24 ms·

Reasons not to use Uber

• viraptor 10y ago
  > If you take an ordinary taxi and pay cash, it will generate no records associated with you I think that's a foolish assumption. Standard taxis not only remember the phone number / name / address association, they are likely tracking the cabs as well these days. They also often have CCTV. > With real taxis, you can flag one on the street Or not. Or they'll tell you they won't go where you want.
  • whyagaindavid 10y ago
    >> With real taxis, you can flag one on the street >Or not. Or they'll tell you they won't go where you want. Which city/country? Honestly, I am surprised. Admittedly, i lived only in Europe (France/Germany/UK) - entire life - never ever has a Taxi driver refused to take me somewhere.
    • geocar 10y ago
      Usually it's not overt. More common (in New York, London, and Cologne) is cabs that avoid me when I'm carrying luggage, however just a few weeks ago, at George Best (UK) airport, driver asks me to get another car after I am inside the car and tell him I want to go to Newry. I don't go to France.
    • cariaso 10y ago
      I've had it happen in NYC and in Washington, DC. And I'm a white male trying to get to the burbs. I can't imagine being a minority trying to get to a less desireable location.
    • dan1234 10y ago
      Wasn't "Sorry mate, I don't go south of the river." once a common response from London cabbies? Presumably they'll not want to take someone out to the middle of nowhere, where they'll probably struggle to get a fare on the way back. Much more profitable if you're carrying passengers in both directions.
      • JdeBP 10y ago
        > Wasn't "Sorry mate, I don't go south of the river." once a common response from London cabbies? No. It was a quip by Peter Sellers.
    • stevetrewick 10y ago
      London, frequently. Try getting a cab from Hammersmith out to Roehampton and you'll get a stream of "I'm not going that way" responses. Simple economic reason is that the driver is unlikely to pick up a return fare (source: talked about it with a taxi driver)
    • fernandotakai 10y ago
      happens a lot in my city (são paulo) -- if the ride is too short, they won't take it. if it's too long, won't take it (since traveling back is going to cost them gas and they won't get a passenger). taking to a play them deem not safe (even if it's safe)? not taking you.
  • PaulRobinson 10y ago
    In the UK, cabs are heavily regulated. If they refuse the trip, they may be fined or worse. Some of those bylaws and regulations are there to stop discrimination, some of them are there to ensure that they provide a service and charge fairly, not just run a business: that's an important part of how authorities view licensing somebody going around picking up strangers and driving them around for cash. If you're covered in vomit, if you are eating food, if you are clearly so drunk you are likely about to vomit, if you are being abusive or aggressive, if they have reason to think you can not or will not pay the fare, they can tell you why they're not taking you and not take you. You can complain by making a note of the license number on the back of the car. If you are found to be right, the driver will be at fined, and may be forced to compensate you. Generally, they're going to take you. In London there are competitor apps to Uber for black cabs and minicabs. Some of them are great and provide drivers who provide great service (Hailo, Addison Lee), some of them less so (Kabbee). I've used Uber a few times as an experiment and had mixed results. I see why people like it, but I'm inclined to stop using it, mostly because I think Uber is exploiting the drivers to a certain degree. Also, most people aren't aware that Uber drivers rate you, the passenger. Support the wrong team? Don't like the route they're choosing and tell them so, and they hate you? You're going to struggle to get an Uber next time. My g/f tells me when she's in an Uber she spends so much time trying to be "pleasant" to get a good rating, it's like that episode of Black Mirror, it's ridiculous.
    • yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Generally, they're going to take you. Says a member of the majority ethnic group. If you are not a member of that group, this is simply not true. A black man in NYC or a person not speaking Marathi in Pune simply cannot expect the same service quality. In any case, Uber also has regulations, and in my experience they are enforced far better than any cab rules. The last time I had a problem with an Uber it was some idiot pretending he didn't understand my Hindi and running up the meter by taking a long non-highway route to the airport. I submitted a complaint while waiting for the flight and got a "your trip has been refunded" notification when I stepped off the plane. Will the UK regulator provide a similar level of service?
      • 10y ago
  • user5994461 10y ago
    > With real taxis, you can flag one on the street I can count on my fingers the number of times I've seen taxis in the wild, in my entire life. But let's forget about all countries who don't have taxis. #FranceOutsideOfParis
• Bino 10y ago
  And some of the same arguments can make it safer to ride cabs? If I step into a strangers car (yes that includes cabs) I appreciate if there are some public records of me doing so. Makes it easier for CSI to find me...
  • icebraining 10y ago
    Uber has plenty of PR people to point out the benefits. rms is making the argument against Uber, not trying to decide for you if you should use it.
• bricss 10y ago
  Psycho %)
  • sctb 10y ago
    This account has been posting only fluffy one-liners. That's not what this site is for, so please stop or we have to ban the account.
• magoon 10y ago
  Which is greater: His desire for us to have a "free" (liberty) society, or his resentment of those are trying to earn a living and simply can't afford to stand up for his principles?
• eropple 10y ago
  Even where he has good points, Stallman so often undercuts himself through overreach. Like, his decades-long attempt to rename things in a "pejorative" way or call them pejorative names when he doesn't like them is...weird. I mean, weird-for-him, not just weird. "Oh, we shouldn't call it Uber, we should call it Goober!" Are we back in fourth grade now? I mean, it's in the same vein as their redefinition of phrases into particular jargon (like, say, "free"), obviously, but then trying to use it in advocacy? Hasn't twenty years of wet-fart responses to the rhetoric taught him--or the FSF in general, who's usually pretty tin-eared too--anything?
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    I don't think the instinct to rename things in a suggestive way is a wrong one -- consider the success of Frank Luntz -- but he hasn't got an ear for it, that's for sure.
  • sambe 10y ago
    100% agree. Overreach combined with childishness is a massive turn-off, even if you think he's right a lot of the time. And it damages the FSF/GNU by association. If I see that I might have to sign a contributor agreement (often not in some straightforward manner, but involves reading multiple documents, postal mail, is only tangentially related to the core GNU product etc.) my first choice is usually just not to contribute. I hear myself saying internally "I don't want to have to deal with those people". Seems to me that this damages the Free Software world.
    • jordigh 10y ago
      You don't sign a contributor agreement with the FSF. You sign away your copyright, but they also agree to only distribute the work under the same terms as the ones you gave it to them (i.e. the GPL in most cases). It is far more equitable than contributor agreements which basically try to remove the right for you to sue the organisation that gives you the contributor agreement. Instead, in exchange for your copyright, you get a promise that your work will remain free. Also, the process has recently been transformed to be completely over email: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-now-offering-paperless-option-for-all-copyright-assignments https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-now-offering-paperle...
