36 ms·

Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals

965 points by colin_jack 4y ago

EGreg 4y ago
“There’s nothing wrong with capitalism. This is a problem of crony-capitalism / corporatism. <EOF>” That is what people will reflexively say to any analysis that discusses the role of the profit motive and wall street earnings in leading to these outcomes. The fact that systematic actions like this to amass advantages at expense of the public happen with regularity at Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, General Motors and many other for-profit enterprises, means there may be some room to improve the economic paradigm in which these things are built. And in fact, we have just such a paradigm, and the products of it (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) are of a completely different character. They don’t have an investor class at all, that needs to recoup their investment by extracting rents forever. The alternative to for-profit venture funded companies owned by Wall St doesn’t have to be communism or socialism. It can be a gift economy such Science, Creative Commons, or Open Source Software and decentralized permissionless networks based around protocols like HTTP. For example, Uber can be replaced with an open source, decentralized marketplace that doesn’t take 50% of all drivers’ revenue, but has a free market and ratings / reviews operated by the community. But if a project is funded by venture CAPITALISTS, subsidized by money-losing unit economics through multiple rounds, and then dumped on the public in a Wall St IPO, and subsequently owned by pension funds and other pools of capital, then yes that is a quintessential example of Capitalism. And the result is that there is an investor class that will always tell Uber’s board to maintain centralized control and extract rents from the public, squeeze drivers, as well as try to hack the society around them (as in this article: secretly trick, get around the police, lobby state officials) whereas an open source decentralized system wouldn’t do any of that. The dream of cryptocurrency was that the developers would sell the tokens to the public and make money on the primary sale, but after that, the network would belong to the public. Even any royalties that could accrue (such as on every transfer of the token) would be above-board and disclosed once, so everyone knows the deal. Sadly, rather than focusing on a “peer to peer cash system” as Satoshi’s whitepaper said, the entire space switched around 2013 to “store of value”, HODL and speculative investment. It’s actually a cop-out that happened because blockchains can’t scale well. Bitcoin was the granddaddy and it solved the double-spend problem, but in a very brute-force way, by gathering all transactions in the world in one place every 10 mins to search for a double-spend. It’s actually even worse than that, because every transaction has to be gossipped to every miner, and all mined transactions have to be stored forever in an ever-growing history. The tech is a straightjacket but the vision is good. We do need smart contracts to replace privately-owned middlemen, but we need the smart contracts to run on a better DLT than Blockchain. There have been tons of innovation since 2008 but Bitcoin maximalists and Web2 maximalists both deride all of it, so progress depends on open-minded people who look past the grift of utility-less coins long enough to build something useful
- ngcazz 4y ago
  Cryptocurrency is a huge non-sequitur here.
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  This kind of collusion between the state and a company is antithetical to capitalism.
  - elcomet 4y ago
    Yes but without a strong state to prevent this, the incentives do push the companies to collude
    - dixie_land 4y ago
      With a strong state, it’ll just be easier to collude without even having to maintain an appearance.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    It might be on paper, but that's a "No True Scotsman" argument, just like all the socialists saying "oh the Soviet Union wasn't real socialism!". In reality, this seems to be what happens every time, empirically. So maybe this is just what real life capitalism is like?
    - blowski 4y ago
      Most economic systems go through the same 3 step process: 1. Start out with a good idea. 2. Go through a golden period of good results, in which there is much innovation, and established dominant players are upended. 3. Revert to form, in which the newly dominant players prevent further change. The key is not looking for the perfect system at step 2, but the one which causes step 3 to break down in the quickest time possible.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    You talking about Uber or the cab cartels they were competing with?
switchstance 4y ago
ajaimk 4y ago
Why is this news? It's from 2014... We already knew all this. They even made a TV series about all this.
raverbashing 4y ago
But the question is, how many politicians and lobbyists were on the other side, trying to keep the status quo as it was, in favour of taxi drivers?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  I don't know of a more corrupt industry than the taxi industry. The tight control of supply via taxi licenses, the low pay of drivers and the inability for any incumbents to enter. It was horrendous and hugely profitable for those in power and exploitative for anyone needing such services.
- aunty_helen 4y ago
  All you have to do is look at cities where they don’t have Uber and you’ll find a strong taxi mafia. Sometimes a literal taxi mafia like in Budapest. I was living in Valancia Spain, the first day I got there I remember walking down what turned out to be one of the main streets in the city to find it being blocked by hundreds of taxis in a peaceful protest. Ok fine, I didn’t know why and it was all cosure with the police. Then a few months later my ability to use a good quality app with verifiable trust (extremely important in some parts of the world) and recourse to the operator was suddenly taken away. I had to order taxis using one of the crap taxi middlemen apps which offer little to no support for when things go a wrong and I was back to riding in cars where the driver was actively trying to rip you off. Oh you’ve lived here 10 years but you need to look on the map of where one of the main streets is? Ok great, make sure the meeter is started before you do that. Oh it’s after 8pm so that short 4.50€ journey is automatically a minimum 6€ Ok great enjoy. 25€ to the airport? I’m sure this used to be 14… Taxis suck, lack accountability and will do anything it takes to maintain their market share while providing a horrible scammy service.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    Which app was that?
HL33tibCe7 4y ago
Really feels like there’s a massive amount of corruption in European politics these days. Especially in the EU.
- lancesells 4y ago
  Outside of maybe freshman politicians I would think that corruption exists with many, if not most, politicians in the US as well. I can't speak to other countries but power tends to corrupt.
- geitir 4y ago
  More regulation => more opportunities for bribery => more corruption
NelsonMinar 4y ago
FWIW this is about the company's founding DNA: "The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick".
ethbr0 4y ago
When you have a massive leak of pervasive illegal behavior throughout the company, from the CEO down, and your response is... >> "Kalanick’s spokesperson said Uber’s expansion initiatives were “led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber’s robust legal, policy and compliance groups”." ... I don't think that messages what Kalanick’s spokesperson thinks it messages.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  "It's all okay because our legal and compliance teams said it was." Talk about non-sequiturs.
- exhaze 4y ago
  Disclaimer: at Uber 2014-2018 Travis has not been CEO for 5 years. Based on this article, what do you want the people who actually presently work at Uber to do?
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    Quit? And find a job in a legitimate company?
    - exhaze 4y ago
      I literally left Uber and moved to Japan. Mostly because I could not stand inequality I saw in SF and US. Did feel like Uber wasn’t great for full time drivers as well and it bothered me a lot and always on my mind. So I did that. You ever actually do something like that or are you just giving theoretical advice based on stuff you’ve never done? Easy to say stuff like this. Tell me when you’ve actually done something similar yourself.
      - jeffrallen 4y ago
        In 2004, I left the US on humanitarian missions, never came back. Glad it worked out for you too.
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Still a million times better than what it replaced. About 20 years ago I was working with the Australian taxi cab industry. The hq of the regulatory authority shared the address of the main payment system. The regulatory authority was made up of representatives of each taxi cab company that each had one vote. There was one taxi company (the one that controlled the payment system allowed) with 200+ subsidiaries that made up that organization. If anyone tried to get into the taxi industry they'd use their 200 votes to say they are not allowed by regulations. This was a company making 2billion a year in one state of Australia alone (NSW). It was so incredibly fucking corrupt and i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in. It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption.
- blowski 4y ago
  The technology definitely made life easier for passengers, especially in big cities. Prices were cheaper for some time, but only because they were subsidised by investors, so hardly a net gain. Arguably, they made the environment worse by pushing middle income off public transport and into taxis For drivers, things seem to have got worse. I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. But there is an argument to say that the local taxi cartels needed breaking up, and only a company prepared to engage in these kind of tactics could have done it. I don’t know what I think about all this.
  - alisonatwork 4y ago
    A key point here is that Uber didn't just disrupt taxi cartels, it also undermined public transport services. In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. To me this is the true long term damage of their VC-funded predatory pricing model.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - rawling 4y ago
oefrha 4y ago
Meh, any corp of this caliber lobbies as much as they can. It wouldn’t have succeeded if cabs weren’t so shitty.
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  They "succeeded" because every ride so far was subsidised by investors. It's not a level playing field for the cabs, which have to make a profit.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    Or their competitors who played by the rules.
    - ChadNauseam 4y ago
      I'm not sure that the uber competitors (taxis) followed the rules as much as some people seem to think. For instance, why is their card reader is always broken?
  - oefrha 4y ago
