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Ask HN: How to contact Uber about a rider safety exploit being used in the wild?

144 points by elmerfud 5y ago

I've tried every possible way to contact Uber I can find to only be met with canned answers by what I assume are bots. I was a victim of this so I know it's being exploited by drivers currently. How to assault/rob your passengers and not get caught: 1. Accept the ride 2. Meet the passenger and lock then in your car. 3. Do not start the ride, but instead assault, extort, etc... Your passenger. 4. Decline the ride when they flee the car. 5. Ride is now routed to the next driver. 6. Profit!!! Because you car and name will never appear in the riders history. The rider safety hotline does not have the ability to see driver canceled rides. You cannot open a help case in the app because driver cancelled rides do not appear. Uber support (if you can get them to respond) do not have the ability to see driver canceled rides. There is no way to escalate this issue. There's no human to talk to about this issue. You are totally safe to do this with impunity as a driver. For all the tech magic, anything that deviates outside what they have considered as possible leads to a black hole. How do we contact Uber about this massive exploit before it blows up and tanks their already floundering stock price?

elmerfud 5y ago
Uber's new tactic now is that simply continually close my case with no response. Does anyone actually work at Uber and understand the seriousness of this exploit? Surely someone who watches hacker News also works at Uber
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Every hour like clockwork they try and close the issue with no response at all. They're just asking for this to blow up in their face when this happens to some celebrity with lots of followers.
crate_barre 5y ago
Get a driver willing to help you simulate the situation. Record it, put it on YouTube/TikTok.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  That might be an idea, but I'm a nobody with no followers. I guess it could picked up and go viral. It's a trivial exploit. Maybe get a major news outlet to m pick it up.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Contact Brian Krebs of Krebs On Security. https://krebsonsecurity.com/about/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/about/
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      ^ Something like this OP. Get your content ready, edit it, and then start contacting specific people that might want to cover this content. It could even be a local newspaper/channel. I think you should do it. I recently felt uncomfortable with a Lyft driver and decided to check my ride history logs. All of the time stamps were completely wrong. That was a little unnerving but it’s something I never did anything about. If I needed to prove I was somewhere at so and so time, Lyft wouldn’t be a reliable source of information. Something actually happened to you, so I encourage you to follow through. That could happen to anyone and it’s not funny it’s being shrugged off.
remram 5y ago
Tweet at them?
- elmerfud 5y ago
  I have hundreds of tweets at them. It's the same mind numbed robot responses they always give. They say open a help request on the ride in the app, note this is the ride history that does not appear because the driver canceled it. Or alternately they will open it for you from Twitter when you provide them a phone number or email address on the account but then again ask you for which ride it was which doesn't exist. Quite literally with this information any driver who wishes to assault or extort someone can pretty much do it with impunity with this knowledge. And there is no way to contact Uber about it or even get Uber to acknowledge that it exists.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  Or maybe wait and see if anyone that works on Uber also browse HN
  - user100002 5y ago
    hey we see your post and are working on investigating this now.
petterparker 5y ago
have you brought this incident to the polices attention?
- elmerfud 5y ago
  I did speak to the police about this when it happened and it goes in circles like this. They need to know the driver's information or the car number. Since it's not in the trip history I don't have it. I contact Uber asking them for this information and they say have law enforcement submit a request. Law enforcement doesn't have any thing to submit a request about. And the circle jerk continues like that ad nauseam. I suspect that the number of rideshare assaults is greatly underreported based upon this simple exploit. Because quite literally Uber is entirely ignoring my pleas and not even acknowledging this as a possibility.
  - dandelany 5y ago
    You know when & where it happened, and have a rough make/model/color of the car and maybe some description of the driver - surely people regularly report crimes based on less than that? I'm not sure why this wouldn't be enough for a police report, at least to have some paper record of it to wave in Uber's face. Sorry to hear this happened to you, sounds a bit scary and traumatic. Good luck.
    - elmerfud 5y ago
      I think in the USA I would have better luck doing that. I'm on vacation in the Dominican Republic. There's a lot of sympathy but without information they said they can't take any action. The fact that Uber hides driver canceled rides but not customer cancelled rides allows for this possibly to even happen. You would think they would want to address this quietly. If it's happened to me, then it will happen to someone with a million Twitter followers and it will blowup in their face.