• antirez 10y ago
  > Abuse of Drivers Aren't there minimum salary levels that must must guaranteed in US?
  • techsupporter 10y ago
    Uber drivers are "independent contractors," according to Uber, so the minimum wage laws don't apply to them.
    • antirez 10y ago
      Understood, a bit too easy way to circumvent law IMHO. Thanks for the hint.
      • Normal_gaussian 10y ago
        http://uk.businessinsider.com/british-uber-drivers-entitled-to-minimum-wage-holiday-pay-lodon-tribunal-rules-2016-10 http://uk.businessinsider.com/british-uber-drivers-entitled-... I don't know how easy it is to take to court in the US, but here it is beyond obvious what is an attempt at circumvention or not. When I was in Uni I did a lot of contract work, when you register for being self employed they run you through a great set of questions so that you know whether you are self employed or not in the eyes of the law and what your rights are. Of course most dodgy employers try to say 'you should register for self employment.. and I have to tell you to do so legally, but if you were to forget to do it you won't pay any tax and nobody will know, so don't forget to do it!' in the hopes that you don't bother yourself and don't end up finding out.
      • giovannibajo1 10y ago
        Also in Italy, if you're free to work at any time of the day, for how many hours you want, you're easily classified as a contractor, not an employee. On top of that, taxi drivers are all independent contractors, not employees of dispatchers, so we can easily sat that Uber followed established best practice of labour arrangement in its market
        • 10y ago
• em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  We need a free-software distributed p2p replacement for Uber.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    The problem is payment. If you use the CC network, you're still getting tracked. Adding regular Bitcoin would not help much (most people would purchase them in a trackable way) but it'd vastly increase the difficulty in pushing for a switch.
    • corobo 10y ago
      The problem is the potential for dodgy drivers. No way in hell I'd get in a car that could be some random Joe Bloggs with no oversight. There has to be a central someone that says "this is one of our drivers" that can be held accountable.
      • scient 10y ago
        This is why the Austin Thumbs Up! initiative matters and companies like ID.me with their identity proofing/vetting capabilities can solve the issue.
      • em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
        yes, I do think that reputation is important. I imagine a system like openbazaar which is p2p but keeps track of user reputation: https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-open...
      • deleted 10y ago
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• DonHopkins 10y ago
  TIL: Uber is the new TCL. [1] [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462-f94/public/other/rms.text http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462-f94/public...
• deleted 10y ago
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• linuxkerneldev 10y ago
  I respect his views. He's been consistently right in the long term. Many of the problems he predicted are currently with us. I recently discovered the StallmanWasRight subreddit as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/
  • federicoponzi 10y ago
    Thanks, I was missing that!
  • B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    That's 'cuckstallmanism' - the real thing would be StallmanIsRight. (Only half joking ;-)
  • jaredklewis 10y ago
    I haven't seen much in the way of specific predictions from Stallman. Basically his "predictions" amount to that closed source software allows corporations and governments to do bad things to users. We fairly regularly see evidence that this is the case, so hurray, the predictions were right. But it's not really a point I've ever heard someone argue against. Pretty much everyone agrees that yes, closed source software makes these bad things possible/easier and sometimes they do happen. Kind of reminds me of all the armchair economists predicting that the tech bubble will burst without ever providing a timeframe. Anyways, people trot out the "Stallman has consistently been right" thing for every new Stallman article, as if the fact that a guy has made a series of uncontroversial, vague predictions is some sort of defense against the rest of the comments discussing the article's acerbic tone and/or starkly impractical conclusions.
    • yeowMeng 10y ago
      I dont think it's fair to characterize Stallman as an "Armchair Economist". FSF/GNU are active efforts in response to the Stallman world view. It's the opposite of armchair IMO. There is a distinction between frameworks, theories and models. Stallman is probably not offering models that contain the real predictive juice you're after because he has seen the same story unfold over and over. I give Stallman credit for referencing events that support his general theories/framework. Edit:Grammer
• SCdF 10y ago
  This is all well and good. However, it doesn't matter if every person who is every heard of stallman never sets foot in an uber, because statistically no one has heard of stallman. Regardless, I think it's been pretty well shown at this point that as long as people are getting something for their lack of privacy (such a slimy but convenient taxi service) they're OK with it. Short term convenience trumps basically anything else. Recently I was stuck outside of Rome with no way to get into the centre city because I made the (understandable) mistake of trying to use public transport on a public holiday, and getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with no trains running. Or taxis. Uber, to the rescue. I really feel these days the only way to win is to compete. To build a better product that happens to also not invade your privacy. And I'm not sure there are market forces that make that possible.
  • PaulRobinson 10y ago
    Linux and Android has arguably made inroads with non-techs, not because of Stallman advocating Free Software, but because people who echo Stallman's words. RMS is not expecting everybody to read this and go "Oh, OK, I won't use Uber". He's expecting a few thousand people to read it, choose not to use Uber and then explain to their friends the reasons why echoing his own words. If convinced, those friends will pass it on, and so on, in a network effect. You forget just how close Linux was to being ousted from the enterprise back in the 1990s and early 2000s - if it wasn't for a similar network effect (specifically arguments around security), Microsoft would now basically be "the computer company", and we'd all be screwed.
    • SCdF 10y ago
      Sure, so what I'm saying is: there has to be a "correct" alternative to uber (as linux was to ms) and then you're providing an actual reasonable proposition for switching. I do not think telling people "don't use uber" when it's clearly cheaper and more convenient is going to be hugely productive.
      • praptak 10y ago
        There is, it's taxis. Where I live they're getting close to Uber in terms of convenience of ordering one.
• B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  I'm regularly reminded of the genial title of an old album by the punk band Dead Kennedys: "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death" ("Why not both?" has been added lately to the trope repertory as a witty rejoinder ;-)
• probably_wrong 10y ago
  > The US government can get [your trip history], and any lawsuit (such as a divorce lawsuit) can subpoena them This sounds genuinely terrifying. Divorce lawyers will have their day if they can get a hold of that data.
• delegate 10y ago
  Stallman is right on many points. Uber, Airbnb, delivery services and the like are nothing more than glorified communication and payment tools. These services can only be called "sharing" economy if they operate at zero profit and their app code is open source. I think they should and pretty soon will be public services, developed by the community and run by local non profit organisations, like Firefighters. Furthermore, these should be local services, catering to the specific circumstances of the city or town they operate in, obeying the local customs and so on.