    I’m sure the cab cartel was on life support and only tried to scam every tourist and sometimes even locals because they couldn’t make a profit otherwise.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Regardless of what you think about the company or their products, letting them get away with this sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion. Whether you agree with the specific laws they’ve broken, the precedent would allow companies to break other laws you might agree with more (and do more damage as a result).
- dannyw 4y ago
  Companies break laws every minute. Basically every US company operating in the EU is breaking GDPR post-Privacy Shield right now: it's illegal to transfer data of EU residents to US data centers. Oil and gas companies have been blatantly breaking laws for decades. Volkswagen, along with a majority of car manufacturers have been cheating emissions testing for ages. Big banks literally rigged LIBOR through intentionally lying about numbers and laughing and not a single executive is in jail.
  - orzig 4y ago
    Agreed! And they should be held accountable too!
  - asdfjkhasjkdfh 4y ago
    And they all set dangerous precedents, and now uber is setting yet another. And we all got dumber by taking the discussion to this direction. Enough defeatism.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      To add to that, it could also be inferred that the Ubers of the world are able to get to where they are from the numbing affect of all the previous evilCorps that came before creating the death from a thousand paper cuts scenario. They're just standing on the shoulders of evilCorpGiants?!
  - monooso 4y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is. IIRC, Volkswagen were fined several billion, and a number of senior executives were charged.
oriettaxx 4y ago
“Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.”
nprateem 4y ago
And now they enter the "ask for forgiveness" stage, get a slap on the wrist and get to bank their billions.
- miles 4y ago
  > and get to bank their billions. The only billions Uber has is in losses: 2022: Uber lost $6 billion to start the year, but reports a rebound in ride-hailing and no issues with driver supply https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billion-loss-from-investments-but-reports-a-rides-rebound-beating-estimates-11651664829 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billio... 2021: Uber is still losing a lot of money https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-still-losing-a-lot-of-money-latest-earnings-show-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-still-losing-a-lot-of-m... 12 Years After It Was Founded, Uber Says It Might Finally Make a Profit https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/12-years-after-it-was-founded-uber-says-it-might-f/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/12-years-after-it-... 2020: Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019, but it thinks it can get profitable by the end of 2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126965/uber-q4-earnings-report-net-loss-revenue-profit-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126965/uber-q4-earnings-... 2019: Uber lost over $5 billion in one quarter, but don’t worry, it gets worse https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-quarter-loss-profit-lyft-traffic-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-qu...
  - bambax 4y ago
    Uber may be losing billions, but Travis Kalanick still has his. > In the weeks leading up to [his] resignation, Kalanick sold off approximately 90% of his shares in Uber, for a profit of about $2.5 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick
  - amelius 4y ago
    Sadly, this is normal for growing companies. Amazon lost year after year at some point. Uber's CEO is still laughing their way to the bank. F...ing up our economy is profitable.
0x_rs 4y ago
Inexcusable. Yet no considerable action will be taken against this corporation nor the corrupted, lobbied politicians that enabled this will ever be held accountable, let alone be cornered to resign from whatever seat they occupy. It's not a good indication for the future how the EU seems to be one giant toybox for fraudulent activities such as these, with all the recent scandals.. there seems to be very little interest in even just keeping a façade of legitimacy.
crikeyjoe 4y ago
skilled 4y ago
Biden being shown as a puppet in this context is certainly something. Admittedly, Guardian is the only news site I check ever (last 5 or so years anyway), and even I am impressed that they went with a straight arrow. Good job. // Weird seeing downvotes for my reply without any comments/input. Just goes to show - ignorance is bliss.
wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne They can't be very smart, Joe Biden is the least corrupt president ever and has committed to total transparency: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-briefing-idUSKBN29Q08S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-briefing-idUSKB...
- ratsmack 4y ago
  >pledges A pledge has the same value as good intentions.
  - wronglyprepaid 4y ago
    It is not just a pledge as so far he has not broken it https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/?ruling=true https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-prom...
Entinel 4y ago
There are some particularly bad things here like > Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to press ahead regardless. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no? Agreed that right place and time must be thought out.” However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate. Break the law until they get caught and pay a small fine. Uber will get away with this and people will continue to use Uber.
- electrondood 4y ago
  > However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate. No it absolutely isn't. Uber is uniquely corrupt. Their toxic tech-bro culture has been baked in from the start.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    It absolutely is when paying fines for breaking the law is called 'cost of doing business'. Businesses want to pretend they are people with rights, then they need to be punished. Send the whole C-suite and Board to fucking prison. Uber is super corrupt but hardly unique.
    - kevincox 4y ago
      Why would any rational company follow the law when the cost of not doing so is miniscule and the upsides are huge. If the law encourages people not to follow it the law isn't very effective.
javajosh 4y ago
I don't think "they broke the law" has the same weight it used to. The American justice system has been so entirely captured by capital that such an accusation merely tells me that one of Uber's enemies spent real money on a PR firm. Plus, the laws they broke are ones that almost no-one except taxi companies (and perhaps city tax officials) care about.
mercy_dude 4y ago
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  What does that have anything to do with Uber’s crimes
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  so many words, not a single truth stated backed by some facts... I guess you've never seen Europe from closer than Fox news screen
photochemsyn 4y ago
Interesting reporting about behavior that goes somewhat beyond business-as-usual for corporate lobbying efforts (not a justification, just a note that these kinds of tactics are relatively common and this report is not an extreme outlier, compared to pharmaceutical lobbying for example). However, it's curious that there's no mention of Uber's largest backer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which put an unprecedented $3.5 billion into Uber (initially, that may not be all). All the article mentions is this: > "From Moscow to Johannesburg, bankrolled with unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidised journeys, seducing drivers and passengers on to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable." https://www.thestreet.com/investing/how-much-of-uber-does-saudi-arabia-own-15162803 https://www.thestreet.com/investing/how-much-of-uber-does-sa... Uber's relationship with Saudi Arabia certainly deserves some mention: > "In the interview with the digital news platform, Khosrowshahi said the 2019 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi shows that "the (Saudi) government said they made a mistake. It's a serious mistake, but we've made serious mistakes, too right?""
0xmohit 4y ago
How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide (2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...
- SilasX 4y ago
  HN discussion of that Greyball article (not just linking because my comment is the top one and explains it, or anything...). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564
jeffrallen 4y ago
Corporations are people, and people can be terminated by the state. Corporate death penalty. Easy. (Except that I agree neither with corporate personhood, nor the death penalty.)
theplumber 4y ago
Uber is the best thing that happened to the taxi industry, from client's perspective
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Except all the weird/interesting cab stories are no longer going to happen. Mine include: Cabbie suggesting we pick up girl from bus stop on the way to club. we did and yes we had to pay the extra for his amusement. Cabbie runs out of fuel. Gets help, gets to petrol station, wants to charge us extra for the time! Ordering 2 taxis just in case. Anger ensues. Cabbie looking on the floor for his phone while driving. Seemed stoned. Doing a few hundred miles in a random cab because the whole train system was screwed up.
wizwit999 4y ago
Honestly, I'm happy they resisted the pressure. Visiting Istanbul, and the taxis suck here (apparently the taxi drivers got Uber banned here)
marban 4y ago
Lots of early stock holders in the comments.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
All this effort and legal chicanery just to build a mediocre, unprofitable business.
- oneepic 4y ago
  Yes, let's focus on the business and forget all about the product, which just so happens to be ubiquitous today, used in most developed countries and 10,000 cities, and people use "Uber" as a verb the same way "Google" is used for searching the web. /s
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Well in my country, it has gone from being ubiquitous to being rarely available, to the point that Uber is considering exiting the market. JNCO jeans and Cabbage Patch Kids were ubiquitous too at one point. Doesn’t mean that they represented anything more unsustainable fads.
xwdv 4y ago
Everything Uber has done is pretty standard for a lot of big companies, people just love to bash Uber for some reason, probably people with ties to the utterly corrupt Taxi industry.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  No. The behavior described in the article is not "standard." When you identify a law in a big company that forbids you from doing a business practice, you stop and obey the law. There is no alternative approach, particularly in a big company. The conduct described in the article is basically reckless win-at-any-cost nonsense that reflects Uber's very survival was forbidden by law. The politicians who prevented subordinates from enforcing the law should be called out one-by-one and made to explain themselves. The lesson from the parent comment is not the correct lesson.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    I see no reason to be a staunch defender of bullshit unjust laws meant to stifle innovation and uphold monopolistic behaviors. The executives can hold their heads high at their acts of corporate level civil disobedience.
    - unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
      No, serious executives cannot do that. If an executive acknowledges a business practice violates law, the action item is not 'do it anyway'. There is no corporate level civil disobedience. This is not correct and not reflective of the way this actually goes in real life corporate America.
      - xwdv 4y ago
        There is. You can treat fines as just another cost of doing business if your returns will be far greater.
        4y ago
kurupt213 4y ago
I don’t know what’s worse. This, or VW writing software to identify an emissions test was being done and entering a low emissions mode that car never used when under normal operation
stef25 4y ago
Uber isn't the most ethical company for sure but here in Brussels the taxi industry is pretty shady as well. Getting a taxi license costs an exorbitant amount of money and it's done through all kinds of dodgy deals. There's 1-2 companies that have a monopoly on the whole industry. There's weird rules about which types of taxis can "serve" the airport, akin to what mobsters are responsible for collecting trash in what areas. You'll often get "sorry the payment terminal is out of order, cash only" BS. A study a few years ago showed the main taxi company, according to their tax documents, earned a ridiculously low amount of money per day (= obvious dodging of taxes). They clearly refused to innovate for years. When you called their number you'd get some unintelligible voice on the other end that would give you about 10 sec to state your details before they'd clearly run out of patience. You could only request pickups at specific addresses that would then be connected to your phone number / profile. So "pick me up on this street corner" was impossible. The last time we called one for a ride to the airport they didn't show up at the agreed time so we got an Uber. Taxi company called us many times screaming insults down the phone, followed by an offensive email with an invitation to pay and threats of small claims courts. In light of all that, I have zero problems with someone else moving in fast to break things.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  I don't use Uber. Several friends do, and, as a third party watching I'd suggest the experience is no better but now with a shiny phone app and exploitative would-be unicorn tech corporation at the helm. Most recent experience, we were in the docks, the docks are restricted access for terrorism prevention, on entry you need a specific purpose. Our purpose was to inspect a possible party venue (an actual steamship, it's awesome, for a few grand we could have them steam it out into the sea while we celebrated - but, on viewing it seemed like if weather was bad on the day it'd suck as a venue because there's only very limited indoor capacity). So after we've looked around we need to get back out of the docks. Friend summons an Uber. No problem initially, "This is why I use Uber" she says. Her ride gets to the edge of the docks and cancels, presumably because the driver sees scary warning saying "Restricted Area. State your business at checkpoint" and hit cancel because he has managed to live in a port city for years without knowing about this. She summons another one. It too gets to the edge of the docks and then cancels. "Uber says if this keeps happening they're forbidden from cancelling" she claims. Sure enough now her requests are just denied automatically. So once she gives up I called a regular taxi. That driver couldn't find us, because apparently a massive sign with the name of the ship is too hard to notice ("I had no idea that was here"), but once we walked a few minutes to somewhere this driver could recognise we were driven out of the docks to go for cocktails with another friend.
goopthink 4y ago
… and in retrospect, was it worth it? Or was it a pyrrhic short term victory at a huge expense for something that would have happened eventually anyway but at a slower pace? Was this all just a quest to accelerate the inevitable outside of what overlapping Overton windows allowed for?
jmyeet 4y ago
There’s nothing particularly surprising here. This is capitalism. Pretty much every company operates like this. That doesn’t make every company the same. Goldman Sachs literally killed people for profit. Defense companies made up for their revenue loss from the end of the Afghanistan war by earning almost that same amount in military aid to Ukraine (seriously, our ~$50B in both cases). Those aren’t tech companies FWIW. Even there there’sa error spectrum. AirBnB is cancer, for example. But at last Uber killed the taxi industry, which was almost universally awful, corrupt and horrible to use. Seriously, good riddance. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Uber, Lyft, etc have to operate as commercial enterprises rather than VC money incinerators. This business isn’t going away.
rob_c 4y ago
But don't worry they're a changed company in the valley now and they're so sorry for past behaviour (nothing to do with being caught)... https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4 https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
speeder 4y ago
I actually joined a political party in my country, because they had the intention of protecting Uber. Some people wonder, but why? Why protect such scummy company? Well, it was literally to save lives, as much illegal Uber behaviour is, what they were trying to replace was worse, MUCH worse. Where I live "Taxi Mafia" was a thing, not just in the usual sense people imagine, like blocking competitors using regulations, but people were murdering others, there were beatings, assassinations, theft, high level government corruption, the Taxi Mafia was evil and destructive as any other "<drugs/guns/slavery> Mafia" you can imagine. A lot of people claim Uber is evil because they say their workers are contractors and not employees. Well, before Uber if you wanted to be a driver, you had to purchase your own car, open your own company, and then give 50k USD to the local mafia boss, and promise to join combat whenever called. Combat? Yes, combat, gathering up drivers to kill a competitor was a thing, one infamous case for example: out of town driver parked near airport to deliver someone, a client in a hurry got on his cab as the other client was leaving, the local mafia didn't like this happened, so they surrounded the car and invited the driver for a "walk", took him under a nearby bridge, and they all kicked him until he was a mangled mess, and then they kicked him some more to make sure he was dead.
- foepys 4y ago
  I don't understand why breaking up the mafia wasn't a more pressing issue? What makes Uber drivers different that they won't be dragged from their cars and kicked to death?
  - SSLy 4y ago
    the politicians from the parent commenter's city/state aren't in uber's bed
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      They don't have to be? They would only need to intimidate/recruit the Uber drivers (which they did) and use their gov connections to cover up the crime. A local mafia problem is a local mafia problem, no matter the transportation system being hijacked. This whole thread kinda turned into Taxi whataboutism to deflect from Uber.
yieldcrv 4y ago
ITT: How Softbank and A16z broke up regional taxi mafias, while absorbing disproportionate press from many jurisdictions at once
silveira 4y ago
I highly recommend the episode 271- Uber from the podcast The Dollop which goes about the history of Uber. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVkb2xsb3AubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/YzYwMDc1MGM0MDNkNWJjNDU1ZjkwNjI3ZDlkYTEzZmU?ep=14 https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVkb2xsb3AubGl...
- mtlynch 4y ago
  The Dollop just plagiarizes content from other sources. They have a (not always complete) list of sources on their website, but on the podcast itself, they read other sources word-for-word without giving attribution: https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/new-claims-on-the-dollop-sources-page/ https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/n... https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/07/15/how-a-comedy-podcast-sparked-a-plagiarism-debate/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/07/15/how-a-comedy-podc...
jollybean 4y ago
Someone describe to me why politicians even bother to meet with Uber. Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others? Where is the 'money flow' happening here? Is someone being bribed? Was Uber funnelling money to a related cause? I can understand ministers wanting to please a big up and coming company, sure, that's their job in some way, but not like this. How does Uber have the ability to get the VP to 'change their speech'. What's going on? That's not in the article.
- wronglyprepaid 4y ago
  > Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others? Yes I agree, Biden is also very tough on corruption[1], historically so in fact. [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/08/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administration-is-taking-action-to-restore-and-strengthen-american-democracy/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
  - zbird 4y ago
    Obviously we are to trust whitehouse.gov on how tough on corruption the administration is.
- Ericson2314 4y ago
  There is an ideological attachment to the gig company. See Macron trying to change the labor laws in France. In Macron's mind, France is "uncompetitive" and so Uber is like a straight-to-the-veins routing around the political system to change that.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    Having lived in France, I would definitely agree on some level with that, I see an entire nation of people fighting over surpluses and a lot less productivity - but I wonder if even that would be enough. Agree with Macron or not - that's at least him doing is job to 'make things happen' - but the degree of complicity is just to much. There's money going somewhere somehow, that's the missing piece. I don't suggest there is outright bribery because that's 'illegal' and would 'really get them in trouble' but something softer like campaign contributions or related causes, or favours here and there.
tapatio 4y ago
The new norm: to become a unicorn you have to lie, cheat, and steal.
jsemrau 4y ago
How is this news? This has been known for a long while. I, myself of all people, have written an article about how dangerous lobbying from these tech companies is [1] Corporations need to get their funding out of politics because it perverts the democratic process. The same applies to foreign influence. It bothers me greatly how much right-wing parties all-over the world are taking a pro-Russian stance. [1]https://medium.com/@jsemrau/uber-and-lift-set-a-very-dangerous-political-precedent-bc6585126198 https://medium.com/@jsemrau/uber-and-lift-set-a-very-dangero...
ETH_start 4y ago
Uber has massively improved taxi services around the world. The labor laws and taxi medallion rackets they circumvented were massive barriers to improving transportation services.
lesstyzing 4y ago
