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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 h
by zxcvbn4038 4y 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 4y agoThere'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 4y 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 4y agoNo there isn’t. We have taxes for this
- Gibbon1 4y agoLift is using a public good as the basis for a private business.
- yarg 4y agoThere's a gas tax.
- lowkey 4y agoWould you also want to charge commercial delivery vehicles $0.10/mile? They are also private businesses and they already pay gas tax. Do you realized the cost will simply be passed on to the consumer in the end either way leading to higher inflation?
- Gibbon1 4y agoWhy not? Large truck already don't pay for the damage they do to roads.
- lowkey 4y agoI’ve heard this before and if it is true I would be in favor of adjusting gas taxes on commercial vehicles to cover the cost of road maintenance. However, $0.10/mile sounds excessive and punitive and inflationary for all consumers. I would love to see some data to support your claim.
- ipaddr 4y agoLarge trucks pay higher fees and require inspection
- 4y ago
- ncallaway 4y agoThis is exactly how I look at it. The “censorship” and “arbitrary banning” isn’t the key problem. The key problem is that some of these entities are so powerful that being censored by them, or arbitrarily banned by them, can have serious long term consequences on almost anyone. Frankly, the antitrust regulators and legislators have been asleep at the wheel for decades and have allowed an unimaginable level of consolidation in multiple sectors of the market. We should never have gotten to this point, but now that we’re here I feel like we need to follow the Big Bell example.
- BizarroLand 4y agoIt would be handy if they had a requirement of transparency. Having your job threatened for saying that a driver that hit you looked "young" is too obscure. Make it clear what you won't accept, have a whole web page with every single thing that you have decided on as corporate taboo.
- anony23 4y agoYou are free to chose from a number of local car service or taxi companies.
- jsiepkes 4y ago> 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. What about if some VC decides to use 200 million USD to undercut your prices? Would you consider that a healthy free market?
- pydry 4y agoThat very obviously isn't.
- maxerickson 4y agoCompanies that operate under limited liability should have an obligation to run their companies in a way that benefits society (otherwise we should withdraw the limitation on investor liability, as it is being used against us). It's pretty funny how lots of people that are more or less rabidly anti-regulation never manage to consider limited liability to be regulation.
- brewdad 4y agoRegulations are merely rules I don’t like.
- strken 4y agoThe problem is that there was a healthy free market, until the pearl-clutching wealthy decided they didn't like all the taxis that were cluttering up the streets and lobbied to introduce licensing. It took enormous companies breaking the law at an industrial scale to destroy this artificially expensive and terrible regulatory capture, and now those same companies are using the same regulatory mechanisms as a moat to stop competitors.
- plugin-baby 4y ago> she called him "young" - so Lyft support blocked her account for making discriminatory statements Is anyone else confused how this is discriminatory? And what kind of guideline does it violate?
- TheChaplain 4y agoI am probably cynical, but perhaps these rules and regulations are only there to be used as a tool for removing undesirables.
- zamnos 4y agoAge discrimination is a legally recognized discrimination.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jabradoodle 4y agoWhere is the discrimination part, though?
- ipaddr 4y agoAge classification isn't.
- quinndexter 4y agoExcept no one was discriminating against anyone. They simply described them.
- hulitu 4y ago> Except no one was discriminating against anyone. They simply described them. In US every description is a discrimination. Fat, slim, black, white ( they say caucasian in movies without knowing what skin color the people living in that region have), master, slave, red, yellow. And i bet Lyft will never hire a Dick (Chenney) or a Peacock .
- 4y ago
- a3n 4y agoThe gift of incorporation should come with significant responsibility and deference to actual corporeal beings.
- sneak 4y agoMy partner was sexually assaulted by a Lyft driver and lost her Lyft account in the process. That's some great customer service right there.
- ipaddr 4y agoSounds like a big public lawsuit would help
- mindslight 4y ago> when describing the driver who hit the Lyft she called him "young" > played back the audio of her conversation Am I reading this right? She gave a verbal statement to a rep, ostensibly to support their internal processes. They turned around and hypercriticized her exact wording, looking for reasons to punish her? If you squint hard enough, you can almost understand why companies want to avoid any possibly-misconstruable language in public posts, regardless of how unreasonable the possible PR blowup would be. But this is the next level.