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Maybe this is all common knowledge; I live in NYC so we don't have Birds yet, so I'm a little ignorant here. From what I can tell, each scooter that is low on

Maybe this is all common knowledge; I live in NYC so we don't have Birds yet, so I'm a little ignorant here. From what I can tell, each scooter that is low on batteries is given a bounty (somewhere between $5 to $20) based on how hard it is to find. I assume that the "hardness" is computed based on how many chargers fail to find the scooter, but there may be something more sophisticated at work. To charge a scooter, a charger finds one, checks it out in the charger app, and then takes it home and charges it, and returns it to its "Bird's Nest" (clever) in the morning, at which point you get paid. The scooters have GPS trackers to prevent theft. So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van, and then keeping them in their home, where other chargers will fail to find them, thus increasing their bounty, until they "discover" the scooters, claim them through the app, charge them, and return them to their nest. Have I understood this correctly? Given that they are removing the scooter without claiming it through the app (either as a rider or a charger) that means that they are stealing them, which means all Bird has to do is provide the police with the address of the hoarder and that's the end of it.

cyphunk 8y ago
some times I love america
muthdra 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
_rs 8y ago
Another thing I don't see anyone talking about is that some people (users) hoard scooters so they definitely have one available to ride the next morning without having to hunt for one (and hope they find one close enough). I've seen this where someone will ride a scooter somewhere and bring it inside behind a locked door so that it will be available in an hour or two when they are leaving. I would expect this same behavior to happen overnight when scooters have a high enough charge left on them to still be useful.
- reureu 8y ago
  That's not a new strategy. Car2Go had the same problem. I had multiple incidents where I'd reserve a car, only to go find that it was parked in someone's garage.
mannykannot 8y ago
I am not sure that this is a clear-cut criminal matter (Bird knows where the item is, did it make an attempt to recover it? Had it made any attempt to secure said item?), but even if it was, getting the police involved in a problem Bird has brought on itself would just make its already-tricky relationship with municipalities even more difficult.
- andrewla 8y ago
  The municipalities have a problem with people committing crimes, namely theft. They can blame Bird for creating an attractive nuisance, but it seems like the security measures they have in place are more than sufficient to give law enforcement the information it needs so that they need to do minimal investigatory work in order to prosecute these crimes. Denying Bird the equal protections of the law is a violation of their constitutional duty to, well, not deny anyone equal protection of the law.
adrianmonk 8y ago
That's how I understand it too. As a matter of fairness and good PR, it would be great if scooter companies could find ways to enforce this themselves rather than creating grunt work for the local police. One way to do this is with better fraud detection. There are probably many signals, but an obvious one is to look at per-account trends and ask: did the scooters charged by this account have an unnaturally low rate of being picked up and ridden by users? Even after accounting for other variables including demand in that location at that time and charge available on that scooter? If so, that suggests something has prevented people from riding them, so probably hoarding. Then you temporarily suspend or permanently ban the account. Of course, it's possible scooter companies know they can solve these things, but they just haven't bothered yet. While they're in growth mode, they may feel their resources should be used solving other problems and Mets prefer just to throw money at the problem by putting more scooters on the street.
- ticmasta 8y ago
  I'm pretty confident that (A) the police can't barge into a private residence because some tech company points at a phone and says "see! it says my scooter is inside!" - they would still need legal basis for probable cause. When my home was B&E'd and a tablet stolen the police said unless the device reported it was in a public area they explicitly were "not going to go into a private residence to look for it". (B) The police should (and probably will) place these complaints at the very bottom of their priority list. (C) No current-era start-up that's business model is based around ignoring regulation and existing laws is going to assume responsibility and cost for anything they can displace onto another party or, better yet, society at large 'cause, ya know "disruption".
  - andrewla 8y ago
    Wow -- that seems really odd; a GPS beacon seems like it is practically the definition of probable cause. I can understand police being reluctant to pursue crimes where the criminal is unlikely to be apprehended, but in this case it seems a straightforward way of boosting arrest numbers since the crime is so clear-cut. Regulation and crimes are different things. Regulations are aimed at preemptively preventing potential crimes, usually fraud, by making parties affirmatively establish that they do not have criminal intent before committing an act. Crimes are criminal acts -- we added an equal protection clause to the constitution to prevent exactly this scenario, where the police can discriminate on the application of the law. If the police are choosing to deny the protection of the law to a company like Bird then they are liable for a civil suit, in addition to violating their duties as law enforcement officers.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
This is simple to fix: Allow a charger-app to trigger a loud horn sound continuously. Make taking these painful to keep. And then post a way to report illegally impounded scooters, either with address or license plate of where they're kept.
- jotux 8y ago
  Seems easier to fix than that -- just change the incentive. Instead of paying more for scooters that are hard to find or have been dead longer, pay more the faster people pick up, charge, and return the scooters to service. Pick-up, charge, return within 2 hours = $20. If it takes longer than 8 hours, pay $5.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  I like the sound idea. Could be useful if someone is trying to locate one to rent too. Might prevent people from reserving one. Bird could also offer. Reserved price if you want to have it inside for later use.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  Just mute your phone, problem solved.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    I think the idea was for the horn to be in the scooter. I would assume that there's no mute button on a scooter.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Just what we need — more sirens. Like car alarm sirens, which are enormously effective ;) Which go off randomly and in most cities, you can have one going off next to you and you would think everyone around it is deaf by their complete lack of care over your car being stolen. You think people are going to care more about a...scooter?
twtw 8y ago
> So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van This is not my understanding. The scooters I've seen throw an absolute fit if you move them more than ~1 meter without unlocking them via the app. I don't know much about this, but I didn't think the scooters had to be returned to any particular place. So hoarders pick them up to charge them and when charged "return" them to their garage/backyard. In which case it's not as clearly theft, they are just returning them to an inconvenient place - but that's fine, they are dockless.
- andrewla 8y ago
  What I've seen indicates that after charging they are required to return the scooters to their "Bird's nest", not to an arbitrary location of their choosing. It might be that they choose to forfeit the reward for the initial charging by not returning the scooters, but that seems like more of a no-brainer to detect; chargers who routinely do not return their scooters to their nests would be extremely easy to detect. Easier might be to check them out as riders, then toss them in the van and "return" them to the charger's backyard or garage; if you have a group of people who are in on this, then it seems like you could make this nearly undetectable by pooling the risk.
ProblemFactory 8y ago
> which means all Bird has to do is provide the police with the address of the hoarder and that's the end of it. Literally. Bird can provide the address to the police and they will do nothing, and that's the end of it. If you are leaving your property on public sidewalks, and offering a $20 bounty for temporarily stealing it, then you need to fix your rewards system before wasting police time.
hndamien 8y ago
Is it stealing or is it just dockless?
stcredzero 8y ago
So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van, and then keeping them in their home, where other chargers will fail to find them, thus increasing their bounty, until they "discover" the scooters, claim them through the app, charge them, and return them to their nest. What if the bounty was influenced by the duty cycle of the scooters? So the more utilized the scooters are, the higher the bounty? What I'm wondering is if there is a way to shape the hoarder's behavior into something beneficial to the user base.