The Uber propaganda here in this thread is insane. Taxi’s maybe have been shit but that does not in anyway justify Uber breaking the law to conquer the market (btw, now that they’ve done that, they’ve also turned to shit because it was unsustainable). Perfect may be the enemy of good but we shouldn’t excuse companies using endless VC money and law breaking to achieve something that’s marginally better for consumers. Obviously there are some exceptions to this in the comments but generally, in modern countries where the taxi firms aren’t run by literal mafias and killing people, we should condemn Uber’s behaviour.
- hourago 4y ago
  Uber is well known for paying to manipulate on-line discourse. The amount of propaganda just adds to my grievances towards the company.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  My observation is that nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press, isolated in local news under different taxi brands, and in municipal court filings. This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves. Whereas any incident with Uber is international news. Makes it harder for me to elevate Uber’s issues as being as egregious as presented. I recognize their flaws, I also recognize the market need which still remains. So sure, make a better one thats more compliant. When I and others point this out we’re not giving Uber a pass. Just assigning a weight to the problems.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves. Can you give an example? I've never heard of that. They usually lack any power at all. > nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press Everyone seemed satisfied in my experience. I did see Uber's talking points everywhere on social media - how terrible taxis were. Unforunately, taxis lacked the money to run their own information campaign.
    - 4y ago
intrasight 4y ago
Rules are meant to be broken. That's how progress occurs. The courts will decide what, if any, sanctions to apply. This is as it should be in a liberal democracy.
- zbird 4y ago
  Looks like you're quoting a book on social progress. This isn't it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wolverine876 4y ago
> More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC [and the Guardian] will in the coming days publish a series of investigative reports about the tech giant. OT: What happened to the NY Times? They seem to have stopped doing ground-breaking investigations of the powerful, including government. Instead, we get investigations of trends and porn sites. What are they doing? It would be an incredile resource to lose. Seriously, please share the last investigation they did that fits that description?
- flakiness 4y ago
  https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/about-uber-files-investigation/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/about-uber-fi... Only US media listed is WP. I guess this is because the file is about international (non-US) behavior of Uber and ICIJ might have asked for help in media in each country. Uber's behavior in the US is well covered by this very popular book [1] and it is authored by an NYT reporter, based on his own reporting on NYT. I won't argue about NYT's general trends, but it's not very fair to complain NYT not to cover Uber. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/0393358615/ https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    I'm concerned more than complaining, and not about Uber coverage but about investigative reporting in general. The reporting in that book was years ago.
wolverine876 4y ago
I think it's important to realize that Uber is what SV has become: Corruption and abuse of power as the primary tools of business, not innovation. Embrace of the powerful, not the little guy in their garage. Destroying other people and embracing sociopathology.. There's a long way from Steve Jobs' Apple, or Netscape, or many others (including FOSS!), who made exciting ground-breaking innovations, to Uber.
mi_lk 4y ago
... the leak is from 2013-2017 when Travis Kalanick was still CEO, I mean it was bad but we already know it.
Kalanos 4y ago
and scheduled me a 5:15am ride at 10pm the night before so i could get to their airport at the click of a button. where else is the driver going to make $25 (guessing their actual profit from $40 ride) in 20min at 5am? it's in the best interest of the people and progress. that's what the law should be enabling, not defending taxi licenses and unions
- Nursie 4y ago
  Uber don't schedule anything in most markets, they just look for a driver a couple of minutes before. I'd never rely on that for something important like an airport trip.
WalterBright 4y ago
Laws that enshrine and entrench the taxi monopoly are bad laws.
polynomial 4y ago
I don't feel great about taking Uber, but until NYC gets the TV screen out of my face, it's a no brainer from a user experience pov.
dnissley 4y ago
The laws being broken were clearly unjust and Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition) by breaking them. That doesn't mean every underhanded thing Uber has ever done has been justified, but in this particular instance it seems like it was. No one wants to be sympathetic to a large corporation of course, but that's a conversation most people aren't willing to have...
- pyrale 4y ago
  > The laws being broken were clearly unjust We're talking about laws from foreign countries too here, some of which were clearly aimed at preventing civil servants from becoming corrupt. > Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition) Comitting "civil disobedience" against a foreign country to force them to open to business? Sure, it may be a tradition if you refer to Matthew Perry or William Walker.
entwife 4y ago
Uber was better than taxi because it had an app and taxis did not. However, taxis in many cities now have some taxi-hailing app. Once the app became available, I began to prefer taxis over "ride sharing" services like Uber and Lyft.
dayvid 4y ago
I went to Vegas earlier this year. The taxis were far better and cheaper than the Uber. Uber's are also a lot more expensive now. I think UberPool was going to be Uber's killer feature. It made taking Uber's more regularly affordable for different groups of people, but COVID sadly ruined it.
aftergibson 4y ago
I see this is hitting the front page of the guardian with that heavy hitting colour scheme but reading through the articles I feel a big… so what? Maybe I’m just apathetic but it feels like a company that’s fought to exist in a world of crappy, shady incumbents and made life meaningfully better for a lot of people. I’m skeptical of a lot of technology and generally would prefer that status quo for a lot of things but this feels like a storm in a teacup for what is a pretty decent product disrupting an industry that deserved disruption, I’m almost hope Uber provides an example of how this can be done for other industries.
bradgranath 4y ago
Duh?
us0r 4y ago
Ugh ICIJ. Cherry picked stories without ability to look through raw files/data.
elforce002 4y ago
God, I love this comment section. Let's justify Uber's behavior since taxis were/are bad.
halamadrid 4y ago
I can’t imagine a world without Uber. Every city I go to, this or similar apps simply makes my commute easier and better.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Damn. That’s gonna leave a mark. It’s above the fold, on BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321
jwilber 4y ago
Taxis suck. But Uber sucks now, too. I’d still rather ride share than use a taxi, and use door dash over Uber (lest we forget Uber’s previous lawsuits), but all of the choices in the market are kind of grim.
sylware 4y ago
ofc, microsoft, its owner, has _nothing_ to do with all that. ...
blobbers 4y ago
They’ve made multiple movies/series about WeWork. Where is the movie in Uber??? Take my money! Show me the Kalanick!
rmatt2000 4y ago
"Behind every great fortune is a great crime." - Balzac. Was there ever an industry that this quote described more accurately than tech?
hahaitsfunny 4y ago
People on here pretending like unelected rich elite influencing politics via NGOs by meeting with elected government officials in Davos every year isn't a big deal or anything to worry about, and that Uber's behavior as well as the behavior of corrupt world leaders who enabled Uber, is justified because Taxi companies and labor unions are also corrupt. People unconcerned with this stuff are probably the same folks who think Klaus Schwab is a benign leader of the WEF which is just some benign global humanitarian organization, and that when Schwaab talks about penetrating government cabinets, and people owning nothing by 2030 and liking it, it's just a conspiracy. This is one of the major problems with the world - tech overlords and globalists have everyone brainwashed into thinking this dystopian shit is normal, and that we should accept it, or that it's necessary to build a "sustainable" future - whatever that means. Sounds to me like the rich and powerful will do whatever they can to become more rich and powerful, damn the costs. Their purported ends justify their means, no matter how violent, destructive, unethical or immoral. Edit: I just thought more about this. This article literally painted a scene at one point where the effing POTUS, supposedly the most powerful person in the world, was being spoken to like a child by the CEO of a corporation, and then changed policy on the spot after being bullied around at a secretive conference that I won't even get into the sketchiness of. If this isn't concerning, I don't know what is.
piyushpr134 4y ago
Uber works like a terrorist organization. Their city teams work like terrorist sleeper cells...no office, no call center only email contact. They bribe, they buy, they infiltrate and they have a huge fanatical base who won't listen anything against them.
jheriko 4y ago
this was always obvious to me from day one. i didn't need a leak to notice this. it was flagrant and blatant at the time. everyone was so busy being a fanboy it drove me a bit mad... especially operating without licenses and looking as if nobody had done the basic due diligence on what was needed to operate at all. honestly the entire "genius" of the idea itself is "ignore the law and do whatever"
- TwoHeadedBeast 4y ago
  Indeed, the app, while nicely implemented, contained nothing groundbreaking.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
Isn’t this leak about 5 years old?
DLA 4y ago
I just wonder when companies just stopped caring at all about doing the right thing? Are there any objectively honest big companies out there? - Enron. We all know what happened there. - Facebook. Industrial-scale slimy. - Exxon. Poor Alaska. - BP. OMG poor Gulf Coast. - McKinsey. Here’s how to sell more Fentanyl. - Experian. Let’s lie about that giant data leak. - AIG, Bond rating agencies, Lehman etc. We’re printing money from total crap paper, and we know it, but SHHH the OMG the $$$. - J&J. Talc powder is very bad and we knew it for a long time. - Purdue Pharma. Evil opioid empire. - Bayer. Roundup poison (someone explain why this is still legal to sell anywhere for any purpose). And the list goes on forever! So sad and utterly morally bankrupt. Corporate boards are part of the problem. In so many case are they not doing their oversight job because they are on the take or utterly incompetent or maybe both. </rant> Sorry, this just makes me crazy.