      - GauntletWizard 5y ago
        Uber is aware of this. They have taken explicit steps to protect their drivers "privacy" against police requests for data, even given investigation #s and warrants . I don't really understand what their motivation is, but my experience in the brief period I worked there is that they're lead by scummy people. They do not take reports of crimes seriously.
sorethescore 5y ago
You're definitely going to want to make a police report.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Unfortunately since nothing appears in the ride history without the plate number or the person's name or anything there is nothing to have the police report about. That's the real problem there is this big circle between Uber saying law enforcement needs to make a request and law enforcement saying I need to know what to make the request about. Having an actual human on the other side of uber that understands the seriousness of this driver exploit would be the easiest way to get it corrected. Or Uber needs to publish complete ride history including driver cancellations.
  - Kinrany 5y ago
    In these cases law enforcement should be the ones making the request. This isn't different from "unknown person punched me in the face and ran away, but the Starbucks' camera was pointing at them".
    - elmerfud 5y ago
      Unfortunately this is in the Dominican Republic (pleasant vacation I'm having) and they are sympathetic but without information they're said they have nothing to file.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        What are the odds they already know who mugged you but won't do anything without a (bigger) bribe than what the Uber driver is paying them not to investigate?
      - ghayes 5y ago
        You could contact a lawyer who can use legal methods to request the information from Uber. You should probably file the criminal complaint, even if you don't have sufficient information for the police to move forward right now.
pkrotich 5y ago
That's truly a blindspot for everyone - you'll have to assume they have logs of accepted & canceled rides. The only thing I can think about for now is taking screenshot of accepted rides as a record.
- vimax 5y ago
  I had to do the same with uber eats until I stopped using it. They do everything they can to make sure there's no recorded timestamp of when you place an order so it's that much harder to dispute a bad delivery.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Yes, do this every time! This will be your only protection that I can think of. It's insane that Uber even hides driver canceled rides. Because I guess no on would ever need to report a problem with a driver cancelled ride.
behnamoh 5y ago
If you have Android, can you check your notification history? There might be the driver's name on one of them, like "xyz is on route" or sth. Going to the police, they might have access to security cameras in that neighborhood to check the car's plate. If they touched your belongings and you still have them, it might be worth giving them to the police to run finger print tracing.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  I'm using a One Plus 5T... Still a great phone but sadly no notification history. I did contact the airport (which is where it happened). They are looking at camera footage but haven't gotten back to me yet. Driver was bold, just didn't care. I've traveled the world and never seen someone so bold right in the middle of so many people. Must have done it many times to know he could get away with it.
  - behnamoh 5y ago
    Sorry to hear that. I know there used to be a "trick" to get notification history on Androids that don't show it. It involved installing a widget, if I'm correct. If I were you and had time, I'd create another account and keep requesting for an Uber around the same area where that driver showed up until I see the same driver again. From what you describe, chances are he's still out there doing it.
Kaze404 5y ago
I'm sorry but they will not do a single thing about it. Just recently in Brazil a pregnant, transgender man was almost killed by an Uber driver and he didn't even get so much as a response back from the platform. There are public videos of the man threatening to kill them (he was with his girlfriend) while they were still in the car and Uber did nothing. On a more similar note, my girlfriend last year called an Uber, and after 30 minutes of waiting for it to arrive, the person simply canceled the ride claiming she wasn't wearing a mask (they never even came close to my girlfriend, and she was definitely wearing a mask). We tried contacting support to at the very least refund us the ridiculous fee, but nothing was ever done. Avoid Uber like the plague.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Sad, but I believe you're correct,. especially in regards to Uber in other countries. I'm glad Grab bought it Uber in most Asian markets. Grab has some annoying security checks of you get flagged but they are much better in their customer service.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  A pregnant transgendered man? How does that work.. if the person was a female but become a male the parts wouldn't be available for a baby. Without surgery they are female with female parts but identify as male so dressing up as a male. How does someone identify as a male but still want a baby.