  • golergka 10y ago
    Then they'll soon get as effective and well developed as typical public services. Thanks, but no - I'd rather pay a little extra to someone who has a real incentive to do a good job than rely on charitable motivations of strangers.
  • petra 10y ago
    >> Uber, Airbnb, delivery services and the like are nothing more than glorified communication and payment tools. Let's focus on transportation services. Yes, their technology wasn't that big of a deal. But their largest contribution is building a thriving market. And that market could be used to offer interesting services like real sharing(UberPool). Can communities build that market on their own ? well there's little effort and in general the results aren't encouraging. Even places who put a serious effort in such services(kutsuplus service in sweden), didn't seem to sucseed , and old services like dial-a-ride didn't seem to do so well with regards to scaling or sustainability. Of course , it's hard to speak of the sustainability of current ride services(hopefully they wouldbe), but at least they seem take us a bit further.
    • dancek 10y ago
      Kutsuplus was in Finland. Some of the reasons it didn't succeed is that employing people in Finland is very expensive, there are a lot of regulations to be met, and Helsinki area a very small market so the payback period for any new investments is long (such as the information systems required). Meanwhile Uber is successful in Finland alright but it's illegal and not really profitable for the drivers. (It's legal if the driver has a taxi permit which is very rare.)
• Daviey 10y ago
  When I saw the title and author, my first thought was... "Oh golly, another RMS rant about fundamentalism free software"... However, that wasn't the case. He presented a reasonable argument, with sources backing up his claims. I agree with many of his arguments..... but i'm still going to use Uber :(
  • quadrangle 10y ago
    That's okay, boycotts don't really work. Network effects and economies of scale are real. You are NOT a hypocrite for saying "I'm going to keep using this convenient but problematic and unethical service". It's admirable to make the sacrifice, but don't kid yourself. These issues are system-level and not about individual choices, even though that's what it is just aggregated.
• witty_username 10y ago
  > Uber has changed the regulations that cover charging passengers for making cars wait. This decision itself may not be objectionable. Taxis typically charge for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency which is at least somewhat responsible to the people. Uber is a business headquartered somewhere else, which accepts no responsibility to the people of any city. We should not allow a company to privatize the making of the regulations that create our social order. ?? What is wrong with a company deciding their late arrival penalty? Stallman's argument could apply to anything that a company decides.
• tdkl 10y ago
  Uber, Airbnb (and more of those modern "community feel good" services) are a slap in the face to all the workers who fought for workers rights and unions.
  • aykutcan 10y ago
    And that is a bad thing ?
    • regularjack 10y ago
      Are you implying that workers losing rights is a good thing?
      • pjscott 10y ago
        This conversation badly needs concrete examples. "Workers rights" sounds like a nice thing -- but what, exactly, does it mean? What specific policies are we talking about? For example, you can have an interesting argument about minimum wages. You can have a different interesting argument about workplace safety standards. But you can't have an interesting argument about both of them at once.
  • mjolk 10y ago
    I don't think it's fair to categorize it as a slap in the face. If people want to offer up their cars/home (or, in my experience of using AirBNB, their non-residence rental properties) to take part in a nascent/risky employer agreement, that's external to people that benefit from longer-stanging workplace regulations. It's not either/or and the success of Uber/AirBNB suggest that something was broken or missing in the taxi and hotel industries.
  • curun1r 10y ago
    On the other hand, the taxi industry is a slap in the face to anyone needing to safely get to a destination beyond walking distance. I used Uber a bunch while I was traveling around Southeast Asia. There were also times I had to take taxis. The taxis would routinely try to rip me off, refuse to run the meters, inflate the price at the destination and threaten to bring in police if I didn't pay the new amount that was 2-3 times the agreed upon rate. When running the meters, the taxis would routinely take long, roundabout routes to inflate the fare. And in cities without Uber, taxi fares were routinely as much as 5 times higher than in cities with Uber. Meanwhile, Uber would tell me, in advance, the price I would pay, have a car show up without me having to flag it down and the drivers would use GPS to take me exactly where I wanted to go as fast a possible. People like to focus on how Uber is exploiting their drivers and charging below-cost prices, but they ignore all the other ways that Uber is better than the taxi industry and all the ways that the taxi industry has needed to change for a long time now. I can respect Stallman's opinion, but when Uber is not only the cheaper option but also the safer option, I'm not going to choose to compromise my safety to make a principled point.
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• dmytroi 10y ago
  Uber as an experience is nothing new, IIRC eastern Europe had this model for ages: the company accepts client requests, the company posts request to drivers, fastest driver accepts and gets the requests, after the ride client pays drivers directly (usually cash only), driver pays % to the company. This was first implemented with pagers + mobile phones, than with sms, than with j2me apps, and nowadays with android apps usually. So the taxi company is just a proxy, and there are all kinds of flavor available: illegal taxis, virtual companies, etc. The only things Uber did: great UX, wide availability in the world (you use the same app everywhere), possibility of deferred payments (aka ride now, pay at some point before next ride) and driver ratings. As usual with any infrastructural international project: whoever goes first and behaves boldly - will stay for quite some time, see PayPal, Visa, eBay, etc. One can argue that Uber is not perfect ideologically on paper, but any reasoning "why we should make replacement for Uber" are doomed because ROI is simply not there, while struggles to forbid Uber are also doomed - you may block the company, but you cannot forbid better UX, so Uber is already here to stay. In the end would be better to change discussions from "top 100500 reasons not to do something" to "top 100500 ways to make something better". There are concrete things available how to make Uber better, but instead everyone is just trying to forbid/destroy/etc.
  • bmj 10y ago
    Uber as an experience is nothing new, IIRC eastern Europe had this model for ages Where I live, we've had something similar for a long time: jitneys[0]. [0] http://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2013/09/07/Pittsburgh-jitney-service-illegal-but-thriving/stories/201309070167 http://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2013/09/07/P...
• softwarelimits 10y ago
  Does anybody know of an open source uber-like platform that could be used by local communities?
  • white-flame 10y ago
    Many people do want these systems to have vetted drivers, consumer protection against bad behavior, insurance & maintenance/condition requirements for the driver and vehicle, and other such things. Of course, the taxi system does provide these protections, although with much more overhead than owner-operator systems like Uber. So while I'm not aware of an open source system, even if one were implemented, people would still want some sort of vetting, driver registration, and regulatory power over ensuring decent safety, which does require some centralization.
