8 ms·

These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way, why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.

gravyboat 10y ago
Probably because a good number of people have worked for SF startups and seen this behavior first hand.
- tiglilly329 10y ago
  That doesn't excuse all the guilty-until-proven-innocent pitchforking going on right now.
  - tomlock 10y ago
    You should abandon your throwaway and talk to some of your lady friends in tech about their experiences. See for yourself if their anecdotes build up into something approaching quantitative - and ask them if anything was ever done about their complaints - or if they even felt safe enough to complain to the people they ought to feel safe around.
    - tiglilly329 10y ago
      What's your point? That harassment occurs frequently and is often mishandled? I never disputed that.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
        throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        yich. pointing out that we're an audience without legal standing, playing with pitchforks, is not harassment or condoning harassment.
        tomlock 10y ago
        That's the sound your lady friends would be making if they knew the moral imperative you felt after reading that blog post was to defend the judicial system from comments on this website.
        throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        as a leftist... I can only feel the left is fucked. on the other hand, I am arguing in a thread that contains that complete altrightgarbletwat banned below. on the other other hand, your aggrieved-on-behalf-of-my-lady-friends stance is just so freaking overwrought and gross. you're attacking a position that no one has advocated for, with the exception of the altrightgarbletwat. go bug him. and final edit: by the way, the moral imperative I advocate for is to burn these companies to the ground and to scald capitalists with their own failures. it wouldn't matter to me if Uber managed a PR save here because Uber's shitty heart will not change and nothing of value will be lost when it dies. do you get it? a system will do the bare minimum to exonerate itself and continue perpetuating the SV failures of greed and misplaced tech idealism: there's no story here because it doesn't fucking surprise anyone clued when someone comes out with yet another harassment story in tech and it doesn't fucking mean anything when some token firings take place over the next few weeks. Uber will still be a piece of shit unsustainable company in a tech world coopted by greedy would-be visionaries, hopefully destined for the scrap heap in the near future. my lady friends don't need you here. read up on performative allyship and then check a mirror.
        tomlock 10y ago
        You're responding to a post where I suggested a throwaway comment should be discussed with real people, irl. What position do you think I'm defending?
    - uwnigga 10y ago
      Ah, look at this cuck. Lady friend. Do you masturbate to her cuckold?. That hoe might be lying and very likely made up the story for her book promotion. Can't wait to be proven false and crucify her.
  - gravyboat 10y ago
    Why would she lie about something like this? If she's lying then her career will be wrecked, and Uber will hit her with a defamation lawsuit that will ruin her life and finances.
camdenlock 10y ago
It's trendy right now to "listen and believe." Outrage can score you some serious Internet popularity points, particularly when your claims are about men being sexist pigs. Don't ask for any evidence, just grab the pitchforks! That being said, it's tempting to just believe everything Fowler wrote and hope for sweet justice. We all love a good story, after all. Unfortunately, what makes for a gripping story of justice in the face of wrongdoing doesn't always align with reality, and it can be difficult to convince the lynch mobs of that fact.
- muglug 10y ago
  She's staked her reputation (and, at this point, probably her career as well) on not lying about the harassment. She says she has both documentary evidence and other female Uber employees to back up her claims. "Guilty until proven innocent" is how our courts work, and rightly so. But, as a layperson, there's nothing wrong in assessing the evidence and saying: "the chance these claims are false is vanishingly small, given all the publicly available information about the author of the blog post, Uber's culture, the heavily-documented problems faced by female developers in SF and elsewhere, and the very very low proportion of these sorts of claims that turn out to be false".
  - discodave 10y ago
    I think you accidentally a word (or you don't understand how courts work in the US). :)
    - matt4077 10y ago
      Nobody here does. It's a civil case and the standard of evidence is "preponderance of the evidence".
    - muglug 10y ago
      Commenting at 2am has its drawbacks...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mistercow 10y ago
Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out. Fowler knows this. There's no room for ambiguity here: either Uber has broken the law extravagantly, or she's lying. If the latter is true, she will be crucified for it. The defamation suit alone would be monumental. And again, there's no ambiguity. She says she has extensive records of this behavior. That's not something she can really walk back. In a situation where one person's word is pitted against another's, the most reliable way to buy credibility is precommitment. By writing the article that she wrote, she made a massive precommitment. She will be screwed if Uber takes her to court and she can't back up her claims. Uber, meanwhile, has said "We're looking into it." Precommitment is about cutting off your options. Uber has done the opposite. So we have one side that just cashed out options for credibility, and one side that wants to wait and see. If you're trying to assess the situation rationally, there's only one correct play here.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > she will be crucified for it. She'll be crucified for saying bad things about a man in tech regardless. As we can see from the recently created accounts revving up the accusations of lying to promote her book.
  - mistercow 10y ago
    Eh, I think that's a little too reductive. She's getting berated for pattern-matching to the "feminist" outgroup, which is a favorite bogieman for a lot of men in the industry. And given Uber's previous flirtations with "digging up dirt on hostile journalists", I wouldn't put some malicious extralegal bullshit past them either. But I do want to distinguish that from the crucifixion she'd receive if she were making it up. There's a difference between people being shitty online, and your professional reputation being destroyed. The former will happen regardless. The latter is less likely if she's telling the truth. But fair point that even if she's being truthful, she's put herself at a lot of risk.
- erdojo 10y ago
  The truth will only come out if a lawsuit is filed and it goes to trial and it's not settled before a verdict. Otherwise we'll get her side of the story as written and a statement from Uber that's been rubber stamped by lawyers.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
You know what? You're right. But at the same time I can understand everyone jumping to her side of things. Many of us in HN have worked at start-ups where we've seen almost this exact same behavior. I know I have seen something eerily similar. Ultimately I get the feeling this is going to be one of those tough situations where if the evidence was still on Uber's computers it could have easily been removed by now. So if it was removed and Uber says there is no proof, do we then side with Uber? Or do we stay on her side? There may not be a good way to proof in favor of either party.
freyr 10y ago
When they keep getting caught doing scummy things over and over again, people stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
kevando 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