  - elmerfud 5y ago
    Transgender woman, is a biological (is this the correct terminology?) That is transitioning to a woman. So a transgender man or trans man as I've heard referred to, is a biological female transitioning to a man. So yes they can get pregnant, because it's only very late in the process (and optional) to have a hysterectomy and a male genitals created. Many/some do not opt for this as the male genitals aren't really functional in the way you'd expect. They use a prosthetic instead.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Loads of people don't get bottom surgery.
natch 5y ago
But they probably sell your marketing data so if this guy, the driver, was previously googling football (soccer) gear, and now Uber has a record of your phones being in proximity for 10 minutes, now they will add your info to a list of people interested in football (soccer) gear by association, and Uber can reap a reward by selling this info to ad companies. But track down a bad driver??? Oh no, can’t do that.
Jugurtha 5y ago
The rider goes to law enforcement/security services, they take the appropriate measures to get the data from Uber even if it's not possible to do so from the app. Reverse scenario: - Rider requests a ride - Rider meets driver - Rider assaults and extorts driver - Rider cancels the ride.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Your first scenario only works if the police take the complaint and follow up. As I mentioned in other replies, I'm vacationing in the Dominican Republic. The police will not take the complaint without more information, thus they will not make a request to Uber because they don't know what to request. Uber refuses to disclose the same trip history for driver canceled rides as they do for passenger canceled rides. Thus your reverse scenario and your forward scenario do not match. Because in your reverse scenario both driver and Rider have a history of it in your forward scenario neither driver or Rider have a history to refer to. This is the Crux of the exploit. Without this information showing up in the trip history of the rider drivers are free to exploit them with impunity. Perhaps if you find a very zealous law enforcement officer in the USA who's willing to pursue this you might get somewhere. Even then if you cannot show that you actually had a ride they may drop the investigation entirely as well.
ianmabie 5y ago
Which market are you in and who did you end up getting in touch with in support? Did you try the Safety Incident Support Line? At least in the US that is 1 (800) 285-6172. Without getting into specifics they absolutely do have a way to track down the driver regardless of the state of the trip / who cancelled.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Yes I specifically called that line. They informed me that they had no ability to see driver canceled rides. They could only see the same rides I have in my history. They were sympathetic and took my complaint but ultimately it ended up nowhere. The same Uber support black hole of nothingness. No response, no follow-up nothing. Pretty much this driver exploit can be executed with impunity and Uber does not care and there is no way for customers to report it.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
If they actually want to, most databases keep some kind of history. The problem is that they don't want to be able to deal with it.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I highly doubt they dispose of any information in the sequence of requests, acceptance/decline and cancellation. That would require actually deleting things that were already in their database, and they have no incentive to do that. They certainly have an incentive to make those things inaccessible to the riders, but not to actually flush them.
YeBanKo 5y ago
If the ride has been accepted, there most certainly is a log on Uber’s side. It may not show up in your history, but it is there. I hope you are safe now and your health is intact, but please consider filing a police report. Even if you did not note the license plate, location, time, vehicle info, description and name of the driver, etc - this all can help identify the driver. On top of that, your state may have a consumer protection agency or even contacting a state’s attorney office maybe useful, if it is a systematic issue. Also, see if it is worth filing a civil lawsuit. Maybe even in a small claims, depends on the damage.
thatcat 5y ago
Even if they have the history, they will generally do nothing about complaints against riders or drivers more than review data and possibly cancel account
quickthrower2 5y ago
Hopefully someone here can hack the data stored in the Uber app (in storage) or site (json responses) and see if the registration number is in there somewhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if the meta data is in there even if inaccessible via normal means. The data would have flowed through the app to show you the name of the driver and plate number at the point they agreed to the pickup. Obviously they can only hack their own app but then once successful they could publish how they did it so you can repeat it for yourself. Also try this https://help.uber.com/riders/article/request-a-copy-of-your-personal-data?nodeId=2c86900d-8408-4bac-b92a-956d793acd11 https://help.uber.com/riders/article/request-a-copy-of-your-... and see what they send. A long shot perhaps. Another long shot - was there any nest cams in the near vicinity? Do your own police work, but a silver platter, and hand it all over to the police.