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• atsaloli 10y ago
  I find Uber gives me freedom. I recently went from working full-time plus consulting and training on the side, to consulting and training full-time (www.verticalsysadmin.com). My client is across town (Los Angeles) and it can routinely take more than an hour (more than 2 on bad days) to get across town. Driving in traffic wears on my soul. With Uber and my trusty T-mobile hot-spot, I can get an extra 2+ hours of work in per day and arrive fresh! Uber's been a life-saver.
  • brianwawok 10y ago
    What is the going rate for 2 hours of uber? I have only ever used it for 15 minutes or less.
    • atsaloli 10y ago
      The price varies based on availability of drivers and Rider demand. It costs me about 30-35 bucks to go across town. My hourly rate is higher than that and I enjoy working more than I do slogging through LA traffic.
• SeriousM 10y ago
  With uber I pay what I have to. With a real taxi I have to pay 3€ only for entering the taxi. Either the taxi company is changing its offer or I stick with uber.
  • pimlottc 10y ago
    That starting fee is called flagfall and you have to pay it with Uber as well. But that's somewhat irrelevant for short trips, as Uber has also has a set minimum fare. I don't know where you're located but it's typically more than 3 euros: New York: US$8 Paris: €5 London: £5
• throwaway1974 10y ago
  I tried to use Uber, but it asked me on registration to provide paypal details Since I do not have Paypal due to being banned (they never told me why) that was that...
  • smsm42 10y ago
    I use Uber for a lot of time and never used Paypal with them. They accept regular credit cards. If you think (like Stallman) that using a credit card is an intolerable invasion of your privacy, then you'd have a hard time using Uber. You would also have a hard time convincing many other people to stop using credit cards.
    • throwaway1974 10y ago
      I have no problems using credit/debit cards its Paypal I have a big issue with (As per my post) I just tried it again and see its a credit card form and no mention of paypal anymore, great i can actually use it now!
• rdslw 10y ago
  I would add: It allows foreign corporation (uber) not paying taxes in your country to effectively taxate working people with 20% ubertax. Big one: uber tax is proportional to ride while their cost is fixed. Also these days in sankt petersburg or other cities in europe, uber "driver" is a guy leasing 5 cars and hiring 10.. 15 drivers to drive them 24h. Similar to waht airbnb "shared" economy became: buying bigger flat, remodellibg it to three small " studios" and try to rent 365 days a year. It would be fine if openly told and admitted, but its not what airbnb/ uber tells what it does. Also normal driver/hosts can not compete ( economy of scale) with uber/airbnb middlemen. Also airbnb taxate country's real estate while avoiding taxes itself. Also on proportional scale while having fixed cost. They (uber/airbnb) should be banned. *this would ruin their business model, so they choose to lie instead.
  • wodenokoto 10y ago
    I completely agree. The word sharing economy basically means "regulation loophole". For Uber "sharing" is a way to get around employment laws and taxi regulations. For AirBnB it is a way to get around zoning laws and hotel regulations.
  • gonzo 10y ago
    > Also these days in sankt petersburg or other cities in europe, uber "driver" is a guy leasing 5 cars and hiring 10.. 15 drivers to drive them 24h. Was in St. Petersburg last month. Most Uber rides were around $4-$6. Many of the drivers drove taxis during their regular shift.
  • SilasX 10y ago
    What are you talking about? Drivers in any country are still taxed on their income, and, since Uber is CC-only, it's harder to conceal this income from the tax authority. What do you think the under-reporting rate is on cash fares?
• dan_m2k 10y ago
  If you're having an affair or doing pretty much anything that you might not want people to know you're doing, there are a hundred and one ways for people to find you. Users aren't dumb. They know by the email receipt coming into their inbox complete with map that their movements are tracked. And they make a choice either way that suits their requirements or convenience. Having an affair? Get a cab and pay cash. Or take the risk. Personal choice, after all. Uber might be a questionable company with questionable people in charge (referring to 'boob-er' by Travis Kalanick for one), but they're just flawed people, as apparently is the author with his quite childish style and apparent lack of reality or commercials. Near me, Uber has made the previously shitty private hire cab industry up it's game, with more drivers and an app experience a bit like Uber. But, let's be clear. Uber probably weren't the first in this space, they're the ones that went out there, got funding, hired some smart people and delivered a good product and platform. And they existed because the industry, globally was pretty shitty, and bits of it still are. The good thing is that the consumer has choice. And the calls in the comments that the platform should be free and open is lovely and idealistic. But do the talented engineers, designers and whoever else that works to make a well put together and scalable platform not deserve good pay for a job well done? As a fair disclosure, I write, admire, build on-top-of free software and platforms when it meets my needs. I write this on a Mac, which also meets my needs. Choice exists and we're all leveraging it.
• fixxer 10y ago
  > Uber pays drivers peanuts; we should call it "Goober", or rather "Guber". Drivers are free to not drive for Uber. Uber operates within a free market. Obviously, the economic incentives are enough for many. Amusing that the godfather of free software has so little understanding of the free market.
  • chappi42 10y ago
    And if they don't have the choice to not drive for Uber? Maybe b/c higher paying taxis have been unable to compete? - Rather unamusing that Uber is (still) allowed to shift much of the risk to their drivers. Glad that in Germany the politics works better in this regard!
    • fixxer 10y ago
      Interesting... Where is this mythical land where the only source of income is from ferrying people to and fro? What do those passengers do for income? Free market doesn't just mean free to drive for other companies (if available). It means free to work in any other field for which you have opportunity. Are you claiming that some people are only qualified to drive taxis? (As for German politics, I think I'll take our free market over the astronomical shitshow that Merkel has given you.)
      • chappi42 10y ago
        Free market doesn't mean that the government wouldn't be allowed to set basic standards which must be complied with. When I read that the income for Uber drivers goes as low as 8 US$/hr after deductions/costs, I think regulations are not uncalled for. (Regarding Merkel, it's difficult, won't comment)
        • erikbye 10y ago
          The very definition of a free market is a market free from government intervention. That's why what you have in the US, and most so-called capitalist states, have what is called a regulated market, not a free market. Another hallmark of a free market is that the market should rid itself of business that do not do well. In the US the governments bails out business that do not do well (like banks). Hence, Chomsky calls it a nanny state.
• pmyjavec 10y ago
  "Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed." To me this point is extremely valid, call it progress if you like, but to me this is just going to screw a lot of people over for the benefit of a few. Especially since big tech companies don't seem to like paying tax to help with matters of welfare. Also, taxi drivers aren't always perfect but I've seen them do more than robotically take people from A to B. There can be other value provided by human interaction.