cyphunk 8y ago

some times I love america

muthdra 8y ago

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

_rs 8y ago

Another thing I don't see anyone talking about is that some people (users) hoard scooters so they definitely have one available to ride the next morning without having to hunt for one (and hope they find one close enough). I've seen this where someone will ride a scooter somewhere and bring it inside behind a locked door so that it will be available in an hour or two when they are leaving. I would expect this same behavior to happen overnight when scooters have a high enough charge left on them to still be useful.

reureu 8y ago
That's not a new strategy. Car2Go had the same problem. I had multiple incidents where I'd reserve a car, only to go find that it was parked in someone's garage.

mannykannot 8y ago

I am not sure that this is a clear-cut criminal matter (Bird knows where the item is, did it make an attempt to recover it? Had it made any attempt to secure said item?), but even if it was, getting the police involved in a problem Bird has brought on itself would just make its already-tricky relationship with municipalities even more difficult.

andrewla 8y ago
The municipalities have a problem with people committing crimes, namely theft. They can blame Bird for creating an attractive nuisance, but it seems like the security measures they have in place are more than sufficient to give law enforcement the information it needs so that they need to do minimal investigatory work in order to prosecute these crimes. Denying Bird the equal protections of the law is a violation of their constitutional duty to, well, not deny anyone equal protection of the law.

adrianmonk 8y ago

That's how I understand it too. As a matter of fairness and good PR, it would be great if scooter companies could find ways to enforce this themselves rather than creating grunt work for the local police. One way to do this is with better fraud detection. There are probably many signals, but an obvious one is to look at per-account trends and ask: did the scooters charged by this account have an unnaturally low rate of being picked up and ridden by users? Even after accounting for other variables including demand in that location at that time and charge available on that scooter? If so, that suggests something has prevented people from riding them, so probably hoarding. Then you temporarily suspend or permanently ban the account. Of course, it's possible scooter companies know they can solve these things, but they just haven't bothered yet. While they're in growth mode, they may feel their resources should be used solving other problems and Mets prefer just to throw money at the problem by putting more scooters on the street.