GianFabien 5y ago
It's very hard to do something after the event. But it is important that this is a warning to others. Perhaps taking some precautions is a good idea. Take a photo of the Uber, including the plate number. If you can, a photo of the driver and screenshots of the booking, etc. Then you have some evidence to file with the police.
csmattryder 5y ago
Go to the media, you're not doing anything @'ing Uber or filing a police report. If Uber PR has to deal with a growing news story being put in front of potential customers, they'll do something about it.
codingdave 5y ago
You don't call Uber, you call 911. Being locked in a car and assaulted or extorted is crime, not a software exploit. Get the license plate if you can, but even after the fact, file a police report with as much info as you can remember.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  Thank you for the advice but if you read the other comments you'll see that this happened in the Dominican Republic. The police while sympathetic declined to take any kind of official report without a plate number or anything else. That is the Crux of the exploit that drivers can use against passengers. When you're panicked and running away from someone assaulting you you don't have time to memorize a plate number or take a picture of it. Uber conveniently route you to the next available driver completely of allowing this initial driver to vanish from your ride history. You're then left with zero information to go back on and Uber support has no way for you to contact them about this ride. You're left with zero information to give the police for them to follow up on. What you have is drivers that can exploit passengers with impunity and no recourse and no evidence.
  - codingdave 5y ago
    If the police refuse to take a report, they are not sympathetic. They are hiding crime. You should add that to your list of problems, and take it over their heads. I know there is a US Embassy there if you are American. Tell them.
    - elmerfud 5y ago
      Uber is ultimately the one shielding their driver by not publishing the same information for driver canceled rides as they do for passenger cancel rides. And well I am exploring other aspects of dealing with this the core problem in here is that Uber has a massive exploit that is being used in the wild against people and there is zero way to get assistance with or from Uber on this. Specifically Uber's contact methods and reporting methods do not allow you to have any way to know who this person was or even to open a support case with Uber. So the real exploit here that we're talking about is with and against Uber.
jpl56 5y ago
Doesn't Uber show the car model and licence plate when the ride is accepted? Looks useful to make a screenshot and have it uploaded to the cloud in case such a driver steals your phone on top of harassing you. Hope you are safe now.
MrWiffles 5y ago
I’m really sorry this happened to you, and I hope you’re safe now (and that it stays that way). One possible safety precaution for the future might be to make it a personal habit to always photograph the car with plate and driver when they show up, if possible, before you get in. This isn’t the “right” fix for the problem, but it’s potentially something you can do to at least create the theory of consequences/evidence, in hopes that it’ll be enough of a deterrent. Two other things come to mind, though I don’t know how feasible they’d be outside the US. Still, might be worth a shot: 1. Contract an attorney and see if you can file a private suit against Uber in court, or maybe even against local law enforcement. That MIGHT open up the possibility of forcing Uber to turn over data to comply with a subpoena depending on how the law might work there. Not great, I know, but it might be enough to get their attention at least. This next one requires faith in humanity, and I fully recognize that fact damn near kills it at the outset, but here goes… 2. ASK OTHER UBER DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS TO FILE SUPPORT REQUESTS ABOUT THE ISSUE. If enough people raise enough hell about it, maybe someone capable of independent thought, someone who can do more than copy and paste canned responses, will become aware of this and have “the feels” as they DAMN WELL SHOULD. And maybe then something can get done. Like I said, requires faith in humanity so it’s probably the longest of long shots. But right now it sounds like a long shot might be the only shot ya got. Good luck to you, and stay safe out there! PS - Fellow hackers o’ the news, if you can do this without major consequences, maybe voice some concern for your fellow (hu)man, over Twitter, or whatever. Not much we can do individually by ourselves, but with enough voices, maybe we can form a chorus loud enough to help. It’s a small ask, IMO, and we can hopefully save future victims from harm.