• saalweachter 10y ago
  So, why is there no GNUber? Most of what Stallman complains about would go away if there were no profit-seeking corporation sitting in the middle. If no one were trying to collect a 20% tax on taxis, you wouldn't need to pay with a credit card and you could have anonymous cash rides. Heck, without the need for a company to have something to take a 20% cut of, you could have actual ride-sharing. A free, open-source app could be written and verified to not track its users, beyond the need to provide location services at the moment a call for a cab is placed. So why haven't I ever heard of the free, open-sourced alternative to Uber & Lyft?
  • uniclaude 10y ago
    That's similar to an idea I had a while ago. A cryptocurrency based open source application, using a margin generated on rides to fund maintenance and insurance, but I decided to pick something else (which I thought could be more helpful) as a startup idea. I'd love to see if there's been any work on something in this vein regarding any company in the sharing economy. Traction/Marketing would be hard though.
  • eternauta3k 10y ago
    There's en ex-con artist working on decentralized ride sharing: https://arcade.city/ https://arcade.city/
  • ryanwaggoner 10y ago
    How about safety? I wouldn't get into a vehicle (esp. at night and / or in a dodgy neighborhood) driven by a stranger without any record, vetting, or background checks and where the premise of our interaction was that no one would know they had picked me up, and no one would be able to track me from there. And I'm a man; I can imagine many women would be even more skeptical.
  • bdcravens 10y ago
    rideaustin.com isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's a push in that direction. Cell411 has decentralized ride-sharing, with payment via cryptocurrency
  • 10y ago
• icantdrive55 10y ago
  I can't see anything I really disagree with, except as long as they are subsidizing rides; take advantage of the cheap rides--if you don't care about his list. Beyond blatant disregard for following the rules, and regulations regarding Taxi regulation in most cities/counties; their are a few of his points that hit me hard. 1. Never liked identifing myself to Uber in order to use their service. I understand they need personal information because you can't pay in cash--I assume? 2. Never understood the rating system. The last thing I care about is who's driving me. The last thing I want is being rated as a customer. It's a car ride, not a marriage. The last thing I would want as a driver is being rated on how I kiss ass, or provide free mineral water. It's a ride. Growing up-- we had Rent-a-wreck. It served its purpose. It provided cheap car rental. I don't understand this need to micromanage what gets you to opposing A to B. I have way to much to worry about than my Uber driver. I've never used Uber, but I heard they require a picture of the rider. That is unacceptable in my world. I dumped Costco over this invasion of privacy.(you don't need a membership to use their great Pharmacy.) 3. My biggest complaint with this company, is in order to "get your side hussle on"; they dictate what four door car you need to buy for your side gig. I have never bought a four door car in my life. They have horrid resale value, even four door classic cars. I've been meaning to do a study on the average ROI after buying an acceptable Uber vechicle, but I can't get corporate informantion, and driver's data is antidotal. I do know guys who ruined their credit on hopes of being a successful Uber driver. 4. That's it. Oh yea, I don't like being tracked. I guess if your going to commit adultry, and you live in a state that cares about your personl indescresions in a divorce, like Missouri; taking Uber is not the prudent thing to do. If you live in California, you could have sex with the driver, and post it all over the Internet, and it wouldn't affect that divorce settlement. 5. I thought of one more. I dislike companies with so much money they can afford lobbiests, and the best lawyers. The best lawyers, are too many times, the lawyers who are paid to drag out expensive legal proceedings. It's very harmful to spend a lot of city money hiring outside lawyers just to fight Uber. 5. Sorry, but one more; Uber is just a taxi service. Yea, they do some real research on AI? I still look at them as a half ass people mover. On the list of problems; I could care less if Uber is around in a few years. 6. That goes double for Airbnb. It's just a service that rents out to vacationers. Again--I am beyond worrying about vacations. Just can't afford them in this economy. Kinda ironic? With all the talk about the negative aspects of this new economy?
• codedokode 10y ago
  He is absolutely right. It seems that in America personal data are not properly protected and corporations can do whatever they want. And making people work long hours is bad too. Isn't sleepy driver dangerous for everyone?
• wicket 10y ago
  > Uber plans to snoop on users' locations and contacts all the time. Uber has the technical possibility to do this because its app is nonfree: it is controlled by Uber, not by the user. In addition, snooping depends on a nonfree operating system. > Uber requires customers to run a nonfree program (an app). > The Uber app requires running other nonfree software (in the case of Android, Google Play). These points are not strictly true. Uber may be used via the web interface [1] which can of course be used on a free operating system. [1] https://m.uber.com https://m.uber.com
  • bo1024 10y ago
    Wow, thanks for the heads up! I might try out deleting the app, using the browser site and manually entering my location from now on. Although it still keeps data on your rides and you still can't pay cash, so it's definitely not a Stallman solution.
  • zanny 10y ago
    I believe there is consensus in the FSF that a proprietary website is still unethical because you are downloading and executing their page on your local machine, and many websites use techniques to obfuscate the implementation of the page you are on, or hide its functionality behind server side proprietary services.
    • ikeboy 10y ago
      You can also use https://developer.uber.com/docs/riders/ride-requests/introduction https://developer.uber.com/docs/riders/ride-requests/introdu... to build an entirely open-source uber client, if I understand their api correctly.
    • wicket 10y ago
      I don't disagree, nor do I think Uber is entirely ethical. I was merely pointing out a few inaccuracies with RMS's assertions: - Uber cannot snoop on users' locations all of the time if they use the web interface. - Uber does not have access to the contacts of web interface users. - The web interface does not depend on the use of a nonfree operating system. - Uber does not require customers to run a nonfree program (app). I've not actually checked to see if the web interface uses nonfree Javascript but the API is open so it should be possible to create a free Uber client. RMS doesn't seem to mind about the software running on the servers as it doesn't directly affect customers. - The Uber app itself may require running other nonfree software however the Uber app is not required to use Uber's services.
• employee8000 10y ago
  Only in an echo chamber will you find people who suddenly think taxis are somehow morally superior to Uber. Sure, uber did some things wrong in the past, but Uber in 2016 is nothing like Uber in 2013-2014. The management has grown up and accepted the responsibilities is has towards its drivers and riders and takes it very seriously. You don't hear the stories of how Uber pay drivers when they have outages or how happy most drivers actually are. Instead most people appear happy to vilify Uber for some weird reason.