965 points by colin_jack 4y ago

“There’s nothing wrong with capitalism. This is a problem of crony-capitalism / corporatism. <EOF>” That is what people will reflexively say to any analysis that discusses the role of the profit motive and wall street earnings in leading to these outcomes. The fact that systematic actions like this to amass advantages at expense of the public happen with regularity at Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, General Motors and many other for-profit enterprises, means there may be some room to improve the economic paradigm in which these things are built. And in fact, we have just such a paradigm, and the products of it (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) are of a completely different character. They don’t have an investor class at all, that needs to recoup their investment by extracting rents forever. The alternative to for-profit venture funded companies owned by Wall St doesn’t have to be communism or socialism. It can be a gift economy such Science, Creative Commons, or Open Source Software and decentralized permissionless networks based around protocols like HTTP. For example, Uber can be replaced with an open source, decentralized marketplace that doesn’t take 50% of all drivers’ revenue, but has a free market and ratings / reviews operated by the community. But if a project is funded by venture CAPITALISTS, subsidized by money-losing unit economics through multiple rounds, and then dumped on the public in a Wall St IPO, and subsequently owned by pension funds and other pools of capital, then yes that is a quintessential example of Capitalism. And the result is that there is an investor class that will always tell Uber’s board to maintain centralized control and extract rents from the public, squeeze drivers, as well as try to hack the society around them (as in this article: secretly trick, get around the police, lobby state officials) whereas an open source decentralized system wouldn’t do any of that. The dream of cryptocurrency was that the developers would sell the tokens to the public and make money on the primary sale, but after that, the network would belong to the public. Even any royalties that could accrue (such as on every transfer of the token) would be above-board and disclosed once, so everyone knows the deal. Sadly, rather than focusing on a “peer to peer cash system” as Satoshi’s whitepaper said, the entire space switched around 2013 to “store of value”, HODL and speculative investment. It’s actually a cop-out that happened because blockchains can’t scale well. Bitcoin was the granddaddy and it solved the double-spend problem, but in a very brute-force way, by gathering all transactions in the world in one place every 10 mins to search for a double-spend. It’s actually even worse than that, because every transaction has to be gossipped to every miner, and all mined transactions have to be stored forever in an ever-growing history. The tech is a straightjacket but the vision is good. We do need smart contracts to replace privately-owned middlemen, but we need the smart contracts to run on a better DLT than Blockchain. There have been tons of innovation since 2008 but Bitcoin maximalists and Web2 maximalists both deride all of it, so progress depends on open-minded people who look past the grift of utility-less coins long enough to build something useful

ngcazz 4y ago
Cryptocurrency is a huge non-sequitur here.
HL33tibCe7 4y ago
This kind of collusion between the state and a company is antithetical to capitalism.
- elcomet 4y ago
  Yes but without a strong state to prevent this, the incentives do push the companies to collude
  - dixie_land 4y ago
    With a strong state, it’ll just be easier to collude without even having to maintain an appearance.
- malermeister 4y ago
  It might be on paper, but that's a "No True Scotsman" argument, just like all the socialists saying "oh the Soviet Union wasn't real socialism!". In reality, this seems to be what happens every time, empirically. So maybe this is just what real life capitalism is like?
  - blowski 4y ago
    Most economic systems go through the same 3 step process: 1. Start out with a good idea. 2. Go through a golden period of good results, in which there is much innovation, and established dominant players are upended. 3. Revert to form, in which the newly dominant players prevent further change. The key is not looking for the perfect system at step 2, but the one which causes step 3 to break down in the quickest time possible.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  You talking about Uber or the cab cartels they were competing with?

switchstance 4y ago

ajaimk 4y ago

Why is this news? It's from 2014... We already knew all this. They even made a TV series about all this.

raverbashing 4y ago

But the question is, how many politicians and lobbyists were on the other side, trying to keep the status quo as it was, in favour of taxi drivers?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
I don't know of a more corrupt industry than the taxi industry. The tight control of supply via taxi licenses, the low pay of drivers and the inability for any incumbents to enter. It was horrendous and hugely profitable for those in power and exploitative for anyone needing such services.
aunty_helen 4y ago
All you have to do is look at cities where they don’t have Uber and you’ll find a strong taxi mafia. Sometimes a literal taxi mafia like in Budapest. I was living in Valancia Spain, the first day I got there I remember walking down what turned out to be one of the main streets in the city to find it being blocked by hundreds of taxis in a peaceful protest. Ok fine, I didn’t know why and it was all cosure with the police. Then a few months later my ability to use a good quality app with verifiable trust (extremely important in some parts of the world) and recourse to the operator was suddenly taken away. I had to order taxis using one of the crap taxi middlemen apps which offer little to no support for when things go a wrong and I was back to riding in cars where the driver was actively trying to rip you off. Oh you’ve lived here 10 years but you need to look on the map of where one of the main streets is? Ok great, make sure the meeter is started before you do that. Oh it’s after 8pm so that short 4.50€ journey is automatically a minimum 6€ Ok great enjoy. 25€ to the airport? I’m sure this used to be 14… Taxis suck, lack accountability and will do anything it takes to maintain their market share while providing a horrible scammy service.
- nprateem 4y ago
  Which app was that?

HL33tibCe7 4y ago

Really feels like there’s a massive amount of corruption in European politics these days. Especially in the EU.

lancesells 4y ago
Outside of maybe freshman politicians I would think that corruption exists with many, if not most, politicians in the US as well. I can't speak to other countries but power tends to corrupt.
geitir 4y ago
More regulation => more opportunities for bribery => more corruption

NelsonMinar 4y ago

FWIW this is about the company's founding DNA: "The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick".

ethbr0 4y ago

When you have a massive leak of pervasive illegal behavior throughout the company, from the CEO down, and your response is... >> "Kalanick’s spokesperson said Uber’s expansion initiatives were “led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber’s robust legal, policy and compliance groups”." ... I don't think that messages what Kalanick’s spokesperson thinks it messages.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
"It's all okay because our legal and compliance teams said it was." Talk about non-sequiturs.
exhaze 4y ago
Disclaimer: at Uber 2014-2018 Travis has not been CEO for 5 years. Based on this article, what do you want the people who actually presently work at Uber to do?
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  Quit? And find a job in a legitimate company?
  - exhaze 4y ago
    I literally left Uber and moved to Japan. Mostly because I could not stand inequality I saw in SF and US. Did feel like Uber wasn’t great for full time drivers as well and it bothered me a lot and always on my mind. So I did that. You ever actually do something like that or are you just giving theoretical advice based on stuff you’ve never done? Easy to say stuff like this. Tell me when you’ve actually done something similar yourself.
    - jeffrallen 4y ago
      In 2004, I left the US on humanitarian missions, never came back. Glad it worked out for you too.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

Still a million times better than what it replaced. About 20 years ago I was working with the Australian taxi cab industry. The hq of the regulatory authority shared the address of the main payment system. The regulatory authority was made up of representatives of each taxi cab company that each had one vote. There was one taxi company (the one that controlled the payment system allowed) with 200+ subsidiaries that made up that organization. If anyone tried to get into the taxi industry they'd use their 200 votes to say they are not allowed by regulations. This was a company making 2billion a year in one state of Australia alone (NSW). It was so incredibly fucking corrupt and i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in. It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption.

blowski 4y ago
The technology definitely made life easier for passengers, especially in big cities. Prices were cheaper for some time, but only because they were subsidised by investors, so hardly a net gain. Arguably, they made the environment worse by pushing middle income off public transport and into taxis For drivers, things seem to have got worse. I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. But there is an argument to say that the local taxi cartels needed breaking up, and only a company prepared to engage in these kind of tactics could have done it. I don’t know what I think about all this.
- alisonatwork 4y ago
  A key point here is that Uber didn't just disrupt taxi cartels, it also undermined public transport services. In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. To me this is the true long term damage of their VC-funded predatory pricing model.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rawling 4y ago

oefrha 4y ago

Meh, any corp of this caliber lobbies as much as they can. It wouldn’t have succeeded if cabs weren’t so shitty.

burntoutfire 4y ago
They "succeeded" because every ride so far was subsidised by investors. It's not a level playing field for the cabs, which have to make a profit.
- nprateem 4y ago
  Or their competitors who played by the rules.
  - ChadNauseam 4y ago
    I'm not sure that the uber competitors (taxis) followed the rules as much as some people seem to think. For instance, why is their card reader is always broken?
- oefrha 4y ago
  I’m sure the cab cartel was on life support and only tried to scam every tourist and sometimes even locals because they couldn’t make a profit otherwise.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Regardless of what you think about the company or their products, letting them get away with this sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion. Whether you agree with the specific laws they’ve broken, the precedent would allow companies to break other laws you might agree with more (and do more damage as a result).

