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Consider a world where you are assigned a random phrase (i.e. "Correct Horse Battery Staple") when you request a ride. The driver is never shown a name. When th

by mrdmnd 10y ago

Consider a world where you are assigned a random phrase (i.e. "Correct Horse Battery Staple") when you request a ride. The driver is never shown a name. When they are shown the set of people they could pick up, they are not shown a photo or passphrase until they accept the ride. As soon as they accept your ride, they are shown your passphrase and your photo (the former to ensure that they are picking up the right passenger, and the latter to ensure that a previously vetted passenger isn't cheating and providing their account to someone else / buying a ride for someone else). Wouldn't this go a pretty long way towards removing obvious sources of discrimination?

drakonandor 10y ago
Not letting the drivers see a location and trying to force them to drive into ghettos where they might get carjacked will probably not go over too well, especially with female drivers.
- mrdmnd 10y ago
  I think this is absolutely true; and you'd want to show drivers locations - I can't think of any way to obscure this, and it does leave a source for discrimination ("don't drive into the dangerous neighborhoods"). I'm not sure I have any good solution to that particular problem, but surely perfect is the enemy of good, and the human anonymization approach is reasonable low hanging fruit?
  - drakonandor 10y ago
    I'm betting the location thing alone would still keep 99% of the present discrimination. At some point the question should probably change from "How can we force Uber drivers to increase risk of losing well-being, wallet, and car in the name of fairness to customers?" to "Why are these neighborhoods/people/demographic so scary to working class citizens, and what can we do to fix it?"
    - ebfe 10y ago
      Isn't the answer to the latter known? Working class citizens are more likely to be victimized in the presence of those neighborhoods/people/demographics. Hence why arguments against racism are never on the grounds that it's irrational, but rather that it's low-status/unpopular etc.

by mrdmnd 10y ago

drakonandor 10y ago

Not letting the drivers see a location and trying to force them to drive into ghettos where they might get carjacked will probably not go over too well, especially with female drivers.

mrdmnd 10y ago
I think this is absolutely true; and you'd want to show drivers locations - I can't think of any way to obscure this, and it does leave a source for discrimination ("don't drive into the dangerous neighborhoods"). I'm not sure I have any good solution to that particular problem, but surely perfect is the enemy of good, and the human anonymization approach is reasonable low hanging fruit?
- drakonandor 10y ago
  I'm betting the location thing alone would still keep 99% of the present discrimination. At some point the question should probably change from "How can we force Uber drivers to increase risk of losing well-being, wallet, and car in the name of fairness to customers?" to "Why are these neighborhoods/people/demographic so scary to working class citizens, and what can we do to fix it?"
  - ebfe 10y ago
    Isn't the answer to the latter known? Working class citizens are more likely to be victimized in the presence of those neighborhoods/people/demographics. Hence why arguments against racism are never on the grounds that it's irrational, but rather that it's low-status/unpopular etc.