manufacturing, we can recognize that a system has provided value to some group of people (and I don't just mean the CEOs) while also recognizing the significant harm it has caused. Providing better alternatives (I've yet to try an app that works remotely as well as Lyft or Uber), regulating abuses we consider unacceptable, and asking for positive incremental improvement from the big players is going to work a hell of a lot better than just demonizing the whole system and trying to suggest people switch back to the inferior model of ten years ago.

FWIW, I don't think Uber-the-company has much sticking power - too vulnerable to competition, they don't really offer anything permanently unique, tainted brand, etc. But ride-hailing apps are here to stay. They do not necessarily need to be in conflict with public transit or decent driver pay or whatever, either.
posted by R a c h e l at 2:48 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]




Rachel, the problem for the consumer is that it can't possibly be cheap forever because Uber is operating at a loss. Same with Lyft, apparently. So either Uber goes under (heh) or it raises prices. There's no third possibility.
posted by AFABulous at 9:18 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, I guess the third possibility is that it screws over the drivers even more, but that will self-correct when no one wants to drive for them.
posted by AFABulous at 9:19 PM on April 24, 2017


...unless, of course, people have no other choice of employment (or second-job employment)!

4D Chess, ladies and gents. 4D Chess.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:33 PM on April 24, 2017


On the un.rollme front: I unsubscribed and it still had access to gmail account. Initially, I thought it just needed to have gmail to get my email subscriptions then file but with the news that they go through your mail that is not related to subscriptions as JimBob pointed above. Anyway, not only do you need to unsubscribe but you will need to go into your Google account and revoke permissions and remove the damn thing.

I thought I was supporting them with ads and eyeballs but that is not enough for them. Daring Fireball is correct, shitbags.
posted by jadepearl at 6:01 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


On unroll.me, it's in the Daring Fireball links here, but it's worth calling out explicitly here too. An unconfirmed report:
they had kept a copy of every single email of yours that you sent or received while a part of their service. Those emails were kept in a series of poorly secured S3 buckets
Some third party service keeping a copy of all your email is just breathtakingly irresponsible.
posted by Nelson at 7:12 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]


Some more unroll.me for your mockery: Why can't they just leave Jojo alone? From an unroll.me cofounder.
posted by Nelson at 9:01 AM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]


the problem for the consumer is that it can't possibly be cheap forever because Uber is operating at a loss. Same with Lyft, apparently. So either Uber goes under (heh) or it raises prices. There's no third possibility.

Yes, I realize that. Maybe I wasn't clear above - sorry - but I think there are two things to recognize there. First, low prices are only one of several benefits/improvements that Uber provides (and, luckily, competitors have adopted many of those benefits as well). Second, even if they're limited and unsustainable and exploitative, you gotta admit low prices do benefit consumers, especially those marginal consumers who wouldn't be able to afford rides otherwise. I'm not contesting that a lot about how Uber does business is gross. Of course drivers in such a regimented system should not be employed as independent contractors (and that one should be on regulators), of course insurance should cover drivers while they're working (or at least it should fit well enough with personal insurance that drivers are always covered by something), of course information presented to consumers and drivers should be as accurate and truthful as possible, of course ADA regulations on cabs should also apply to app-based cab competitors - there's plenty to take issue with. I just don't buy that it's a uniquely destructive company - both compared to its competitors and to other companies generally - or that it can/should be rejected wholesale.

There are many other examples of "unsustainable" or exploitatively-sourced low prices that have become entrenched in modern life that are even more destructive than Uber. Literally everything about agriculture is a great example - high subsidies, consistently illegal and cruel treatment of employees, anticompetitive use of patents, dangerous use of antibiotics, etc etc...but $5 strawberries are pretty convenient and many poor people can still afford to eat thanks to cheap, available fast food.

Two wrongs don't make a right, of course. But just as the answer to Monsanto isn't "let's all move back to the family farm", the answer to Uber needs to involve balancing the benefits of the system with its costs and externalities - probably with regulation and competition and imperfect incremental improvement.
posted by R a c h e l at 9:44 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh - and the point about operating at a loss is fair, but also there are reasons that Uber is cheaper than cabs that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior. For instance, there's a lower barrier to entry for drivers (something I'm totally ok with in this age of GPS), the system is way more efficient than driving around looking for fares or one dispatcher trying to optimize things as best they can, and transaction time is shortened with frictionless payments. Even when they raise prices (and yeah again this is where regulators need to step in and correct market failures like anticompetitive behavior), I expect that they'll be cheaper than cabs.
posted by R a c h e l at 9:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


Nelson: "From an unroll.me cofounder."

