9 ms·
Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers
- frakt0x90 6y agoAirlines do similar things for anything safety related. Having safer airlines is good for business and there's no sense in hoarding that information.
- pochamago 6y agoI wonder if other taxi services do anything similar regarding drivers they fired for safety reasons
- MattGaiser 6y agoThey are still learning how to get up websites.
- AdamJacobMuller 6y agoI'm sure the process exists, it's just much more localized. If bob from City A's best taxi fires you and you try to get a job at City A's fastest taxi, fastest guy is probably gonna call best guy. If you move cross-country, probably not.
- _jal 6y agoExcept... it ends up being a non-reviewable blacklist that most people don't even know exists. What safeguards are there so that a grouchy driver or engineer can't use it to mess with their ex? For instance.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI would imagine there's a review process for allegations already.
- zeronine 6y agoI assume there is safeguards. But for the same reason these lists aren't public, their policies aren't either.
- _jal 6y agoWell, I think people tend to assume there were safeguards in place for things like this, too. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041207/1958200.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041207/1958200.shtml Doing these things in the dark almost always leads to abuse.
- cwkoss 6y agohttps://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:1 https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:1:::::: (PS: what is going on with all these colons in their urls?)
- rhizome 6y agoFor URLs like that the answer is usually either "Java" or "Microsoft."
- drstewart 6y ago>What safeguards are there so that a grouchy driver or engineer can't use it to mess with their ex? For instance. Not gonna say it's perfect, but as an engineer at one of these companies I'll say production access is generally very locked down and audited to the point of often being quite an encumbrance to even be able to debug production issues. Very unlikely anyone will be willy-nilly blacklisting drivers over personal vendettas.
- nullc 6y agoThe conspiracy theories never end. Next they're going to say there is some 'god view' built into the uber code allowing executives to track and retaliate against journalists that annoy them!
- rootsudo 6y agoWhich...was..proven true: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-uber-allegedly-stalked-users-for-party-goers-viewing-pleasure/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view...
- cwkoss 6y agoIt seems like you may be talking about the no-fly list (which I think is controlled by FBI's TSC with some partnership with DHS) while GP may have been talking about NTSB/FAA safety sharing programs. I suspect NTSB/FAA are much more effective at correcting bad info than no-fly list which is managed by people who like to think they are fighting so much evil the harms of their policies are justified.
- simple_phrases 6y agoThe No-Fly List[1] has been a two decades long quagmire that has put thousands of people into a situation where they're banned from travelling despite doing nothing wrong. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Vulnerabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Vulnerabilities
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bpodgursky 6y agoUber and Lyft aren't big fans of having drivers accused of sexual assault or theft. I'm sure you could come up with a nefarious take, but it's really just a way of filtering out bad actors before they hurt riders.
- simplecto 6y agoDo they have a similar list for customers? There is some atrocious behavior out there in both the passenger and driver seats.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI don't think there's a formal sharing program for shitty riders, but it definitely happens in some cases. https://twitter.com/lyft/status/1369390197503361030 https://twitter.com/lyft/status/1369390197503361030
- stevebmark 6y agoDespite the unethical and immoral behavior of Uber executive leadership, from the outside, Uber seems to have a better safety profile than Lyft. They added safety features to the app, such as emergency service requests, long before Lyft did. Both companies probably did it in response to sexual assaults that both companies enabled, but Uber took quicker action. I've seen some truly horrifying behavior from Lyft in terms of safety that makes me cautious of wanting to use the app, despite liking Lyft's public presence better. I suspect it's in the interest of growth and gaining market share to have things like lax-er driver background checks so they get more drivers. In the end it ends up hurting them a lot more, and can lead to terrible things for riders.
- bhupy 6y ago> Despite the unethical and immoral behavior of Uber executive leadership, from the outside Interestingly, literally every C-level exec at Uber from the Travis Kalanick era has been replaced. Uber is the "Ship of Theseus" of companies.
- mikepurvis 6y agoAnd yet— still the same ship, right? It would be fascinating to have some insider stories about whether overhauling the upper management has actually changed the culture of the company, or if it's largely the same attitudes and behaviours at play.
- bhupy 6y ago> And yet— still the same ship, right? Not necessarily. That's the whole debate!