ticmasta 8y ago
I'm pretty confident that (A) the police can't barge into a private residence because some tech company points at a phone and says "see! it says my scooter is inside!" - they would still need legal basis for probable cause. When my home was B&E'd and a tablet stolen the police said unless the device reported it was in a public area they explicitly were "not going to go into a private residence to look for it". (B) The police should (and probably will) place these complaints at the very bottom of their priority list. (C) No current-era start-up that's business model is based around ignoring regulation and existing laws is going to assume responsibility and cost for anything they can displace onto another party or, better yet, society at large 'cause, ya know "disruption".
- andrewla 8y ago
  Wow -- that seems really odd; a GPS beacon seems like it is practically the definition of probable cause. I can understand police being reluctant to pursue crimes where the criminal is unlikely to be apprehended, but in this case it seems a straightforward way of boosting arrest numbers since the crime is so clear-cut. Regulation and crimes are different things. Regulations are aimed at preemptively preventing potential crimes, usually fraud, by making parties affirmatively establish that they do not have criminal intent before committing an act. Crimes are criminal acts -- we added an equal protection clause to the constitution to prevent exactly this scenario, where the police can discriminate on the application of the law. If the police are choosing to deny the protection of the law to a company like Bird then they are liable for a civil suit, in addition to violating their duties as law enforcement officers.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

This is simple to fix: Allow a charger-app to trigger a loud horn sound continuously. Make taking these painful to keep. And then post a way to report illegally impounded scooters, either with address or license plate of where they're kept.

jotux 8y ago
Seems easier to fix than that -- just change the incentive. Instead of paying more for scooters that are hard to find or have been dead longer, pay more the faster people pick up, charge, and return the scooters to service. Pick-up, charge, return within 2 hours = $20. If it takes longer than 8 hours, pay $5.
dawnerd 8y ago
I like the sound idea. Could be useful if someone is trying to locate one to rent too. Might prevent people from reserving one. Bird could also offer. Reserved price if you want to have it inside for later use.
JetSpiegel 8y ago
Just mute your phone, problem solved.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  I think the idea was for the horn to be in the scooter. I would assume that there's no mute button on a scooter.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Just what we need — more sirens. Like car alarm sirens, which are enormously effective ;) Which go off randomly and in most cities, you can have one going off next to you and you would think everyone around it is deaf by their complete lack of care over your car being stolen. You think people are going to care more about a...scooter?

twtw 8y ago

> So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van This is not my understanding. The scooters I've seen throw an absolute fit if you move them more than ~1 meter without unlocking them via the app. I don't know much about this, but I didn't think the scooters had to be returned to any particular place. So hoarders pick them up to charge them and when charged "return" them to their garage/backyard. In which case it's not as clearly theft, they are just returning them to an inconvenient place - but that's fine, they are dockless.

andrewla 8y ago
What I've seen indicates that after charging they are required to return the scooters to their "Bird's nest", not to an arbitrary location of their choosing. It might be that they choose to forfeit the reward for the initial charging by not returning the scooters, but that seems like more of a no-brainer to detect; chargers who routinely do not return their scooters to their nests would be extremely easy to detect. Easier might be to check them out as riders, then toss them in the van and "return" them to the charger's backyard or garage; if you have a group of people who are in on this, then it seems like you could make this nearly undetectable by pooling the risk.

ProblemFactory 8y ago

> which means all Bird has to do is provide the police with the address of the hoarder and that's the end of it. Literally. Bird can provide the address to the police and they will do nothing, and that's the end of it. If you are leaving your property on public sidewalks, and offering a $20 bounty for temporarily stealing it, then you need to fix your rewards system before wasting police time.

hndamien 8y ago

Is it stealing or is it just dockless?

stcredzero 8y ago

So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van, and then keeping them in their home, where other chargers will fail to find them, thus increasing their bounty, until they "discover" the scooters, claim them through the app, charge them, and return them to their nest. What if the bounty was influenced by the duty cycle of the scooters? So the more utilized the scooters are, the higher the bounty? What I'm wondering is if there is a way to shape the hoarder's behavior into something beneficial to the user base.