  • lightedman 10y ago
    "The management has grown up and accepted the responsibilities is has towards its drivers and riders and takes it very seriously." Only after having their hides handed to them in court by employees.
    • employee8000 10y ago
      You're reading the headlines but not understanding the details of the cases. Uber is not stupid, they know they need a healthy two-way marketplace in order to have a thriving company. They can't piss off drivers and expect to stay in business. The idea that most drivers are unhappy is a myth. More than 90% of the drivers I've had are very happy.
  • bo1024 10y ago
    Some people, Stallman for instance, think of free software and privacy as moral issues. On those issues, taxis are morally superior to Uber (not necessarily on purpose, but that's irrelevant). "For some weird reason" - I think Stallman's essay gave lots of reasons...
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• jbmorgado 10y ago
  Well, this might be a locally constrained point of view and doesn't have to hold true in other countries. But in my country, people don't use Uber because Uber is great, people use Uber because Taxis are awful. - The vehicles are mostly quite old (which is strange in this country where private vehicles on the road are relatively new). - Many of the taxis are in bad hygienic conditions (many times dirty, practically always smelly). - Many taxi drivers, are uneducated and impolite and just won't shut up and let you have the ride you paid for in peace, some of them are plainly rude some times. - The taxi drivers will make it difficult or even sometimes outright deny a receipt of the trip at the end. - One of our best journals (i.e. the less sensationalist ones) made a research 2 years ago and found out that 80% of the taxi rides from the airport to the town would overcharge the costumer if he presented himself as a foreigner.
  • HillaryBriss 10y ago
    > ... just won't shut up ... sometimes i wish the Uber and Lyft drivers would just shut up. and turn down their loud choice of music.
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• skybrian 10y ago
  The point about discrimination against minorities seems overblown? I've read that the Uber/Lyft model works a lot better for blacks trying to get a cab.
  • uniclaude 10y ago
    Having a system that is better unfortunately doesn't mean that this point is overblown.
• fiatjaf 10y ago
  Total misunderstanding of economics along with voluntary submission to the State, that's just what I could read from this whole shit.
• harrumph 10y ago
  ITT: Lots of people talking about how Stallman is this, Stallman is that, when Stallman is once again 110% right -- this time, about Uber.
• mikorym 10y ago
  As far as privacy goes, I agree. However, I think the context in a country like South Africa is different. Apart from Uber in big cities, we don't have any reliable taxis (minibus, shuttle or car). Our taxis are notoriously unroadworthy and cause many accidents and they take part in violent taxi wars. Our car taxis at places like the airport are known to exploit unaware customers. Minibus taxis are a standard way of getting to work for many poor people, but I don't see any plans Uber has to compete with them yet. In South Africa, Uber drivers (seemingly) earn quite a bit more money than they would be able to otherwise and they are generally very entrepreneurial people, in stark contrast to the taxi gangs. Finally, I should point out that in many places in SA there simply were not any traditional taxi services (in the US sense), we generally only have minibus taxis. So Uber is performing a very convenient and otherwise unavailable service. Cape Town is perhaps a partial exception, and some other central city areas. But they are nowhere near Uber's efficiency.
• dingo_bat 10y ago
  > Uber has changed the regulations that cover charging passengers for making cars wait. This decision itself may not be objectionable. Taxis typically charge for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency which is at least somewhat responsible to the people. Uber is a business headquartered somewhere else, which accepts no responsibility to the people of any city. We should not allow a company to privatize the making of the regulations that create our social order. This is such bullshit. A company can have their headquarters in a single place only!
• c0rtex 10y ago
  With respect to his point that Uber requires passengers to identify themselves, I think a completely anonymous transportation system is not what is needed. Why do conventional taxi services and public transit systems have cameras? The answer is ostensibly to provide safety not only to the rider but also to the driver and other passengers [1]. But I'm sure Stallman would say "ban the cameras everywhere, Big Brother has no business tracking us!" If I were a cab driver though, I would feel safer knowing that a video of the transaction was at least being captured. And as a passenger I would feel less violated if I knew that the video was stored offline and took some amount of effort to retrieve, could only by accessed by certain individuals, and even then only with proper oversight. What is needed is a balance between privacy and safety. Uber violates user's privacy, but fully anonymous transportation, especially in a one-on-one ridesharing situation, is unsafe for both parties. Law enforcement should be hard, not impossible. [1]: http://taxi.vic.gov.au/drivers/taxi-drivers/driver-safety/safety-cameras-in-taxis http://taxi.vic.gov.au/drivers/taxi-drivers/driver-safety/sa...
  • couchand 10y ago
    Follow the link to the description of the New York City surveillance system. There you will see that he actually shares your viewpoint: "New York City has a long history of oppressive surveillance. Taxicabs in New York transmit the passengers' photos by radio to the thugs, so I never take taxicabs there. By contrast, car service cars only store passengers' photos; that system is tolerable since, if you don't attack the driver (something I never do), the photos are ignored." https://stallman.org/archives/2012-may-aug.html#10_August_2012_%28New_surveillance_system_in_New_York%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2012-may-aug.html#10_August_20...
• HillaryBriss 10y ago
  What is the minimum set of data Uber must collect and store about me in order to know that: * I will pay for the ride * I won't assault the driver or commit some other crime against the driver and Uber * I won't make a mess in the car * I will be courteous and civil How do we shift the competitive environment so that Uber/Lyft et al see minimal privacy invasion as a feature customers value highly? Answer: it's bullshit. pretty much nobody cares. that's why Stallman felt he had to write that article in the first place. the vast majority of customers don't give a crap about these questions.
• kristianov 10y ago
  I think most of his concerns only matter when Uber is monopolizing the market. As the example in his privacy point, if I have an One Night Stand, I could just get in with Uber and get out with Lyft. My location history is then protected as long as the companies are still rivals and don't share info.
• carlisle_ 10y ago
  > With a free system, the user could tell the system to lie to the Uber app. Stuff like this makes it hard for me to take RMS seriously when he's preachy. I have so many issues with this statement that are hard for me to verbalize, but the most notable issue is how not rooted in reality a statement like this is.
