4 ms·

This caught my eye: > In 2017, the New York Times reported that Uber had identified various local politicians and regulators and served them a separate, mislea

by rrwo 4y ago

This caught my eye: > In 2017, the New York Times reported that Uber had identified various local politicians and regulators and served them a separate, misleading version of the Uber app to avoid regulatory penalties. At the time, Uber acknowledged that it had run the program, called “greyball,” but said it was used to deny ride requests to “opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers,” among other groups.

walrus01 4y ago
I read this more as Uber and Kalanick going for "full free market capitalism/libertarianism" in the US's economic and legal system, move fast/break things etc etc, than any nefarious data collection effort. This says more about Uber's callous disregard for legal regulations, labor rights and the hyper-aggressive-venture-capitalist-funded environment that it exists in as a corporation than anything about data mining. Basically "f the government, we do as we please" by Uber. Though obviously the data collection itself is terrible as well. Uber's practices are what happens when you take a bunch of young aggressive business school grads who think Ayn Rand is the best thing since sliced bread and give them hundreds of millions of dollars to hire engineering employees. More on Ubey and "greyball", which has been extensively covered in the US press: https://www.google.com/search?&q=uber+greyball https://www.google.com/search?&q=uber+greyball
- leishman 4y ago
  Even with all that baggage Uber was still 100x more ethical than all the mafia-run taxi cartels they destroyed.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    My take-away from that is that obviously localized small to medium scale corruption and buddy-buddy networks where things are done face to face, verbally, in cash, and without any advanced database/record-keeping are obviously much harder to discover and disrupt than something that's run as a centrally coordinated business effort. As just about anyone who has done business in an entirely cash-based economy where things are done verbally and on handshakes with little or no electronic or paper based record keeping will know all too well.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
how do they serve a subset of customers a different version, unless the app itself is a webview
- AustinDev 4y ago
  A/B Testing System or Feature Flags
  - majormajor 4y ago
    Don't even have to be that fancy. It's an `if` get user; if user.flags contains ["grayball"] then load controller1; else load controller2
- xenospn 4y ago
  Just draw a different UI for every user.

by rrwo 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago

I read this more as Uber and Kalanick going for "full free market capitalism/libertarianism" in the US's economic and legal system, move fast/break things etc etc, than any nefarious data collection effort. This says more about Uber's callous disregard for legal regulations, labor rights and the hyper-aggressive-venture-capitalist-funded environment that it exists in as a corporation than anything about data mining. Basically "f the government, we do as we please" by Uber. Though obviously the data collection itself is terrible as well. Uber's practices are what happens when you take a bunch of young aggressive business school grads who think Ayn Rand is the best thing since sliced bread and give them hundreds of millions of dollars to hire engineering employees. More on Ubey and "greyball", which has been extensively covered in the US press: https://www.google.com/search?&q=uber+greyball https://www.google.com/search?&q=uber+greyball

leishman 4y ago
Even with all that baggage Uber was still 100x more ethical than all the mafia-run taxi cartels they destroyed.
- walrus01 4y ago
  My take-away from that is that obviously localized small to medium scale corruption and buddy-buddy networks where things are done face to face, verbally, in cash, and without any advanced database/record-keeping are obviously much harder to discover and disrupt than something that's run as a centrally coordinated business effort. As just about anyone who has done business in an entirely cash-based economy where things are done verbally and on handshakes with little or no electronic or paper based record keeping will know all too well.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

how do they serve a subset of customers a different version, unless the app itself is a webview

AustinDev 4y ago
A/B Testing System or Feature Flags
- majormajor 4y ago
  Don't even have to be that fancy. It's an `if` get user; if user.flags contains ["grayball"] then load controller1; else load controller2
xenospn 4y ago
Just draw a different UI for every user.