- elmerfud 5y ago
  My faith in humanity is very low at this point especially considering many of the replies to this. There seems to be a lot of victim blaming a lot of uber defense. The fact that Uber does not have any method at all to contact them in regards to this kind of incident is ridiculous. The fact that people believe that this is a defensible behavior by Uber is even more insane. I just hope nothing happens to them where they feel powerless. Currently Uber just repeatedly closes my issue with no response at all. Surely somebody at Uber reads hacker News and can reach out about this exploit. But that does not seem to be the case for how Ubers modus operandi is. They typically just ignore passenger assaults until it rises to the level that they have to get embarrassed into action.
elmerfud 5y ago
Just want to add an update. I finally got a call from someone at Uber who was interested in taking this seriously. So far it's been a positive experience. They listened and understood the mechanics of this exploit that drivers can use. They are working to assist me, but also it seems they do grasp that there is an an ongoing exploit here that drivers are using in the field. While my incident involved assault, there are other incidents that do not. For example, I've had several drivers message me before they picked me up asking for additional money or my destination. This is explicitly against the driver's terms of service to be an Uber contractor. Just uses the same exploit mechanism of when the driver cancels the ride you can no longer report inappropriate driver behavior. The driver failing to pick you up is annoying behavior but still is the exact same exploit mechanism. I believe now that Uber has the information to validate that this exploit is going on currently. It may not be used in the US as I've never seen it there but it is definitely happening in the Dominican Republic. For everyone who's insisting this is 100% of police matter I think you're missing the greater point here. You need to get outside of your local bubble and deal with police and other countries and other locales they do not operate on the same set of ideals and principles as they do in most of the United States. Also that argumentation ignores Uber's responsibility in this matter which is to provide an efficient mechanism to report bad drivers. That mechanism was completely missing here and is cause for the exploit that I was trying to report here on hacker News. It's important that this exploit be made known and that Uber finds a way to address it because if it can happen to me it will happen to other people and it has happened to other people. It may just be the annoyance of canceled rides so far for others but at least in one instance it did rise to the level of assault. Uber should have a vested interest in ensuring that their drivers are of the highest caliber. Since I had at least three rides where the driver accepted and then canceled after a message where I refused to pay them additional I would think it would be trivial for Uber to use monitoring on messages between riders and drivers and detect this kind of thing. After all detecting a driver demanding a tip prior to pick up or requesting a destination prior to pick up is a much easier prospect than a self-driving car. I wish it didn't take 3 days to get to this point but I'm currently very satisfied with how Uber is handling this now.
deleted 5y ago
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JohnHaugeland 5y ago
They did this to me for three years, including after I talked to humans. In 2017, a policy change meant that when a rider reported a driver, the driver rating stayed. Prior to that, things were being handled. Afterwards, a five year five star account dropped to 2.6 in two months. The only solution was to stop using Uber. I've been gone for four years. What I learned is that Uber is needed in tiny towns, but in every decent sized city, I have better experiences with lyft and flywheel anyway. What originally brought me to Uber was faster, lower hassle rides with fewer scams. No loss, it turns out

throwawaygh 5y ago

> A pregnant transgendered man? How does that work.. A person with a uterus, who thinks of themselves as a man, had one of their eggs inseminated. More specifically: a person who is biologically female but self-identifies as a man -- and who has not had certain types of sex reassignment surgery -- either (1) had penetrative sex with a biological man, or else (2) was artificially inseminated. > Without surgery they are female with female parts but identify as male so dressing up as a male Your (totally reasonable) confusion on this point is mostly definitional: "transgender" does not imply sex reassignment surgery. In fact, sex reassignment surgery is still very uncommon among transgender people [1]. (Fun history lesson: In the 60s it would have been a contradiction of terms to say that a transgender person wanted a sex reassignment surgery! The term was originally coined to refer specifically to people who didn't want such surgeries, with terms like "transsexual" or "transvestite" referring to those who did want surgery/hormone therapy. Today, the latter terms are out-moded and the term "transgender" has become a catch-all. But if we want to get puritanical about the meanings of words, which I think is a bit silly of course, we would actually go the opposite direction of the one you assumed -- it would be definitionally contradictory to use the term "transgender" to refer to someone who has received a sex reassignment surgery. This is all unimportant trivia, and today "transgender" implies nothing about surgery/hormone therapy preference, but hopefully this was an interesting history lesson for word nerds.) > How does someone identify as a male but still want a baby. Well, first, OP mentioned Brazil, which makes the "want" part perhaps presumptuous since abortion is illegal in Brazil. Aside from that, drop any pre-conceptions you have about trans people and just read the sentence back to yourself. I.e., consider the sentence: "How does a man still want to have a baby?" Lots of men want to have babies that are biologically "theirs". You've correctly identified that this desire can be a bit more complicated/disorienting for trans men, but the desire for a biological child is pretty universal among all life forms on earth. Trans homo sapiens aren't an exception. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626314/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626314/

ipaddr 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense. The DNA part I would have never considered.

