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‘Stop or I’ll fire you’: the driver who defied Uber’s automated HR

181 points by tolien 3y ago

malux85 3y ago
Does Uber have so many cases of driver fraud that terminations cannot be revised by human first? I suspect not.
- cozzyd 3y ago
  that does not scale to future growth models, where uber will have 50 trillion drivers by 2050, or whatever.
  - stavros 3y ago
    That explains the new Uber-branded perforated condoms.
- andix 3y ago
  From my experience around one in twenty rides the driver tried to pull some sort of scam on me. In Portugal the service was awesome, but in Austria, Hungary, Poland, South Africa and Argentina the experience was very mixed (ranging from great to poor).
- abeppu 3y ago
  But even if a human looks at it: - does the driver ever have a chance to interact with the person making this judgement? Do they have an opportunity to provide information which Uber was not in a position to automatically collect (e.g. a road was blocked due to construction or an accident)? - what is the goal of the human reviewer and what incentives are put on them? Are they required to 'judge' a number of cases per hour, which places a limit on how much context they can actually consider? Are they responsible with arriving at a "fair" decision, or merely one which minimizes costs to the company? - what outputs from the human reviewer inform future automated decisions? Are they merely adjudicating individual cases, or will their decisions help train the algorithms that automatically flag drivers going forward? Merely having a human in the loop is insufficient. It's easy to create a system in which humans effectively rubber-stamp and amplify issues in the automated systems.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Problem is that "human" here would mean outsourced idiot in a boiler room that isn't trained, paid or treated well enough to give a shit, so what you'll end up with will be no better than basing the ban decision on a boolean RNG.
rolandog 3y ago
> An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. That's a very bad way of saying they aren't sorry they got caught doing unethical automated decisions that would've left the driver with no recourse, had he not belonged to a Union.
- wasyl 3y ago
  I like how the wording suggests that they _do_ deactivate drivers' accounts due to _suspected_, not _actual_ fraud.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    I felt exactly the same. The term "suspected fraud" is so perfect PR speak in 2023. It is an excellent catch-all that makes it appear that the company is protecting is good customers from the Bad Ones. Banks do the same with KYC/AML. If your relationship is worth less than a million USD, who cares -- ban them / refuse them. If multi-millions, then the rules can be bent.
- grensley 3y ago
  Shame on that spokesperson. Don't care if it's on behalf of a company, have some shame.
  - lisasays 3y ago
    It's not about the spokesperson. When it comes to matters of litigation such as these - you can be very sure that the message comes straight from the top.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      It comes from lawyers hired by the top, who tell the top what to say (or else risk liability).
slashdev 3y ago
An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. “These rulings only relate to a few specific drivers from the UK that were deactivated in the period between 2018 and 2020 in relation to very specific circumstances.” That’s corporate speak for: we’re assholes who use automated processes to rule about some of our human drivers in a way that may be unfair and leaves them with no recourse. It’s ok though, because it only ruins a few people’s livelihoods. I’m glad this guy stuck it to them in the courts, I hope he got a good settlement. The article didn’t say.
- dsfyu404ed 3y ago
  The algorithms are just replacing soul crushing bullshit jobs. The real problem is that there's no recourse. This is the kind of stuff punitive damages are for.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    The REAL problem is the algorithm was implemented specifically to hide the problem of no recourse, it's a pretty evil decision
    - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
      It's no less evil when your state/local government does the same thing using meatbags.
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        definitely more evil, since the decision was made so they could hide from even the "meat bags" the sort of treatment they're giving to people So bad that even "meat bags" would be sympathetic, so gotta replace them with algorithms my government at least lets me speak to a "meat bag" who has helped me through the bureaucracy, Uber's goal is to eliminate all help, including even that
andix 3y ago
I have to say that I got scammed by Uber drivers many times, when the region had dynamic pricing (not a fixed price at the moment of booking the ride). They took detours, ignored directions when I told them how to reach the destination in the most direct way (trying to make the best out of it). Always reported it, and got back the money most of the time. So I think they have to deal with A LOT of fraudulent riders.
- jrajav 3y ago
  That's one of the many problems they've assumed the risk for (along with the reward of profit for solving). There are any number of creative ways to tackle it. Exploiting and abusing labor is not one of the tools they get to have in their belt to do that.
- lozenge 3y ago
  In London they have to give you an accurate price at booking time, I think by law.
  - andix 3y ago
    In other cities they have to use the official taxi price, that is calculated by distance and time. So this is different for every city and also changes over time. Fixed prices are much better for the customer, because you know how much you pay upfront and the driver tries to get you there on the shortest and quickest route.
h4ch1 3y ago
There are a lot of problems of Uber in India for example, as a native, even though I know most of the routes where I need to travel a lot of drivers do the following which makes it incredibly annoying 1. They'll ask to cancel the ride if it's an online payment and then say pay me in cash and I'll take you. That ride is effectively void from Uber's end and the only recourse I have is to either rebook which takes very long (reason[0]), or take the ride, risking my safety. 2. They'll just reroute without asking, and not notify you. Wait too long at turns, red lights, just to increase the trip time. I've had 30min trips take 1hr and upwards. Which have increased my fare when I had to pay. [0]: There's a common pattern when you book an Uber, they'll call you and ask you where you want to go, if it doesn't fall within their day plan they'll outright tell you to cancel and then not pick up the call. Cancelling from my end often results in a penalty since the ride has been booked, and that causes a lot of issues and a waste of time. This is very common when you want cabs to the airport since they're located well out of city limits and a lot of drivers just don't want to make the trip. Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, God help any tourists who travel here, since Uber is their safest bet. Local *-rickshaws/taxis can charge you anywhere from 5-20x if they see you're not a local let alone a foreigner.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > if it doesn't fall within their day plan they'll outright tell you to cancel and then not pick up the call One would think that some interface where the drivers set the limits where they want to go would benefit all parties here. But yeah, Uber is in very intense disagreement since they launched. Anyway, your #2 is outright fraud. The same kind that taxis were famous worldwide for practicing, and that pushed people into applications like Uber.