dannyw 4y ago
Companies break laws every minute. Basically every US company operating in the EU is breaking GDPR post-Privacy Shield right now: it's illegal to transfer data of EU residents to US data centers. Oil and gas companies have been blatantly breaking laws for decades. Volkswagen, along with a majority of car manufacturers have been cheating emissions testing for ages. Big banks literally rigged LIBOR through intentionally lying about numbers and laughing and not a single executive is in jail.
- orzig 4y ago
  Agreed! And they should be held accountable too!
- asdfjkhasjkdfh 4y ago
  And they all set dangerous precedents, and now uber is setting yet another. And we all got dumber by taking the discussion to this direction. Enough defeatism.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    To add to that, it could also be inferred that the Ubers of the world are able to get to where they are from the numbing affect of all the previous evilCorps that came before creating the death from a thousand paper cuts scenario. They're just standing on the shoulders of evilCorpGiants?!
- monooso 4y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. IIRC, Volkswagen were fined several billion, and a number of senior executives were charged.

oriettaxx 4y ago

“Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.”

nprateem 4y ago

And now they enter the "ask for forgiveness" stage, get a slap on the wrist and get to bank their billions.

miles 4y ago
> and get to bank their billions. The only billions Uber has is in losses: 2022: Uber lost $6 billion to start the year, but reports a rebound in ride-hailing and no issues with driver supply https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billion-loss-from-investments-but-reports-a-rides-rebound-beating-estimates-11651664829 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billio... 2021: Uber is still losing a lot of money https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-still-losing-a-lot-of-money-latest-earnings-show-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-still-losing-a-lot-of-m... 12 Years After It Was Founded, Uber Says It Might Finally Make a Profit https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/12-years-after-it-was-founded-uber-says-it-might-f/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/12-years-after-it-... 2020: Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019, but it thinks it can get profitable by the end of 2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126965/uber-q4-earnings-report-net-loss-revenue-profit-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126965/uber-q4-earnings-... 2019: Uber lost over $5 billion in one quarter, but don’t worry, it gets worse https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-quarter-loss-profit-lyft-traffic-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-qu...
- bambax 4y ago
  Uber may be losing billions, but Travis Kalanick still has his. > In the weeks leading up to [his] resignation, Kalanick sold off approximately 90% of his shares in Uber, for a profit of about $2.5 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick
- amelius 4y ago
  Sadly, this is normal for growing companies. Amazon lost year after year at some point. Uber's CEO is still laughing their way to the bank. F...ing up our economy is profitable.

0x_rs 4y ago

Inexcusable. Yet no considerable action will be taken against this corporation nor the corrupted, lobbied politicians that enabled this will ever be held accountable, let alone be cornered to resign from whatever seat they occupy. It's not a good indication for the future how the EU seems to be one giant toybox for fraudulent activities such as these, with all the recent scandals.. there seems to be very little interest in even just keeping a façade of legitimacy.

crikeyjoe 4y ago

skilled 4y ago

Biden being shown as a puppet in this context is certainly something. Admittedly, Guardian is the only news site I check ever (last 5 or so years anyway), and even I am impressed that they went with a straight arrow. Good job. // Weird seeing downvotes for my reply without any comments/input. Just goes to show - ignorance is bliss.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago

> Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne They can't be very smart, Joe Biden is the least corrupt president ever and has committed to total transparency: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-briefing-idUSKBN29Q08S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-briefing-idUSKB...

ratsmack 4y ago
>pledges A pledge has the same value as good intentions.
- wronglyprepaid 4y ago
  It is not just a pledge as so far he has not broken it https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/?ruling=true https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-prom...

Entinel 4y ago

There are some particularly bad things here like > Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to press ahead regardless. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no? Agreed that right place and time must be thought out.” However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate. Break the law until they get caught and pay a small fine. Uber will get away with this and people will continue to use Uber.

electrondood 4y ago
> However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate. No it absolutely isn't. Uber is uniquely corrupt. Their toxic tech-bro culture has been baked in from the start.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  It absolutely is when paying fines for breaking the law is called 'cost of doing business'. Businesses want to pretend they are people with rights, then they need to be punished. Send the whole C-suite and Board to fucking prison. Uber is super corrupt but hardly unique.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Why would any rational company follow the law when the cost of not doing so is miniscule and the upsides are huge. If the law encourages people not to follow it the law isn't very effective.

javajosh 4y ago

I don't think "they broke the law" has the same weight it used to. The American justice system has been so entirely captured by capital that such an accusation merely tells me that one of Uber's enemies spent real money on a PR firm. Plus, the laws they broke are ones that almost no-one except taxi companies (and perhaps city tax officials) care about.

mercy_dude 4y ago

Apocryphon 4y ago
What does that have anything to do with Uber’s crimes
saiya-jin 4y ago
so many words, not a single truth stated backed by some facts... I guess you've never seen Europe from closer than Fox news screen

photochemsyn 4y ago

Interesting reporting about behavior that goes somewhat beyond business-as-usual for corporate lobbying efforts (not a justification, just a note that these kinds of tactics are relatively common and this report is not an extreme outlier, compared to pharmaceutical lobbying for example). However, it's curious that there's no mention of Uber's largest backer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which put an unprecedented $3.5 billion into Uber (initially, that may not be all). All the article mentions is this: > "From Moscow to Johannesburg, bankrolled with unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidised journeys, seducing drivers and passengers on to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable." https://www.thestreet.com/investing/how-much-of-uber-does-saudi-arabia-own-15162803 https://www.thestreet.com/investing/how-much-of-uber-does-sa... Uber's relationship with Saudi Arabia certainly deserves some mention: > "In the interview with the digital news platform, Khosrowshahi said the 2019 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi shows that "the (Saudi) government said they made a mistake. It's a serious mistake, but we've made serious mistakes, too right?""

0xmohit 4y ago

How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide (2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...

SilasX 4y ago
HN discussion of that Greyball article (not just linking because my comment is the top one and explains it, or anything...). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564

jeffrallen 4y ago

Corporations are people, and people can be terminated by the state. Corporate death penalty. Easy. (Except that I agree neither with corporate personhood, nor the death penalty.)

theplumber 4y ago

Uber is the best thing that happened to the taxi industry, from client's perspective

quickthrower2 4y ago
Except all the weird/interesting cab stories are no longer going to happen. Mine include: Cabbie suggesting we pick up girl from bus stop on the way to club. we did and yes we had to pay the extra for his amusement. Cabbie runs out of fuel. Gets help, gets to petrol station, wants to charge us extra for the time! Ordering 2 taxis just in case. Anger ensues. Cabbie looking on the floor for his phone while driving. Seemed stoned. Doing a few hundred miles in a random cab because the whole train system was screwed up.

wizwit999 4y ago

Honestly, I'm happy they resisted the pressure. Visiting Istanbul, and the taxis suck here (apparently the taxi drivers got Uber banned here)

marban 4y ago

Lots of early stock holders in the comments.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

All this effort and legal chicanery just to build a mediocre, unprofitable business.

oneepic 4y ago
Yes, let's focus on the business and forget all about the product, which just so happens to be ubiquitous today, used in most developed countries and 10,000 cities, and people use "Uber" as a verb the same way "Google" is used for searching the web. /s
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Well in my country, it has gone from being ubiquitous to being rarely available, to the point that Uber is considering exiting the market. JNCO jeans and Cabbage Patch Kids were ubiquitous too at one point. Doesn’t mean that they represented anything more unsustainable fads.

xwdv 4y ago

Everything Uber has done is pretty standard for a lot of big companies, people just love to bash Uber for some reason, probably people with ties to the utterly corrupt Taxi industry.

unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
No. The behavior described in the article is not "standard." When you identify a law in a big company that forbids you from doing a business practice, you stop and obey the law. There is no alternative approach, particularly in a big company. The conduct described in the article is basically reckless win-at-any-cost nonsense that reflects Uber's very survival was forbidden by law. The politicians who prevented subordinates from enforcing the law should be called out one-by-one and made to explain themselves. The lesson from the parent comment is not the correct lesson.
- xwdv 4y ago
  I see no reason to be a staunch defender of bullshit unjust laws meant to stifle innovation and uphold monopolistic behaviors. The executives can hold their heads high at their acts of corporate level civil disobedience.
  - unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
    No, serious executives cannot do that. If an executive acknowledges a business practice violates law, the action item is not 'do it anyway'. There is no corporate level civil disobedience. This is not correct and not reflective of the way this actually goes in real life corporate America.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      There is. You can treat fines as just another cost of doing business if your returns will be far greater.
      - 4y ago

kurupt213 4y ago

I don’t know what’s worse. This, or VW writing software to identify an emissions test was being done and entering a low emissions mode that car never used when under normal operation

stef25 4y ago

Uber isn't the most ethical company for sure but here in Brussels the taxi industry is pretty shady as well. Getting a taxi license costs an exorbitant amount of money and it's done through all kinds of dodgy deals. There's 1-2 companies that have a monopoly on the whole industry. There's weird rules about which types of taxis can "serve" the airport, akin to what mobsters are responsible for collecting trash in what areas. You'll often get "sorry the payment terminal is out of order, cash only" BS. A study a few years ago showed the main taxi company, according to their tax documents, earned a ridiculously low amount of money per day (= obvious dodging of taxes). They clearly refused to innovate for years. When you called their number you'd get some unintelligible voice on the other end that would give you about 10 sec to state your details before they'd clearly run out of patience. You could only request pickups at specific addresses that would then be connected to your phone number / profile. So "pick me up on this street corner" was impossible. The last time we called one for a ride to the airport they didn't show up at the agreed time so we got an Uber. Taxi company called us many times screaming insults down the phone, followed by an offensive email with an invitation to pay and threats of small claims courts. In light of all that, I have zero problems with someone else moving in fast to break things.

tialaramex 4y ago
I don't use Uber. Several friends do, and, as a third party watching I'd suggest the experience is no better but now with a shiny phone app and exploitative would-be unicorn tech corporation at the helm. Most recent experience, we were in the docks, the docks are restricted access for terrorism prevention, on entry you need a specific purpose. Our purpose was to inspect a possible party venue (an actual steamship, it's awesome, for a few grand we could have them steam it out into the sea while we celebrated - but, on viewing it seemed like if weather was bad on the day it'd suck as a venue because there's only very limited indoor capacity). So after we've looked around we need to get back out of the docks. Friend summons an Uber. No problem initially, "This is why I use Uber" she says. Her ride gets to the edge of the docks and cancels, presumably because the driver sees scary warning saying "Restricted Area. State your business at checkpoint" and hit cancel because he has managed to live in a port city for years without knowing about this. She summons another one. It too gets to the edge of the docks and then cancels. "Uber says if this keeps happening they're forbidden from cancelling" she claims. Sure enough now her requests are just denied automatically. So once she gives up I called a regular taxi. That driver couldn't find us, because apparently a massive sign with the name of the ship is too hard to notice ("I had no idea that was here"), but once we walked a few minutes to somewhere this driver could recognise we were driven out of the docks to go for cocktails with another friend.

goopthink 4y ago

… and in retrospect, was it worth it? Or was it a pyrrhic short term victory at a huge expense for something that would have happened eventually anyway but at a slower pace? Was this all just a quest to accelerate the inevitable outside of what overlapping Overton windows allowed for?

jmyeet 4y ago

There’s nothing particularly surprising here. This is capitalism. Pretty much every company operates like this. That doesn’t make every company the same. Goldman Sachs literally killed people for profit. Defense companies made up for their revenue loss from the end of the Afghanistan war by earning almost that same amount in military aid to Ukraine (seriously, our ~$50B in both cases). Those aren’t tech companies FWIW. Even there there’sa error spectrum. AirBnB is cancer, for example. But at last Uber killed the taxi industry, which was almost universally awful, corrupt and horrible to use. Seriously, good riddance. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Uber, Lyft, etc have to operate as commercial enterprises rather than VC money incinerators. This business isn’t going away.

rob_c 4y ago

But don't worry they're a changed company in the valley now and they're so sorry for past behaviour (nothing to do with being caught)... https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4 https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4

speeder 4y ago

I actually joined a political party in my country, because they had the intention of protecting Uber. Some people wonder, but why? Why protect such scummy company? Well, it was literally to save lives, as much illegal Uber behaviour is, what they were trying to replace was worse, MUCH worse. Where I live "Taxi Mafia" was a thing, not just in the usual sense people imagine, like blocking competitors using regulations, but people were murdering others, there were beatings, assassinations, theft, high level government corruption, the Taxi Mafia was evil and destructive as any other "<drugs/guns/slavery> Mafia" you can imagine. A lot of people claim Uber is evil because they say their workers are contractors and not employees. Well, before Uber if you wanted to be a driver, you had to purchase your own car, open your own company, and then give 50k USD to the local mafia boss, and promise to join combat whenever called. Combat? Yes, combat, gathering up drivers to kill a competitor was a thing, one infamous case for example: out of town driver parked near airport to deliver someone, a client in a hurry got on his cab as the other client was leaving, the local mafia didn't like this happened, so they surrounded the car and invited the driver for a "walk", took him under a nearby bridge, and they all kicked him until he was a mangled mess, and then they kicked him some more to make sure he was dead.

foepys 4y ago
I don't understand why breaking up the mafia wasn't a more pressing issue? What makes Uber drivers different that they won't be dragged from their cars and kicked to death?
- SSLy 4y ago
  the politicians from the parent commenter's city/state aren't in uber's bed
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    They don't have to be? They would only need to intimidate/recruit the Uber drivers (which they did) and use their gov connections to cover up the crime. A local mafia problem is a local mafia problem, no matter the transportation system being hijacked. This whole thread kinda turned into Taxi whataboutism to deflect from Uber.

yieldcrv 4y ago

ITT: How Softbank and A16z broke up regional taxi mafias, while absorbing disproportionate press from many jurisdictions at once

silveira 4y ago

I highly recommend the episode 271- Uber from the podcast The Dollop which goes about the history of Uber. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVkb2xsb3AubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/YzYwMDc1MGM0MDNkNWJjNDU1ZjkwNjI3ZDlkYTEzZmU?ep=14 https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVkb2xsb3AubGl...

mtlynch 4y ago
The Dollop just plagiarizes content from other sources. They have a (not always complete) list of sources on their website, but on the podcast itself, they read other sources word-for-word without giving attribution: https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/new-claims-on-the-dollop-sources-page/ https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/n... https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/07/15/how-a-comedy-podcast-sparked-a-plagiarism-debate/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/07/15/how-a-comedy-podc...

jollybean 4y ago

Someone describe to me why politicians even bother to meet with Uber. Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others? Where is the 'money flow' happening here? Is someone being bribed? Was Uber funnelling money to a related cause? I can understand ministers wanting to please a big up and coming company, sure, that's their job in some way, but not like this. How does Uber have the ability to get the VP to 'change their speech'. What's going on? That's not in the article.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others? Yes I agree, Biden is also very tough on corruption[1], historically so in fact. [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/08/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administration-is-taking-action-to-restore-and-strengthen-american-democracy/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- zbird 4y ago
  Obviously we are to trust whitehouse.gov on how tough on corruption the administration is.
Ericson2314 4y ago
There is an ideological attachment to the gig company. See Macron trying to change the labor laws in France. In Macron's mind, France is "uncompetitive" and so Uber is like a straight-to-the-veins routing around the political system to change that.
- jollybean 4y ago
  Having lived in France, I would definitely agree on some level with that, I see an entire nation of people fighting over surpluses and a lot less productivity - but I wonder if even that would be enough. Agree with Macron or not - that's at least him doing is job to 'make things happen' - but the degree of complicity is just to much. There's money going somewhere somehow, that's the missing piece. I don't suggest there is outright bribery because that's 'illegal' and would 'really get them in trouble' but something softer like campaign contributions or related causes, or favours here and there.

tapatio 4y ago

The new norm: to become a unicorn you have to lie, cheat, and steal.

jsemrau 4y ago

How is this news? This has been known for a long while. I, myself of all people, have written an article about how dangerous lobbying from these tech companies is [1] Corporations need to get their funding out of politics because it perverts the democratic process. The same applies to foreign influence. It bothers me greatly how much right-wing parties all-over the world are taking a pro-Russian stance. [1]https://medium.com/@jsemrau/uber-and-lift-set-a-very-dangerous-political-precedent-bc6585126198 https://medium.com/@jsemrau/uber-and-lift-set-a-very-dangero...