sph 5y ago

I am appalled how this person asked a question, out of ignorance, yes, but politely and it got censored, flagged and their comment hidden. I have vouched it back from the dead. How are people supposed to understand if the approach taken by the educated ones is of censorship and taboo? I extremely appreciate @throwawaygh below answering the question clearly and teaching OP a valuable point of view of the matter, without prejudice or indignation of someone else's ignorance. Shame on those who just preferred to censor the question. This is not how we build an inclusive society. I expect better of this site.

Kaze404 5y ago
Unfortunately this is a more complicated subject than it seems for transgender people. So often we have to deal with people saying the most horrific things under the guise of "I'm just asking questions" that we have to, out of self defense, try and identify when someone is legitimately confused or just concern trolling. That said, thank you for reviving their comment as I personally don't think there was anything wrong with it specifically. Just trying to shed some light on why some people might have interpreted it differently.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > So often we have to deal with people saying the most horrific things under the guise of "I'm just asking questions" It's true. "I'm just asking questions" is definitely a routine used to harass trans people. It's probably the most common routine now that overt transphobia is less socially acceptable. I doubt there's a single trans person in the US -- outside of very cloistered bubbles -- who hasn't been harassed by a troll who was pretending to "jut ask questions". My MIL is one of those people -- she's even gone through the same line of questions on the same exact person (1+ year apart, forgot she already met the person). Which is why she's no longer welcome in polite company. The point: I'm not saying that removing people from some social contexts is never the answer. Sometimes that's the best course of action. But here's the thing. "Just Asking Questions" trolling is a particularly insidious and ingenious routine. Sure, it's mean and petty with plausible deniability. But that's not why it's so genius. Using this routine en masse is a genius move by anti-trans hate groups because it actively shuts down education, which is ultimately the best way we know to increase public acceptance of transgender people. We can't do anything about recalcitrant assholes except cut them out of some parts of our lives. But we can disallow them the pleasure of shutting down education and thereby reinforcing their own ignorance in the broader population. Anyways, that's a long-winded way of saying "kill them with kindness". If they were genuinely curious then your kindness just won trans people an ally. If they were trolling then the only way to cut past the plausible deniability bullshit is to avoid direct anger and beat them at their own "pastor's wife bless-your-heart" game. And anyways, there's something viscerally pleasing about a midwesterner who didn't know you're a midwest transplant slowing realize they're being out-midwested... much more pleasing than having to deal with an asshole accusing you of being mean to them when they were "just asking questions" ;-) But the main point is, it doesn't matter if they're trolling or genuine! In both cases, responding with direct anger to questions in the moment is a losing strategy. The troll gets to play victim and the genuinely uneducated are put on the defensive. (And, yes, it's unreasonable that trans people are so often de facto representatives of all trans people in every daily interaction. I'm just describing the micro-political strategy and not trying to imply there's anything wrong with being a normal human instead of a political operative.)