- lhorie 6y agoI joined Uber a few months before Travis left. I can share a few things that come to mind: - shortly after Dara joined, he sent a company-wide email to the effect of "all corporate espionage projects must be halted effectively now" - he introduced a new guiding motto: "We do the right thing. Period." and repeatedly refers back to it - he found out about a previously undisclosed data leak and went ahead and made a proper public disclosure. The CSO had to leave the company and eventually got charged as a result[0] - on an all-hands meeting centrally themed on making things better after the Fowler scandal fallout, a board member made a cringey sexist joke. He had to resign from the board that afternoon. This incident spoke volumes about how discrimination culture was no longer going to be tolerated. - around the same time, as part of the HR revamp, a number of policies were introduced (training courses, anon hotline) - there was a huge internal project called 180 days of change in response to the wave of scandals. This encompasses the safety features, along with improvements to the driver UX to make it easier to understand their income, among other things (which I hear were very well received by users). [0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/uber-joseph-sullivan-charged-data-breach.html https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/uber-joseph-sullivan-ch...
- bluntfang 6y agowhat else are they sharing? who wants to bet their next paycheck that they're colluding on fixing wages?
- jasode 6y agoExamples of competitors sharing data about bad customers across several industries: - competitor banks share information about people who bounce checks - competitor insurance companies share data about customers with fraudulent claims - competitor casinos share photos of card counters Probably many others I can't think of. EDIT to reply: thanks for the customers' returns example. I found a story explaining the shared database: https://www.elliott.org/case-dismissed-2/the-retail-equation-protects-merchants-against-serial-returners/ https://www.elliott.org/case-dismissed-2/the-retail-equation...
- tehwebguy 6y agoIf you are banned from returning merchandise to Amazon, Home Depot, CVS, Sephora, Dick’s, JCPenney, Victoria’s Secret or Best Buy you are likely banned from doing returns by all of them. They are all using a third party called The Retail Equation.
- onelovetwo 6y agoHow would they know who you are, if you're paying cash or not using the same card?
- ceejayoz 6y agoIf you're doing a return on a cash transaction, a lot of stores will ask for ID. https://www.theretailequation.com/frequently-asked-questions/ https://www.theretailequation.com/frequently-asked-questions... > How does the system work? > When a consumer wants to make a return, a retailer will scan the original sales transaction receipt and/or collect consumer identification (in certain regions that may be the individual’s driver’s license or government-issued ID card) to make an identification of the person and his/her unique return behavior.
- jackson1442 6y agoMost ask for photo ID when you do a return.
- z3c0 6y agoA noble effort, but I'm certainly concerned about the use of a background check company. This is anecdotal, but I've missed out on a job before due to misreporting from a background check company. The amount of hoops I had to go through to prevent the mistake from happening again took years - and of course, the opportunity for that job was long gone by then. Really, the only proper way to do a background check is via your local law enforcement. These companies should not be relied on. Ever. Even if they're right a majority of time, the cases where they're wrong are too damaging to be considered trivial.
- ceejayoz 6y ago> Really, the only proper way to do a background check is via your local law enforcement. What in the history of policing makes you think they're immune to similar mistakes?
- z3c0 6y agoThere's more legal recourse for a mistake from law enforcement, and furthermore, they aren't going to show cases where you were acquitted. In my case, the background check company reported a crime that I HAD been arrested for but found not guilty of. Background check companies don't do their due diligence in making sure that the records they gather are still valid. I wanted very much to sue the company that cost me that job opportunity, but they've covered their bases enough to shift accountability to the customer. Basically, they put an asterisk next to their reports saying to take them with a grain of salt. But that doesn't change the damage done by a potential employer getting a peak into your past that they never should have gotten. Edit: fixed some typos
- BurningFrog 6y ago> There's more legal recourse... For people who don't know lawyers, that's largely theoretical.
- badRNG 6y agoLet's say you are mistaken for a wanted robber and arrested and later acquitted or have the charges dropped, when that record is expunged, there is a legal duty for the government to destroy all records related to that arrest. If they don't, you have political and legal recourse. A third-party company doesn't have the same legal obligation, nor does the public have any democratic control over that organization. Data companies have institutional pressures to preserve data at all costs, not to be proactive in destroying records of innocent folks.