ETH_start 4y ago

Uber has massively improved taxi services around the world. The labor laws and taxi medallion rackets they circumvented were massive barriers to improving transportation services.

lesstyzing 4y ago

The Uber propaganda here in this thread is insane. Taxi’s maybe have been shit but that does not in anyway justify Uber breaking the law to conquer the market (btw, now that they’ve done that, they’ve also turned to shit because it was unsustainable). Perfect may be the enemy of good but we shouldn’t excuse companies using endless VC money and law breaking to achieve something that’s marginally better for consumers. Obviously there are some exceptions to this in the comments but generally, in modern countries where the taxi firms aren’t run by literal mafias and killing people, we should condemn Uber’s behaviour.

hourago 4y ago
Uber is well known for paying to manipulate on-line discourse. The amount of propaganda just adds to my grievances towards the company.
yieldcrv 4y ago
My observation is that nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press, isolated in local news under different taxi brands, and in municipal court filings. This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves. Whereas any incident with Uber is international news. Makes it harder for me to elevate Uber’s issues as being as egregious as presented. I recognize their flaws, I also recognize the market need which still remains. So sure, make a better one thats more compliant. When I and others point this out we’re not giving Uber a pass. Just assigning a weight to the problems.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves. Can you give an example? I've never heard of that. They usually lack any power at all. > nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press Everyone seemed satisfied in my experience. I did see Uber's talking points everywhere on social media - how terrible taxis were. Unforunately, taxis lacked the money to run their own information campaign.
  - 4y ago

intrasight 4y ago

Rules are meant to be broken. That's how progress occurs. The courts will decide what, if any, sanctions to apply. This is as it should be in a liberal democracy.

zbird 4y ago
Looks like you're quoting a book on social progress. This isn't it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wolverine876 4y ago

> More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC [and the Guardian] will in the coming days publish a series of investigative reports about the tech giant. OT: What happened to the NY Times? They seem to have stopped doing ground-breaking investigations of the powerful, including government. Instead, we get investigations of trends and porn sites. What are they doing? It would be an incredile resource to lose. Seriously, please share the last investigation they did that fits that description?

flakiness 4y ago
https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/about-uber-files-investigation/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/about-uber-fi... Only US media listed is WP. I guess this is because the file is about international (non-US) behavior of Uber and ICIJ might have asked for help in media in each country. Uber's behavior in the US is well covered by this very popular book [1] and it is authored by an NYT reporter, based on his own reporting on NYT. I won't argue about NYT's general trends, but it's not very fair to complain NYT not to cover Uber. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/0393358615/ https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...
- wolverine876 4y ago
  I'm concerned more than complaining, and not about Uber coverage but about investigative reporting in general. The reporting in that book was years ago.

wolverine876 4y ago

I think it's important to realize that Uber is what SV has become: Corruption and abuse of power as the primary tools of business, not innovation. Embrace of the powerful, not the little guy in their garage. Destroying other people and embracing sociopathology.. There's a long way from Steve Jobs' Apple, or Netscape, or many others (including FOSS!), who made exciting ground-breaking innovations, to Uber.

mi_lk 4y ago

... the leak is from 2013-2017 when Travis Kalanick was still CEO, I mean it was bad but we already know it.

Kalanos 4y ago

and scheduled me a 5:15am ride at 10pm the night before so i could get to their airport at the click of a button. where else is the driver going to make $25 (guessing their actual profit from $40 ride) in 20min at 5am? it's in the best interest of the people and progress. that's what the law should be enabling, not defending taxi licenses and unions

Nursie 4y ago
Uber don't schedule anything in most markets, they just look for a driver a couple of minutes before. I'd never rely on that for something important like an airport trip.

WalterBright 4y ago

Laws that enshrine and entrench the taxi monopoly are bad laws.

polynomial 4y ago

I don't feel great about taking Uber, but until NYC gets the TV screen out of my face, it's a no brainer from a user experience pov.

dnissley 4y ago

The laws being broken were clearly unjust and Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition) by breaking them. That doesn't mean every underhanded thing Uber has ever done has been justified, but in this particular instance it seems like it was. No one wants to be sympathetic to a large corporation of course, but that's a conversation most people aren't willing to have...

pyrale 4y ago
> The laws being broken were clearly unjust We're talking about laws from foreign countries too here, some of which were clearly aimed at preventing civil servants from becoming corrupt. > Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition) Comitting "civil disobedience" against a foreign country to force them to open to business? Sure, it may be a tradition if you refer to Matthew Perry or William Walker.

entwife 4y ago

Uber was better than taxi because it had an app and taxis did not. However, taxis in many cities now have some taxi-hailing app. Once the app became available, I began to prefer taxis over "ride sharing" services like Uber and Lyft.

dayvid 4y ago

I went to Vegas earlier this year. The taxis were far better and cheaper than the Uber. Uber's are also a lot more expensive now. I think UberPool was going to be Uber's killer feature. It made taking Uber's more regularly affordable for different groups of people, but COVID sadly ruined it.

aftergibson 4y ago

I see this is hitting the front page of the guardian with that heavy hitting colour scheme but reading through the articles I feel a big… so what? Maybe I’m just apathetic but it feels like a company that’s fought to exist in a world of crappy, shady incumbents and made life meaningfully better for a lot of people. I’m skeptical of a lot of technology and generally would prefer that status quo for a lot of things but this feels like a storm in a teacup for what is a pretty decent product disrupting an industry that deserved disruption, I’m almost hope Uber provides an example of how this can be done for other industries.

bradgranath 4y ago

Duh?

us0r 4y ago

Ugh ICIJ. Cherry picked stories without ability to look through raw files/data.

elforce002 4y ago

God, I love this comment section. Let's justify Uber's behavior since taxis were/are bad.

halamadrid 4y ago

I can’t imagine a world without Uber. Every city I go to, this or similar apps simply makes my commute easier and better.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Damn. That’s gonna leave a mark. It’s above the fold, on BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321

jwilber 4y ago

Taxis suck. But Uber sucks now, too. I’d still rather ride share than use a taxi, and use door dash over Uber (lest we forget Uber’s previous lawsuits), but all of the choices in the market are kind of grim.

sylware 4y ago

ofc, microsoft, its owner, has _nothing_ to do with all that. ...

blobbers 4y ago

They’ve made multiple movies/series about WeWork. Where is the movie in Uber??? Take my money! Show me the Kalanick!

rmatt2000 4y ago

"Behind every great fortune is a great crime." - Balzac. Was there ever an industry that this quote described more accurately than tech?

hahaitsfunny 4y ago

People on here pretending like unelected rich elite influencing politics via NGOs by meeting with elected government officials in Davos every year isn't a big deal or anything to worry about, and that Uber's behavior as well as the behavior of corrupt world leaders who enabled Uber, is justified because Taxi companies and labor unions are also corrupt. People unconcerned with this stuff are probably the same folks who think Klaus Schwab is a benign leader of the WEF which is just some benign global humanitarian organization, and that when Schwaab talks about penetrating government cabinets, and people owning nothing by 2030 and liking it, it's just a conspiracy. This is one of the major problems with the world - tech overlords and globalists have everyone brainwashed into thinking this dystopian shit is normal, and that we should accept it, or that it's necessary to build a "sustainable" future - whatever that means. Sounds to me like the rich and powerful will do whatever they can to become more rich and powerful, damn the costs. Their purported ends justify their means, no matter how violent, destructive, unethical or immoral. Edit: I just thought more about this. This article literally painted a scene at one point where the effing POTUS, supposedly the most powerful person in the world, was being spoken to like a child by the CEO of a corporation, and then changed policy on the spot after being bullied around at a secretive conference that I won't even get into the sketchiness of. If this isn't concerning, I don't know what is.

piyushpr134 4y ago

Uber works like a terrorist organization. Their city teams work like terrorist sleeper cells...no office, no call center only email contact. They bribe, they buy, they infiltrate and they have a huge fanatical base who won't listen anything against them.

jheriko 4y ago

this was always obvious to me from day one. i didn't need a leak to notice this. it was flagrant and blatant at the time. everyone was so busy being a fanboy it drove me a bit mad... especially operating without licenses and looking as if nobody had done the basic due diligence on what was needed to operate at all. honestly the entire "genius" of the idea itself is "ignore the law and do whatever"

TwoHeadedBeast 4y ago
Indeed, the app, while nicely implemented, contained nothing groundbreaking.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

Isn’t this leak about 5 years old?

DLA 4y ago

I just wonder when companies just stopped caring at all about doing the right thing? Are there any objectively honest big companies out there? - Enron. We all know what happened there. - Facebook. Industrial-scale slimy. - Exxon. Poor Alaska. - BP. OMG poor Gulf Coast. - McKinsey. Here’s how to sell more Fentanyl. - Experian. Let’s lie about that giant data leak. - AIG, Bond rating agencies, Lehman etc. We’re printing money from total crap paper, and we know it, but SHHH the OMG the $$$. - J&J. Talc powder is very bad and we knew it for a long time. - Purdue Pharma. Evil opioid empire. - Bayer. Roundup poison (someone explain why this is still legal to sell anywhere for any purpose). And the list goes on forever! So sad and utterly morally bankrupt. Corporate boards are part of the problem. In so many case are they not doing their oversight job because they are on the take or utterly incompetent or maybe both. </rant> Sorry, this just makes me crazy.