  - h4ch1 3y ago
    Yeah usually I have Google Maps open on my phone as well, and follow the route alongside and if they do take any turns that aren't on the optimal route, I point it out. Annoying, but eh. I only started doing that after I was scammed twice though :p
  - neon_electro 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
Why do so many tech companies think they have a right o issue decisions to employees, contractors, or customers without communicating context? Lack of contextual information seems to account for a large proportion of tech grievances discussed on HN. Running a business as a top-down dictatorial entity with zero accountability says something bad about the founders and owners. The standard excuse is that 'if we give out too much information, people will game the system'. But by evading accountability and often regulation, it's these companies who are gaming the marketplace/regulatory system in which they operate, while offering themselves as victims of unscrupulous individuals whenever one of their counterparties exhibits even a slight degree of autonomy. This kind of control freakery is recapitulating the worst aspects of 20th century Taylorism. I was very much in favor of Uber as a disruptive entity when they first appeared, given the numerous flaws in the in then-dominant taxicab model. But (along with many other companies that adhere to the same platform mentality) have mutated into something significantly worse.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  They are building the ultimate faceless bureaucracy. Super efficient and amoral. Mix in some AI and most of your life will be controlled by entities that make decisions about your life without accountability. I am sure Kafka would write an excellent book about this
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yeah you’re seeing a replay of the sorts of things that lead to taxi regulations in the first place
- sublinear 3y ago
  > Why do so many tech companies think they have a right to issue decisions to employees, contractors, or customers without communicating context? You're probably not gonna believe it, but it's because they don't know much, especially the context in which they're making decisions. How could they really? The reality of any company is not its ideas, but its implementation details. For tech companies that's really difficult. You know how everyone with a room temperature IQ keeps insisting that AI is gonna take away programming jobs? Imagine that it already happened except that instead of losing your job you have been left to manage the robots... that's the position they're in, but the robots are instead extremely stubborn 20-something contrarians who want to rewrite everything in Rust. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zxcvbn4038 3y ago
My wife had the same issue with Lyft. She was taking a ride home last year when they got hit from behind by a car that tried to drive around them and ended up hitting them. She gave a statement to Lyft support to make clear that the Lyft driver was not at fault. However when describing the driver who hit the Lyft she called him "young" - so Lyft support blocked her account for making discriminatory statements in violation of their community guidelines. We had to escalate that to the CEO because there was no avenue of appeal without an active account. They played back the audio of her conversation and afterwards did agree to restore her account, but cautioned that if she violated community guidelines again in 90 days she would be banned permanently! You can't make stuff like that up.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  There's an argument that companies should be able to run themselves however they please, that Lyft should be able to have whatever community guidelines they choose, no matter how silly it's their right. I agree with this as long as there is a healthy free market, and 2 or 3 companies to choose from isn't a healthy free market. Either we need to bust these companies up, or regulate them better. In D&D terms, a single company shouldn't be able to give you a permanent stat penalty just because you did something like use the word "young". Many of these companies are so big that if one of the big 2 or 3 ban you, your entire life will be affected. Another example is LinkedIn, if I get banned from LinkedIn I guess I'll just take the -50% to all future job opportunities. Once these companies get big enough they owe society better than automated support processes and surprise lifetime bans once an algorithm determines you might not be profitable enough to bother with.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    > There's an argument that companies should be able to run themselves however they please There is also an argument that lift should be paying the government 10 cents a mile to use the states roads.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      No there isn’t. We have taxes for this
analog31 3y ago
There should be a statutory presumption that an automated decision is assumed to be deliberate and defensible on demand.
olliej 3y ago
"With the help of Worker Info Exchange and his union, Iftimie pursued Uber – and another ride-sharing app for which he worked, Ola – all the way to the court of appeal in Amsterdam, where Uber’s European headquarters is based." Yet again we see that unions are important, as the only reason anything stopped uber in this case was their union. Every argument companies make against unions is false, the only reason they don't want unions is because it means they can't defraud and abuse employees (I mean "contractors").
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> The court found that he and other drivers involved in the case, based in the UK and Portugal, had the right to more information about the way automated decisions were made about them. > Just before the case came to court, Uber apologised and acknowledged it had made a mistake. So Uber tried to stop the court from making a ruling which would bind it by apologizing to the driver. Then when the court still goes on to make a ruling, Uber complains, and seeks to limit application of the ruling: > An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. > “These rulings only relate to a few specific drivers from the UK that were deactivated in the period between 2018 and 2020 in relation to very specific circumstances.” This is why settlements are not always the societally best outcome of lawsuits. And I don't get how Uber is trying to limit it to UK drivers when the court decision also applied to Portugal drivers.
pastacacioepepe 3y ago
[flagged]