• sebringj 10y ago
  My cousin is an Uber driver and comes from a more troubled past you could say. He drives a more basic type of car and tells me how it isn't so great to drive for Uber anymore and how he wants to quit but is having a hard time finding something better. I had similar drivers tell me the same in the more basic type of car rides I had. When I took the more luxury experiences, the drivers seemed much happier and satisfied with Uber, even saying things like "I love my job." which I never got from the base-model car drivers. So this would lead me to guess the lower model drivers are being marginalized in order to get passengers an easier ramp (cheaper) into the Uber lifestyle. It is addicting once you start doing it, not having to park or worry about your car is pretty awesome, freeing actually as you can abstract transportation like a commodity. The company I consult for bought into Uber pretty deeply and gives some employees accounts to use whenever they need to for perks so Uber has deeply rooted into Business as well as something you should just do. But I do think the reason for this popularity has a lot to do with taking advantage of drivers' economic situation at the base-level on a thin razor line of it being just enough to be worth it to them. That's business I guess and I'm sure the line will bump up and down in response to the quality of the base-line drivers' service to keep profits strong.
  • pm90 10y ago
    This is a good point. Once Uber/Lyft are deployed in most cities/stop expanding, it will be interesting to see what they do to maintain their revenue. Right now, they can borrow like crazy since they are "expanding" (and keep prices fairly low); but once that stabilizes, it will be interesting to see if it can remain profitable without increasing prices. If Im being honest though: your cousin needs to plan to actively get out right now. Driving uber may be OK now, but they've made it pretty clear that they will rely on autonomous vehicles and are doing everything they can to get there first.
    • sebringj 10y ago
      Yes, I've told him the same and he already realized before I told him. He happens to be an aspiring programmer in his early 20s but never seems to have the time to actually learn programming, chasing his tail to keep rent going and helping his partially employed mother. I imagine other Uber driver's having similar or other reasons of being locked into a cycle of just getting by. I was luckier as I had plenty of time to read and do homework working at a very unbusy gas station in my youth. Driving Uber takes up too much of your attention and time, definitely making you sleepier and unhealthier, sitting all day and eating fast food on the road in an often stressful environment.
• frakr 10y ago
  I have seen Uber's commission misstated in a few posts: Uber takes $1.55 off the top of each ride for a booking fee and then 28% of the remaining amount. This means for short rides Uber takes 40%+ of the fare, depending on the city. I would love to see a drivers guild get formed, maybe structured as an employee owned company.
• abandonliberty 10y ago
  Like much of hckrnews, I've stopped supporting AirBnB. Though we are usually extremely supportive of disruptive startups, the tide is starting to turn [1] AirBnB and Uber are both profiting from "disruptive innovation," or rather facilitating illegal actions. Both benefit the consumer but damage the community. It's like buying a stolen bicycle. AirBnB: Transforms residential housing into (in most jurisdictions) illegal hotels. Ask a local renter in NY or YVR how that's working out for them. Uber: Losing crazy amounts of VC cash to [often illegally] compete against traditional companies that must be cashflow positive. It's not a level playing field. Laws exist so that drivers could make a livable wage; Uber is devaluing the medallions they've invested in. Is this really how we want the world to see us? Real disruptive innovations already have huge social implications: autonomous vehicle fleets, mobile phones, data collection/mining, machine learning, CRISPR, cryptocurrency - the list is very long. Why do we elevate companies like AirBnB and Uber that circumvent laws for profit to be our champions and unicorns? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11930080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11930080
  • elcct 10y ago
    > AirBnB: Transforms residential housing into (in most jurisdictions) illegal hotels. Huge part of this is actually state over-regulation. People just can't build houses. If local folks can earn some money on the side by renting out their houses, this is a good thing. Why tourists should be forced to pay for over-expensive hotels? Instead of pressing companies like AirBnB, people should press governments to remove regulations that are not necessary only serve to hire civil servants out of family members of ruling parties (not to mention pocketing bribes to give permissions to build) and make the money for the privileged. By asking for even more regulation, you are just tightening the loop on your neck.
    • CreRecombinase 10y ago
      That's not the way the law works though. You don't get to decide which ones are worth following.
      • 10y ago
• smsm42 10y ago
  I am really disappointed at Stallman using this old canard of "Uber is cheap but then they become a monopoly and will charge you huge sums forever". There's no way for Uber to do with without government's help and there's no way to anybody to do it without government's help really - maybe in very short term, but it would be so ruinous in the long term nobody would do it. It's just fear mongering. Uber is not a monopoly, is not close to monopoly and will never be a monopoly, not unless some crazy government regulation suddenly makes it so.
  • pjscott 10y ago
    Exactly. Making services to compete with Uber may not be trivial, but it's not capital-H Hard either. After Uber and Lyft left Austin (thanks to a law requiring fingerprinting and background checks for drivers), a bunch of competitors suddenly appeared. Currently, Uber and Lyft have two ways of keeping the other competition down: brand name reputation and operating at a loss to price competition out of the market. If they jacked up prices, all they'd have is the brand name thing -- and that's not a very durable advantage if the price differences are big enough.
• markbnj 10y ago
  Reasons to use Uber: - I take out my phone, enter an address, and five minutes later a car picks me up. - I take out my phone, enter a time and an address and right at that time a car arrives and picks me up. It isn't that complicated. Could taxi companies adopt these innovations? Sure, and now they are. Why didn't they before? Because they are government protected and didn't need to. If we all just accepted the economic structures the government licenses and supports France's minitel would still be the coolest network on the planet.
  • snoman 10y ago
    So far, the vast majority of people I have heard complain about Uber are people that don't rely on public transportation. Fortunately, I think we've gotten past the point in the argument where everyone realizes that it's great for the consumer (Uber running a loss to make it so) right now, but few people are talking about what it's like for the drivers as well. There's valid arguments made about how much/little they're making, at times, but that's not an inherently Uber thing. Talk to anyone in a warehouse, corner store, gas station (and a seemingly uncountable many more occupations) across the country and you have the same conversation. Market forces are driving wages down, everywhere, for everyone, doing unskilled work. One of the key differences I'm seeing is that Uber appears to be the pinnacle of voluntary, elastic, labor - at the discretion of the laborer. If the driver doesn't want to work today, or tomorrow, or all next week; they just don't turn on the app. I'm not aware of any backlash from Uber when drivers don't log in. Try finding any other job that allows that level of autonomy. That's the most free kind of work environment I can think of, and that's value that shouldn't be ignored.
    • markbnj 10y ago
      Exactly. I make a habit of chatting up the Uber drivers I ride with, and I haven't heard many complaints. Far more typical is the guy who picked me up in Seattle yesterday after a great week at Kubecon. He's retired after 22 years of driving for UPS and loves to work the overnight shift when things are quiet (he was fetching me for a scheduled ride at 6 AM and arrived at 6 AM). The attractions for him are the flexibility and independence. He works when he wants and for as long as he wants, and is able to add a nice bit to his pension in the process.