From that Medium article:
Unroll.me was bought by a company called Slice Intelligence (don’t get me started on the founder of that company) who takes that data and repackages it to sell insights to companies. Slice is responsible for selling the data to Uber. Not Unroll.me and definitely not Jojo. Jojo and Travis are not buddies hanging out at a strip club in Korea. Jojo has nothing to do with Uber. Slice, the parent company, takes care of that.

And, as an aside, if you think this is the worst thing that tech companies do with your data then you have your head in the sand.
This may not be quite as solid a defense as the author intended.
posted by mhum at 10:41 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]


sfenders: So he created 14 values for Uber...

Celebrate CITIES
Always be HUSTLIN'
SUPER pumped!
Let's UBER it!
Step on some TOES
They'd have to CATCH you first
Pwn it for yourSELF
Meritocracy for the Ubermensch
Principled Confrontation
Champion's Mindset
Drivers drive, builders BUILD
Greed is chaotic-good
If this sticker is blue, you're driving too fast
BIIIIIG bold bets
Make money, make MAGIC


Jesus, I hope this is a parody. It sounds like the shipnames of a bunch of Idiran-war-era ROUs
posted by Jakey at 11:37 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]


Second, even if they're limited and unsustainable and exploitative, you gotta admit low prices do benefit consumers,

No, I don't. Because this is the heart of the problem with Walmart - yes, their prices are "lower", because they do everything in their power to reduce them, even policies that are ultimately destructive to their consumers in the long run. So no - unsustainable, exploitative low prices aren't good for the customer, because ultimately, the bill comes due.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:42 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]


For many Americans, convenience tops EVERYTHING.

So... I don't shop at Walmart, but I also don't judge people who shop there because that's the kind of budget they have. I mean I was recently talking online to someone who was driving on a donut because they didn't have the cash to replace a busted tire -- if I lived near them you'd better believe I would happily drive this person to Walmart for their cheapest-ass, most socially-irresponsible tires myself.

And yeah, it's great if people can choose to replace private car services with buses and bikes. Hit 'em in the wallet. I've deleted the Uber app. But I think you also have to be honest about the trade-offs you're asking people to make. "Convenience" could mean the difference between spending 2.5 hours on a bus (1.25 hours each way) versus 40 minutes total in a ride-share. On top of your workday, that's a lot of time that people don't get to spend in other ways. It could mean getting to see friends or family that you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to see because they don't live on your way to work or on your way home. Particularly if you live in the boonies, because you can't afford to live close to the city center where all the good transit is. Social isolation sucks.

I think these aren't trivial concerns. Uber and Lyft are solving them in a pretty shit way, but I also don't think people are necessarily lazy, entitled, or cheap for using them. I think the main problem is 1. total lack of/sociopathic disregard for regulation, which is essentially a government problem (not dropping the hammer) and 2. public transit is, mostly, absolute hot garbage in the US, outside of the greater NYC area (maybe Chicago also, I've never lived there). It's too slow and unreliable to compete with anything except walking -- and sometimes biking, but not even always then -- which is the absolute last thing transit should be replacing.

Anyway I could go off about that for a while but I think an alternative viewpoint is to recognize that people aren't all just total shitbirds about everything and that they have legitimate wants and desires, and the upside of this is that if we can meet those demands in a Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism way then maybe we can nudge the future away from the Shitty Blade Runner future. Or something.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:23 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


Some third party service keeping a copy of all your email is just breathtakingly irresponsible.

Jail her! Jail her!

Sorry, what were we talking about again?
posted by flabdablet at 6:42 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


That sounds like he lifted points from an MLM presentation. Jesus Christ.

The NYT piece mentions that Kalanick sold knives door-to-door for Cutco. Cutco is a well-known MLM.
posted by quartzcity at 5:03 PM on April 27, 2017


If you'd like to read a pretty long thing about what on Earth Kalanick could possibly have meant when he repeatedly claimed that he was ranked #2 in the world at Wii Tennis, do I have an article for you.

Spoiler alert: he was, at best, giving an extremely misleading characterization of reaching the maximum number of points in the way the game measures skill level.
posted by Copronymus at 1:26 PM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Meritocracy for the Ubermensch
A real, live, human person said this in a professional context in the last 50 years. 'king hell. Burn it to the ground.

I love my colleagues. Only now do I realize how great they are.
posted by eotvos at 6:09 PM on April 28, 2017


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