181 points by tolien 3y ago

malux85 3y ago

Does Uber have so many cases of driver fraud that terminations cannot be revised by human first? I suspect not.

cozzyd 3y ago
that does not scale to future growth models, where uber will have 50 trillion drivers by 2050, or whatever.
- stavros 3y ago
  That explains the new Uber-branded perforated condoms.
andix 3y ago
From my experience around one in twenty rides the driver tried to pull some sort of scam on me. In Portugal the service was awesome, but in Austria, Hungary, Poland, South Africa and Argentina the experience was very mixed (ranging from great to poor).
abeppu 3y ago
But even if a human looks at it: - does the driver ever have a chance to interact with the person making this judgement? Do they have an opportunity to provide information which Uber was not in a position to automatically collect (e.g. a road was blocked due to construction or an accident)? - what is the goal of the human reviewer and what incentives are put on them? Are they required to 'judge' a number of cases per hour, which places a limit on how much context they can actually consider? Are they responsible with arriving at a "fair" decision, or merely one which minimizes costs to the company? - what outputs from the human reviewer inform future automated decisions? Are they merely adjudicating individual cases, or will their decisions help train the algorithms that automatically flag drivers going forward? Merely having a human in the loop is insufficient. It's easy to create a system in which humans effectively rubber-stamp and amplify issues in the automated systems.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Problem is that "human" here would mean outsourced idiot in a boiler room that isn't trained, paid or treated well enough to give a shit, so what you'll end up with will be no better than basing the ban decision on a boolean RNG.

rolandog 3y ago

> An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. That's a very bad way of saying they aren't sorry they got caught doing unethical automated decisions that would've left the driver with no recourse, had he not belonged to a Union.

wasyl 3y ago
I like how the wording suggests that they _do_ deactivate drivers' accounts due to _suspected_, not _actual_ fraud.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  I felt exactly the same. The term "suspected fraud" is so perfect PR speak in 2023. It is an excellent catch-all that makes it appear that the company is protecting is good customers from the Bad Ones. Banks do the same with KYC/AML. If your relationship is worth less than a million USD, who cares -- ban them / refuse them. If multi-millions, then the rules can be bent.
grensley 3y ago
Shame on that spokesperson. Don't care if it's on behalf of a company, have some shame.
- lisasays 3y ago
  It's not about the spokesperson. When it comes to matters of litigation such as these - you can be very sure that the message comes straight from the top.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    It comes from lawyers hired by the top, who tell the top what to say (or else risk liability).