- 1_player 5y ago
  I understand and empathise with having to deal with trolls online. It gets tiring very quickly. But when in doubt, on this site my suggestion is to follow its guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
The problem is that a transphobe that refuses to acknowledge gender identity can look exactly the same as someone who legitimately does not understand gender identity and wants to know more. The former knows this and will JAQ off.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Yes, that's exactly the problem. And in at least some cases it is strategic and intentional. Anti-trans hate groups know that most people will respond with understanding rather than hate when hearing answers to certain types of questions. They know that, like the racists and homophobes before them, they are on the losing side of a rational and polite discourse. The only hope for trans hate groups is to shut down that rational and polite discourse. One strategy for doing so is to identify questions that people have and then prime trans people/trans allies to respond emotionally to those questions. The goal of the "just asking questions" routine is (1) make trans people uncomfortable but also (2) make sure that people who actually do have questions always feel attacked by the trans community instead of empathetic with the trans community. It's a strategy. By shutting down possibilities for education we play directly into their hand. I wrote more in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29267480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29267480

MrWiffles 5y ago
One more long-shot idea that occurred to me, and might be worth your time (totally up to you!) would be to contact your various "scopes" of government. I know next to nothing about Brazil, so I don't know what that would look like for you, but if it were in a mid-sized US metro area I'd look at: - City Council Representative - State Department of Transportation or Public Safety (In my case this would be Texas DPS) - County level law enforcement, not city; (so not El Paso, TX police dept. in my case but El Paso County Sherrif) - State level law enforcement (Not Texas Rangers in this case, as I think that's for other stuff, but something adjacent if it exists? Just my guess as to an example, may not have even a remote analogue in Brazil) - Federal law enforcement (FBI in the US for example; filing a report/complaint won't get them mad at you unless you really abuse the hell out of it) - Mayor's office for your city - Metro transit authority if you have one - State House of Representatives and/or Senate (your legislative representatives, if you have those) - National House and/or Senate representatives (I'm in El Paso, TX so in my case Veronica Escobar - House - Ted Cruz (*shudder*) and John Cornyn in the Senate) - Federal Trade Commission (oversees trade issues, privacy in the US) - State Attorney General's office (Texas AG in this case) - Maybe the equivalent of your state governor if appropriate/possible (for example in my case, Gregg Abbott) - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (in the US this is a federal agency, but no idea what the equivalent would be elsewhere or if you even have one) - Federal Communications Commission (The FCC overseas telecommunications systems and law in the US; equivalent may or may not even exist) Now you're probably thinking "most of those don't deal with criminal exploitation/violent crime/theft!" and you're right. The goal is to make enough noise about it in hopes that somebody in some agency somewhere will just give a damn and hopefully at least make a phone call to a buddy who knows the CEO or something, or draft a letter, or just do something, nearly anything, to poke Uber in the ribs and give 'em a little pain. Sometimes all you need is the attention of just one person in the right position to get others on board, so more complaints = higher probability somebody will do something. In the US there's an organization called the "Better Business Bureau", or the "BBB", that maintains ratings of merchants and small/mid-sized businesses and tries to mediate disputes. I don't know much about them or if that would be appropriate in this case if it were in the US, but see if an equivalent exists in Brazil or just your local area. You might be surprised at what you find. Another possibility: take your story to local taxi drivers/companies that COMPETE with Uber. They might be willing to put advertising dollars behind your story to help create a sense of distrust among the public, getting them a bit "scared" to use Uber so that folks use them instead. A slimy tactic, sure, but if your government won't protect you and your fellow citizens, the "slimeball" factor rests on their shoulders, not yours, because they forced you into a corner by not doing the most fundamental job of any government: providing basic safety by enforcing the law. --- You could also, as others have mentioned, try getting the local (or maybe even national) news media to do a story on this too. Just be aware that being in the public spotlight like that might not be the safest thing for you - retaliation from whomever is doing the extorting could be a serious concern or risk. I doubt Uber themselves would bother you, even through a "proxy" or hired/other "agent", especially as far away as Brazil, so I wouldn't worry about them. The individuals using Uber to harm people, however, might be organized in some way, and they might target you for...something. I don't know what. Don't let that scare you off right away, and don't go buying every gun/weapon you can find "just in case" either, at least not until you're fairly sure you MUST have one. Avoid extreme actions without justified necessity. Don't let this risk put you off entirely - that's exactly why intimidation and retaliation tactics exist and it's the ONLY way they work! Just be aware that there could be some risk depending on your society, laws, public exposure, etc. and discuss that with the journalists involved to find out how to maintain credibility without making yourself an easy target. They might have some pretty clever ideas, so give them a chance! You're in a tough spot but I appreciate you shining the light of day on this. And you're right, if they don't fix this somebody's going to get mugged, raped, or worse, and it's very likely happened already, and all the while Uber's content to just keep their head in the sand. Not great for "optics" and "public opinion", after all. I continue to wish you luck! Here's hoping something breaks loose!