• smsm42 10y ago
  Also, this: > Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. This looks like complete Luddite statement - i.e. Uber must employ humans as drivers and government must prohibit driverless cars until there's no need to work for anybody at all. For me this sounds insane. Why don't ban bulldozers then or ATMs or factory automation or, for that matter, power looms? Until everybody gets basic income and nobody needs to be employed? I mean I know it's Stallman, but I didn't expect him to also be a technophobe...
  • mikeash 10y ago
    The man browses the web by sending email requests to a special gateway and reading the replies when they come back. The only real difference between him and a more run-of-the-mill technophobe is that his cutoff for acceptable technology is around 1985 rather than 1950.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    Stallman does use his own brain, rather better than average. But some other, richer, people have come to the same conclusion about the 'basic income' bit. Actually, the fight about it seems to be that it would be a boon to "tech billionaires" more than to other sectors.
    • smsm42 10y ago
      I don't know about tech billionaires but I know my life, as a consumer, has become much better since Uber/Lyft and Airbnb has been available. I remember how I visited some US city on a business trip in early 90-s and got stuck because no taxi wanted to go where I wanted to go and had to call my coworkers and drag one of them from his family and beg him drive me (I still feel guilty about it). I remember how much it costed me to visit the same place without and with AirBnb, and how I rented a very nice cottage in a rich neighborhood for half a price I previously paid for a so-so hotel. So for me, a non-billionaire, it's a very obvious benefit. I don't mind discussing the basic income idea. What I mind is the idea that all technological improvement should cease before we have basic income because it could put some people out of their jobs. That sounds like pure technophobia and Ludd worship.
• deleted 10y ago
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• leroy_masochist 10y ago
  "Taxis typically charge for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency which is at least somewhat responsible to the people." I thought the whole reason that Uber gained traction initially was that city agencies often suck, are not responsive, and preside over crappy services such as regulated taxi business, which if you venture outside America's major cities tend to be absolutely atrocious.
• nstj 10y ago
  Stallman is the man, and you have to admire him, but wow - is there anything that he can actually use/buy/compile/browse? It's like his universe of potential activities runs through a filter() which always returns false.
• gonzo 10y ago
  s/Guber/GNUber/g
• jay_kyburz 10y ago
  Hey, I've never used Uber. I'm in Australia where we don't tip taxis, are you supposed to tip Uber drivers?
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• buovjaga 10y ago
  Co-ops are the more ethical approach: http://platformcoop.net/ http://platformcoop.net/
• seattle_spring 10y ago
  Why are we giving so much attention to this guy?
• jondubois 10y ago
  I also felt morally opposed to Uber initially, but after thinking it through; I like having wealthy investors in the US subsidise my rides - So now I use it all the time. For every ride, money comes out of the investor's pockets and goes to the driver's pockets and also my pockets (in the form of big discounts) - So it's great. If they remove the subsidies and raise prices, I'm gone ;p
• throw2016 10y ago
  HN is about startups, VCs and using free software to profit. There is nothing remotely wrong with this but the priorities of this forum and users are completely different to someone like Stallman. In this case he raises critical and pertinent points for users to consider, but those vested in building Uber, Google and the entire surveillance economy are going to reject or dilute these points. Just like those who risk losing their livelihood from global warming reject it.
• Mz 10y ago
  The points made in the article are horrifying. I have never used Uber. I walk or take public transit. I expect this pattern to continue anyway, but count me as someone convinced that Uber is a terrible idea.
• chmaynard 10y ago
  My objection to both Uber and AirBnB is purely a practical one. The person who provides the service is not obligated to honor a reservation. I have been stiffed twice this year: • An Uber driver agreed to give me a ride to SFO in June 2016 but later cancelled the reservation with no explanation. Fortunately, I was able to hire a taxi and get to the airport on time. • I used AirBnB to request a room in a home in Brooklyn last Spring for one night. The host decided that I "was not a good fit for their family" and decided not to rent the room to me. What a joke.
  • cnst 10y ago
    I think the most amazing part about AirBnB is that it's actually usually more expensive than the last-minute or anonymous deals with the hotels, or, for the long term rent, craigslist. So, I can rent a pad on a monthly basis from Craigslist at 1000$/mo, or the same one from AirBnB at 1300$/mo (or whatever their fees are), and we call it progress? Oh, right, AirBnB has a "beautiful design" with those useless background videos that waste my bandwidth and my battery, that's why an extra 30%/month/week/whatever is warranted! Thanks, but no thanks.
• zyngaro 10y ago
  This is true we all deep down know this is true the sharing economy uber style is a giant scam.
• SanPilot 10y ago
  Although I agree with many of Stallman's points, it is, unfortunately, true that this post will most likely not change anything at all. What percent of Uber users read Stallman's website or even HN? Probably less than 1%. The sad thing is the general populace of the United States (or even, the world) doesn't care if their data are being tracked or kept; or if their personal information is being recorded; the work of people like Edward Snowden has done little to change the behavior of most internet consumers. It is enormously difficult to change the behaviors of these users, probably even impossible.
• SZJX 10y ago
  Might just be a bit too exaggerated, especially about the comparison with taxi. I don't think Uber is great but let's be honest, the taxi system is not great in a lot of places either and taxi drivers in a lot of cases are treated even much worse. In China the simple fact is Uber-like companies have allowed people to earn so much more than under monopolized taxi companies, such that huge swarms of taxi drivers just simply quit their jobs already. Most drivers I talked to are very happy with their income and flexible working hours (with many part-timing), so I'm not sure where the "15-hour-per-day" work applies to. Certainly not what I could see. Of course, this could also be a result of the short-term boom of this industry, where big players are just investing tons of money. The long-term impact remains to be seen. I predict a lot of drivers will be out of job by then since there're way too many of them currently. But to say "we must preserve this job done by human beings because we don't have universal income yet" is sheer nonsense. I can't believe somebody so proficient with technology could say that. I'm all in for universal income, but for each technological advancement there're bound to be old jobs washed out. Artificially holding them does absolutely no good to progress and people's well-being. Honestly if that's what's been happening throughout the history there would be no computer boom, no RMS at all and he'll certainly be doing something else. Also, Uber technically doesn't even exist any more in China (sold to its competitor in the form of its shares). Anyways, it's imaginable that some local government tries to contact such companies for data and certain crowd control, but it was unlikely to be something centralized. I really hate the "repressive China" stereotype being emphasized again and again. Remember even the US federal government bought tons of data from FB/Twitter/Instagram etc. to control protesters, so I don't see any difference here.