gravyboat 10y ago

Probably because a good number of people have worked for SF startups and seen this behavior first hand.

tiglilly329 10y ago
That doesn't excuse all the guilty-until-proven-innocent pitchforking going on right now.
- tomlock 10y ago
  You should abandon your throwaway and talk to some of your lady friends in tech about their experiences. See for yourself if their anecdotes build up into something approaching quantitative - and ask them if anything was ever done about their complaints - or if they even felt safe enough to complain to the people they ought to feel safe around.
  - tiglilly329 10y ago
    What's your point? That harassment occurs frequently and is often mishandled? I never disputed that.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
      - throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        yich. pointing out that we're an audience without legal standing, playing with pitchforks, is not harassment or condoning harassment.
        tomlock 10y ago
        That's the sound your lady friends would be making if they knew the moral imperative you felt after reading that blog post was to defend the judicial system from comments on this website.
        throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        as a leftist... I can only feel the left is fucked. on the other hand, I am arguing in a thread that contains that complete altrightgarbletwat banned below. on the other other hand, your aggrieved-on-behalf-of-my-lady-friends stance is just so freaking overwrought and gross. you're attacking a position that no one has advocated for, with the exception of the altrightgarbletwat. go bug him. and final edit: by the way, the moral imperative I advocate for is to burn these companies to the ground and to scald capitalists with their own failures. it wouldn't matter to me if Uber managed a PR save here because Uber's shitty heart will not change and nothing of value will be lost when it dies. do you get it? a system will do the bare minimum to exonerate itself and continue perpetuating the SV failures of greed and misplaced tech idealism: there's no story here because it doesn't fucking surprise anyone clued when someone comes out with yet another harassment story in tech and it doesn't fucking mean anything when some token firings take place over the next few weeks. Uber will still be a piece of shit unsustainable company in a tech world coopted by greedy would-be visionaries, hopefully destined for the scrap heap in the near future. my lady friends don't need you here. read up on performative allyship and then check a mirror.
        tomlock 10y ago
        You're responding to a post where I suggested a throwaway comment should be discussed with real people, irl. What position do you think I'm defending?
  - uwnigga 10y ago
    Ah, look at this cuck. Lady friend. Do you masturbate to her cuckold?. That hoe might be lying and very likely made up the story for her book promotion. Can't wait to be proven false and crucify her.
- gravyboat 10y ago
  Why would she lie about something like this? If she's lying then her career will be wrecked, and Uber will hit her with a defamation lawsuit that will ruin her life and finances.