slashdev 3y ago

An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. “These rulings only relate to a few specific drivers from the UK that were deactivated in the period between 2018 and 2020 in relation to very specific circumstances.” That’s corporate speak for: we’re assholes who use automated processes to rule about some of our human drivers in a way that may be unfair and leaves them with no recourse. It’s ok though, because it only ruins a few people’s livelihoods. I’m glad this guy stuck it to them in the courts, I hope he got a good settlement. The article didn’t say.

dsfyu404ed 3y ago
The algorithms are just replacing soul crushing bullshit jobs. The real problem is that there's no recourse. This is the kind of stuff punitive damages are for.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  The REAL problem is the algorithm was implemented specifically to hide the problem of no recourse, it's a pretty evil decision
  - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
    It's no less evil when your state/local government does the same thing using meatbags.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      definitely more evil, since the decision was made so they could hide from even the "meat bags" the sort of treatment they're giving to people So bad that even "meat bags" would be sympathetic, so gotta replace them with algorithms my government at least lets me speak to a "meat bag" who has helped me through the bureaucracy, Uber's goal is to eliminate all help, including even that

andix 3y ago

I have to say that I got scammed by Uber drivers many times, when the region had dynamic pricing (not a fixed price at the moment of booking the ride). They took detours, ignored directions when I told them how to reach the destination in the most direct way (trying to make the best out of it). Always reported it, and got back the money most of the time. So I think they have to deal with A LOT of fraudulent riders.

jrajav 3y ago
That's one of the many problems they've assumed the risk for (along with the reward of profit for solving). There are any number of creative ways to tackle it. Exploiting and abusing labor is not one of the tools they get to have in their belt to do that.
lozenge 3y ago
In London they have to give you an accurate price at booking time, I think by law.
- andix 3y ago
  In other cities they have to use the official taxi price, that is calculated by distance and time. So this is different for every city and also changes over time. Fixed prices are much better for the customer, because you know how much you pay upfront and the driver tries to get you there on the shortest and quickest route.

h4ch1 3y ago

There are a lot of problems of Uber in India for example, as a native, even though I know most of the routes where I need to travel a lot of drivers do the following which makes it incredibly annoying 1. They'll ask to cancel the ride if it's an online payment and then say pay me in cash and I'll take you. That ride is effectively void from Uber's end and the only recourse I have is to either rebook which takes very long (reason[0]), or take the ride, risking my safety. 2. They'll just reroute without asking, and not notify you. Wait too long at turns, red lights, just to increase the trip time. I've had 30min trips take 1hr and upwards. Which have increased my fare when I had to pay. [0]: There's a common pattern when you book an Uber, they'll call you and ask you where you want to go, if it doesn't fall within their day plan they'll outright tell you to cancel and then not pick up the call. Cancelling from my end often results in a penalty since the ride has been booked, and that causes a lot of issues and a waste of time. This is very common when you want cabs to the airport since they're located well out of city limits and a lot of drivers just don't want to make the trip. Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, God help any tourists who travel here, since Uber is their safest bet. Local *-rickshaws/taxis can charge you anywhere from 5-20x if they see you're not a local let alone a foreigner.

marcosdumay 3y ago
> if it doesn't fall within their day plan they'll outright tell you to cancel and then not pick up the call One would think that some interface where the drivers set the limits where they want to go would benefit all parties here. But yeah, Uber is in very intense disagreement since they launched. Anyway, your #2 is outright fraud. The same kind that taxis were famous worldwide for practicing, and that pushed people into applications like Uber.
- h4ch1 3y ago
  Yeah usually I have Google Maps open on my phone as well, and follow the route alongside and if they do take any turns that aren't on the optimal route, I point it out. Annoying, but eh. I only started doing that after I was scammed twice though :p
- neon_electro 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago

Why do so many tech companies think they have a right o issue decisions to employees, contractors, or customers without communicating context? Lack of contextual information seems to account for a large proportion of tech grievances discussed on HN. Running a business as a top-down dictatorial entity with zero accountability says something bad about the founders and owners. The standard excuse is that 'if we give out too much information, people will game the system'. But by evading accountability and often regulation, it's these companies who are gaming the marketplace/regulatory system in which they operate, while offering themselves as victims of unscrupulous individuals whenever one of their counterparties exhibits even a slight degree of autonomy. This kind of control freakery is recapitulating the worst aspects of 20th century Taylorism. I was very much in favor of Uber as a disruptive entity when they first appeared, given the numerous flaws in the in then-dominant taxicab model. But (along with many other companies that adhere to the same platform mentality) have mutated into something significantly worse.

rqtwteye 3y ago
They are building the ultimate faceless bureaucracy. Super efficient and amoral. Mix in some AI and most of your life will be controlled by entities that make decisions about your life without accountability. I am sure Kafka would write an excellent book about this
SoftTalker 3y ago
Yeah you’re seeing a replay of the sorts of things that lead to taxi regulations in the first place
sublinear 3y ago
> Why do so many tech companies think they have a right to issue decisions to employees, contractors, or customers without communicating context? You're probably not gonna believe it, but it's because they don't know much, especially the context in which they're making decisions. How could they really? The reality of any company is not its ideas, but its implementation details. For tech companies that's really difficult. You know how everyone with a room temperature IQ keeps insisting that AI is gonna take away programming jobs? Imagine that it already happened except that instead of losing your job you have been left to manage the robots... that's the position they're in, but the robots are instead extremely stubborn 20-something contrarians who want to rewrite everything in Rust. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zxcvbn4038 3y ago

My wife had the same issue with Lyft. She was taking a ride home last year when they got hit from behind by a car that tried to drive around them and ended up hitting them. She gave a statement to Lyft support to make clear that the Lyft driver was not at fault. However when describing the driver who hit the Lyft she called him "young" - so Lyft support blocked her account for making discriminatory statements in violation of their community guidelines. We had to escalate that to the CEO because there was no avenue of appeal without an active account. They played back the audio of her conversation and afterwards did agree to restore her account, but cautioned that if she violated community guidelines again in 90 days she would be banned permanently! You can't make stuff like that up.

Buttons840 3y ago
There's an argument that companies should be able to run themselves however they please, that Lyft should be able to have whatever community guidelines they choose, no matter how silly it's their right. I agree with this as long as there is a healthy free market, and 2 or 3 companies to choose from isn't a healthy free market. Either we need to bust these companies up, or regulate them better. In D&D terms, a single company shouldn't be able to give you a permanent stat penalty just because you did something like use the word "young". Many of these companies are so big that if one of the big 2 or 3 ban you, your entire life will be affected. Another example is LinkedIn, if I get banned from LinkedIn I guess I'll just take the -50% to all future job opportunities. Once these companies get big enough they owe society better than automated support processes and surprise lifetime bans once an algorithm determines you might not be profitable enough to bother with.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  > There's an argument that companies should be able to run themselves however they please There is also an argument that lift should be paying the government 10 cents a mile to use the states roads.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    No there isn’t. We have taxes for this

analog31 3y ago

There should be a statutory presumption that an automated decision is assumed to be deliberate and defensible on demand.

olliej 3y ago

"With the help of Worker Info Exchange and his union, Iftimie pursued Uber – and another ride-sharing app for which he worked, Ola – all the way to the court of appeal in Amsterdam, where Uber’s European headquarters is based." Yet again we see that unions are important, as the only reason anything stopped uber in this case was their union. Every argument companies make against unions is false, the only reason they don't want unions is because it means they can't defraud and abuse employees (I mean "contractors").

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> The court found that he and other drivers involved in the case, based in the UK and Portugal, had the right to more information about the way automated decisions were made about them. > Just before the case came to court, Uber apologised and acknowledged it had made a mistake. So Uber tried to stop the court from making a ruling which would bind it by apologizing to the driver. Then when the court still goes on to make a ruling, Uber complains, and seeks to limit application of the ruling: > An Uber spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud. > “These rulings only relate to a few specific drivers from the UK that were deactivated in the period between 2018 and 2020 in relation to very specific circumstances.” This is why settlements are not always the societally best outcome of lawsuits. And I don't get how Uber is trying to limit it to UK drivers when the court decision also applied to Portugal drivers.

pastacacioepepe 3y ago

[flagged]