- ape4 6y agoI hope there is some way for drivers to appeal.
- redditmigrant 6y agoThis is obviously a good thing from a safety standpoint, but I worry we are increasingly becoming a one strike society. Where one instance of bad behavior locks you out of significant parts of the infrastructure. Moreoever this happens in a "court" with no documented laws/appeals process.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y agoCancel culture in a nutshell. There's a reason we have "innocent until proven guilty" and lots of interlocking checks and balances in the legal system to prevent the mob from lynching people. Nowadays they can lynch your social life and employment options over a drunken tweet. How do we fix this?
- hytdstd 6y agoIt has been standard advice--for almost a decade-- to watch what you say online before applying for a job. And background checks have existed for work and renters for much longer.
- worker767424 6y agoIf you read "drivers" as "employees," this is much more mixed and can get scary fast.
- freeone3000 6y agoHonestly, I don't think this goes far enough. If you're misbehaving enough to get banned from Uber, you probably shouldn't be holding any other gig work poisition either! This should protect customer safety, by ensuring that once someone is proven problematic, they can simply be removed as a gig laborer, no matter how that looks. Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. This should protect companies from bad employee behavior permanently, and improve society thereby.
- pishpash 6y agoSo social credit scores?
- standardUser 6y agoWe basically have these already, as described by some of the interesting comments on here. It's just a fragmented system instead of being centralized.
- chmod775 6y ago> Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. It's already hard to get a job as a felon in the US, and hasn't that worked out great! In case it's not obvious: Just no. It's been tried. It's a horrible idea.
- smnrchrds 6y agoDo you remember the time Wells Fargo set such high sales targets for its employees that unless they committed fraud, they could not meet it; and then fired those who did not commit fraud and thus fell short of sales targets; and then many of those fired employees found out that they have been essentially blacklisted throughout the entire banking industry, because Wells Fargo had added negative remarks about them to their U5 to justify the firing instead of telling the truth that they were fired because they refused to commit fraud? I sure remember. The problem with these sorts of backchannel data sharing is that unlike things like credit reports, individuals have little to no access to see what is in their file and dispute it. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-faces-scrutiny-for-black-marks-on-ex-employee-files.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-f...
- cwkoss 6y agoI wonder if they'll start sharing data on banned passengers. I think this is a much more interesting and nuanced social issue. A recent viral video this week showed a woman assaulting an Uber driver, she livestreamed on IG to try to justify her actions and in the process said that she would only be using Lyft, then lyft tweeted that they pre-emptively banned her. If FAANG joined together to make a shared blocked users list, they could effectively make a digital caste system subject to little current government oversight.
- smt88 6y ago> they could effectively make a digital caste system subject to little current government oversight You mean like credit scores?
- fakedang 6y agoReminds me of that one Black Mirror episode
- belval 6y agoHonestly I think FAANG know better than to try to do something like that. They are already getting closer to regulatory action to limit their influence and some politicians want to see them be broken up. And that's just in the US, if they pull something like that in the EU it's almost certain there would be new laws put in place to inflict heavy fines.
- throwaway53453 6y agoCancel culture ensures we basically have that already... How many times has an undesirable been unpersoned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube within hours?
- chii 6y agoand what if they weren't really undesirable, but framed? What if they actually had a case, but the context shows a biased view? That's why we don't rely on the court of public opinion for deciding guiltiness of an accused. What needs to be canceled is cancel cultuer itself.
- floatingatoll 6y agoIf only there were a commercial passenger permitting system that already existed, ensuring that drivers who should not be carrying passengers were denied operating license regardless of the business they work with. (For those not familiar, we do already have this in the US, but Uber/Lyft wanted their drivers not to be commercially-licensed, so now they have to reimplement the DMV.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- incrudible 6y agoWhy is this necessary? If people are convicted of sexual assault, it's on the public record. Otherwise, even though some accusations that are not brought to court may have merit, Uber or Lyft should not be the ones to arbitrate on that. https://www.theroot.com/uber-bans-passenger-for-life-after-she-threatens-to-acc-1794107854?utm_source=theroot_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow https://www.theroot.com/uber-bans-passenger-for-life-after-s...