camdenlock 10y ago

It's trendy right now to "listen and believe." Outrage can score you some serious Internet popularity points, particularly when your claims are about men being sexist pigs. Don't ask for any evidence, just grab the pitchforks! That being said, it's tempting to just believe everything Fowler wrote and hope for sweet justice. We all love a good story, after all. Unfortunately, what makes for a gripping story of justice in the face of wrongdoing doesn't always align with reality, and it can be difficult to convince the lynch mobs of that fact.

muglug 10y ago
She's staked her reputation (and, at this point, probably her career as well) on not lying about the harassment. She says she has both documentary evidence and other female Uber employees to back up her claims. "Guilty until proven innocent" is how our courts work, and rightly so. But, as a layperson, there's nothing wrong in assessing the evidence and saying: "the chance these claims are false is vanishingly small, given all the publicly available information about the author of the blog post, Uber's culture, the heavily-documented problems faced by female developers in SF and elsewhere, and the very very low proportion of these sorts of claims that turn out to be false".
- discodave 10y ago
  I think you accidentally a word (or you don't understand how courts work in the US). :)
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Nobody here does. It's a civil case and the standard of evidence is "preponderance of the evidence".
  - muglug 10y ago
    Commenting at 2am has its drawbacks...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

mistercow 10y ago

Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out. Fowler knows this. There's no room for ambiguity here: either Uber has broken the law extravagantly, or she's lying. If the latter is true, she will be crucified for it. The defamation suit alone would be monumental. And again, there's no ambiguity. She says she has extensive records of this behavior. That's not something she can really walk back. In a situation where one person's word is pitted against another's, the most reliable way to buy credibility is precommitment. By writing the article that she wrote, she made a massive precommitment. She will be screwed if Uber takes her to court and she can't back up her claims. Uber, meanwhile, has said "We're looking into it." Precommitment is about cutting off your options. Uber has done the opposite. So we have one side that just cashed out options for credibility, and one side that wants to wait and see. If you're trying to assess the situation rationally, there's only one correct play here.

rodgerd 10y ago
> she will be crucified for it. She'll be crucified for saying bad things about a man in tech regardless. As we can see from the recently created accounts revving up the accusations of lying to promote her book.
- mistercow 10y ago
  Eh, I think that's a little too reductive. She's getting berated for pattern-matching to the "feminist" outgroup, which is a favorite bogieman for a lot of men in the industry. And given Uber's previous flirtations with "digging up dirt on hostile journalists", I wouldn't put some malicious extralegal bullshit past them either. But I do want to distinguish that from the crucifixion she'd receive if she were making it up. There's a difference between people being shitty online, and your professional reputation being destroyed. The former will happen regardless. The latter is less likely if she's telling the truth. But fair point that even if she's being truthful, she's put herself at a lot of risk.
erdojo 10y ago
The truth will only come out if a lawsuit is filed and it goes to trial and it's not settled before a verdict. Otherwise we'll get her side of the story as written and a statement from Uber that's been rubber stamped by lawyers.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

You know what? You're right. But at the same time I can understand everyone jumping to her side of things. Many of us in HN have worked at start-ups where we've seen almost this exact same behavior. I know I have seen something eerily similar. Ultimately I get the feeling this is going to be one of those tough situations where if the evidence was still on Uber's computers it could have easily been removed by now. So if it was removed and Uber says there is no proof, do we then side with Uber? Or do we stay on her side? There may not be a good way to proof in favor of either party.

freyr 10y ago

When they keep getting caught doing scummy things over and over again, people stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

kevando 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias