14 ms·

Can We Trust Uber?

132 points by petercooper 12y ago

saurik 12y ago
I wish the title of this post on Hacker News could be the context-providing "Uber allegedly revealed well-known rider's location without consent for promotional purposes".
- mikeryan 12y ago
  I respectfully disagree. I find the title to be accurate to the question being posed. It doesn't feel that the article was about that direct incident so much as an exploration of the way we choose providers and whether something as vague as company's "morals" should and could drive those decisions. We're currently in a fascinating time where companies like AirBnb, Uber and others are innovating faster than the law can keep up. At some point it's up to us as a society to self regulate even if its just at an individual level.
- 300bps 12y ago
  The article is not just about the one thing you mentioned. The first example in the article of why we should question whether to trust Uber is the corporate attacks that Uber allegedly waged against Lyft.
  - ryao 12y ago
    The real story is that Uber leaked confidential information without consent. The discussion about Lyft is tangential.
    - outside1234 12y ago
      Is it? It shows a pattern of sleaze that raises the question on if Uber can be trusted.
      - wavefunction 12y ago
        It seems like every time I see Uber in the news they're being assholes in one way or another to their customers, drivers, competitors, and governments of all types. The ends don't justify the means.
  - milesskorpen 12y ago
    The single most shocking thing in the story is this reveal of the tracking — the other "bad" thing Uber did was mess with Lyft, which is is old news. If Uber is actually sharing rider location information, that's an awful awful breach of trust.
kapnobatairza 12y ago
You can probably trust Uber just about as much as you can trust the TLC. The only real difference is that Uber has a bit more real--time data they can mine. Even if you only pay for your cabs in cash, your privacy can be compromised by pick up/drop off point meta data (http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/ http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars...). Then what about all the other plethora of apps and OS features that do background location tracking. Can we trust them? I think this problem really goes beyond Uber and touches on something fundamental about how we can maintain privacy when everyday technology asks for so much more personal information to operate..... Maybe we need more robust data privacy laws. Maybe we need better technology that allows for identity obfuscation or anonymity. Maybe we need to mature as a society so transparency is less likely to lead to harassment, violence or discrimination. Maybe it is a combination of all of the above. I just don't think you should leave it up to Uber.
- wdewind 12y ago
  Except that the the yellow cab leaks are unintentional and based on ignorance, and these are (allegedly) based on intentional disregard for privacy. So I don't agree that the two are the same at all.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
lemcoe9 12y ago
However, for the vast majority of users, who cares? The service is useful at a usually-fair price. If it works, use it.
- 300bps 12y ago
  The service is useful at a usually-fair price. If it works, use it. Hopefully we can agree that Uber doing things like corporate attacks against Lyft might say something about their character that should give you pause on dealing with them. For example, someone willing to unfairly attack a competitor might also think nothing of disclosing a customer's location in real time without permission for promotional purposes. Oh, they reportedly did that too. With a pattern of poor judgment, it only makes sense to question whether you should use them even if it generally just works.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    For me at least, it's not even the questionable morality of pulling dirty tricks on your biggest competitor. It's the fact that Uber feels they have to do these dirty deeds to get ahead in the game. If you feel you can't compete on a level playing field and you have to do such things to keep up, it tells me that you don't have a clue how to really do business in the first place. If I can't trust Uber to build a better product instead of sabotaging their competitor, I'll go with their competitor by default.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
      Why do you think they're doing it because they 'have to' instead of doing it because they 'can'.
      - 12y ago
DodgyEggplant 12y ago
The question is even bigger: should we trust startups that claim "no evil" when they are small, and quickly forget it when they grow? Here is another example: http://blog.garrytan.com/infanticide-how-anti-competitive-lawsuits-by http://blog.garrytan.com/infanticide-how-anti-competitive-la...
- zyx321 12y ago
  Short answer: No. If faced with a choice between money and doing the right thing, corporations are legally obligated (c.f. Dodge v. Ford) to pick money every single time.
  - GVIrish 12y ago
    Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford. Even then, making money and doing the right thing are rarely a strict dichotomy. Trying to sue start ups out of existence is not the only way to ensure the profitability of an incumbent company. Lawsuits always have the risk of losing and flushing all of those legal costs down the toilet, or potentially inviting countersuits. A company like Fab for instance could've just as easily decided to buy the new competitor or get more aggressive on price or marketing to snuff them out.
    - zyx321 12y ago
      Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford. ...or startups that have publicly traded corporations as investors (which is approximately all of them). Don't delude yourself into thinking you can trust a corporation. Corporations are sociopathic by design, barely kept in check by threats of lawsuits and bad PR.
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        > ...or startups that have publicly traded corporations as investors (which is approximately all of them). What definition of startups are you using here?
jnaglick 12y ago
My fairly worthless opinions as an NYC Startup Programmer: 1) 'Disruption' is just a code-word for skimming margins in legal grey areas 2) The founder of Uber's twitter avatar used to be the cover of "Atlas Shrugged" (update: it's now a picture of Thomas Jefferson.) 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations) No idea why this company ever deserved my trust in the first place.
- chasing 12y ago
  > 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations) Spoken like someone who never leaves Manhattan. ;-)
  - random28345 12y ago
    > Spoken like someone who never leaves Manhattan That was my first thought as well. For those who don't live in an "outer-borough", the way you obtained car services was by dialing a phone number, talking to a dispatcher, trying to communicate pickup and dropoff locations through the fog of accents, and then you have a 25% chance of the car showing up when promised, a 75% chance of it showing up no more than 15 minutes late, and sometimes 2-3 additional follow-up phone calls were required. If I'm going from tribeca to the east village at 11pm, sure, I'm taking a cab. But if I need to come home from New Jersey, being able to press a button and get a car is a huge convenience.
- Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
  Curious as to what makes you believe #3. Transplant here, but many life-long friends are NYC born and bred, and nearly all of them choose Uber over cabs quite often. Maybe the locals you know have just become numb to how shitty cabs here are ("it is what it is") and are fine with it?
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    Life-long born-and-bred New Yorkers probably didn't grow up in Manhattan. "New York City" is not synonymous and interchangeable with "Manhattan below 96th St".
bingobob 12y ago
in uber we trust.??
freshflowers 12y ago
We can answer this question by simply looking at what Uber is without the smokescreen of "tech" and "disruption". Uber is simply a very old and familiar way to circumvent labor, safety and consumer protection laws. It just happens to have two new elements enabled by tech: an app and dynamic pricing. There is nothing "cool" or innovative about Uber. Many of the laws and regulations Uber runs afoul of aren't outdated, they exist very specifically because of operations like Uber, which existed in the days before smartphones and the internet. And Uber brings absolutely nothing new to the table that changes the rationale behind those regulations. What the fuck is innovative about facilitating unlicensed taxi drivers in private cars? Hell, in Dutch we even have a word, "snorders", for such people, a word that has been barely used in decades until Uber popped up and revived it. Uber is basically the kind of "business" that you would expect from an organized crime outfit, and their other dubious practices should come as no surprise.
- ry0ohki 12y ago
  We call them Jitneys or Hacks here in the US. Very common means of transportation in poor areas, but an app makes the same concept hip I guess.
  - fubu 12y ago
    In New York City "gipsy cab" is a common term for it.
  - Evolved 12y ago
    "Hack" is a slang name for a taxi driver in general not necessarily a gypsy cab. Livery cab might be the term you're looking for.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      Hack specifically refers to gypsy cabs in many places esp. Baltimore: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-09-15/news/0909150013_1_hack-cabs-guglielmi http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-09-15/news/0909150013_...
vonklaus 12y ago
THIS IS ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE, and MAY BE COINCEDENTAL: I was having serious problems using Uber because both forms of payment I was using were failing processing. They were both credit cards I had used earlier in the night, and were both certainly valid. I became frustrated, and as Uber has no customer support I had to sort out contingency. I downloaded lyft and then Uber started to work. It processed both cards and let me request a a car (if it does not process it saves the info but does not let you request). So instantly, without me doing anything, I was immeadiately able to use Uber after I downloaded lyft, without doing anything extra. So I now exclusively use Lyft. It has been cheaper for all comparable distances I can track.
atmosx 12y ago
Of course you can't. That's crystal-clear by now. They've been called out more times than I can count in the last 6 months. "Does it matter?" That's the question that puzzles me, because seems that Uber got the pockets and backers to continue it's aggressive progression towards cabs annihilation.
declan 12y ago
These are shocking and worrisome allegations, but I do want to hear Uber's response. Perhaps they asked certain well-known users if they wanted their locations to be revealed and there was a miscommunication? It seems unlikely, I admit, but there tend to be two sides to every story. If the allegations are true and there was no miscommunication, Uber violated its privacy policy and should be held accountable. Note I'm not calling for FTC action, but (again, if this is true) Uber's management owes me and other users an explanation, an apology, and a plan for privacy controls to ensure this doesn't happen again. Firing the person responsible would not be inappropriate. You can read the privacy policy yourself here: https://www.uber.com/legal/usa/privacy#3 https://www.uber.com/legal/usa/privacy#3 It's also a little depressing. I've taken pains to try to get privacy "right" when working on http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/, including being extremely sensitive about location privacy, and examples like this (again, if true) will make folks less likely to trust apps in general. It's a shame because phone owners will assume that if you can't trust the billion-dollar lawyered-up companies to get privacy right, you surely can't trust the smaller ones. So it becomes safer not to install the apps in the first place. :(
Evolved 12y ago
Uber cars aren't gypsy or livery cabs because the difference is that gypsy and livery cabs often try to shake down the passenger for more money than what was previously quoted or agreed on. I had the exact experience that monksy outlined and it happened with Yellow Cab (largest taxi provider in So Cal afaik) and I discovered the next day that my card was used to ring up almost $1000 in gas and purchases almost 80 miles from my house in a city I've never been to in my entire life. This obviously doesn't mean that all taxi drivers are unscrupulous like this but you can't help but appreciate that Uber and Lyft provide something not so trivial as a way to pay without having to factor in an unethical driver. Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives?
- morganvachon 12y ago
  > Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives? But at that point you still must answer the question: Do you trust Lyft or other alternatives more than Uber? Given the evidence we have, I don't trust Uber to tell me the sky is blue; I'm damn sure not doing business with them.
gainorpain 12y ago
I suspect this is a bogus article designed to stir up the name Uber and draw some attention to them. Stealth marketing, or "murketing" as Rob Walker calls it in his book Buying In. Seriously. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced this article is a sneaky Uber marketing ploy. Don't trust it. I call fake.
godisdad 12y ago
When I moved to the Bay Area, I was amazed at how bad cabbies were. They were expensive, took a long time to show up, often flaked out on even showing up and often refused to take me where I wanted to go. Über was a breath of fresh air. I rationalized their competitive gaffs with Lyft as "they're just competing" and their syncretic religion of Ayn Rand books and Clayton Christensen as objectionable but tolerable. But I don't use them anymore. I started to use Uber constantly, refer friends and some OSS I've written even powers Uber's node.js components today. But their support of Urban Shield is the straw that broke the camel's back. And I do not want to line the pockets of anyone accelerating the militarization of the police in the US. Like the author, I can't see myself trusting them to do what's right.

132 points by petercooper 12y ago

I wish the title of this post on Hacker News could be the context-providing "Uber allegedly revealed well-known rider's location without consent for promotional purposes".

mikeryan 12y ago
I respectfully disagree. I find the title to be accurate to the question being posed. It doesn't feel that the article was about that direct incident so much as an exploration of the way we choose providers and whether something as vague as company's "morals" should and could drive those decisions. We're currently in a fascinating time where companies like AirBnb, Uber and others are innovating faster than the law can keep up. At some point it's up to us as a society to self regulate even if its just at an individual level.
300bps 12y ago
The article is not just about the one thing you mentioned. The first example in the article of why we should question whether to trust Uber is the corporate attacks that Uber allegedly waged against Lyft.
- ryao 12y ago
  The real story is that Uber leaked confidential information without consent. The discussion about Lyft is tangential.
  - outside1234 12y ago
    Is it? It shows a pattern of sleaze that raises the question on if Uber can be trusted.
    - wavefunction 12y ago
      It seems like every time I see Uber in the news they're being assholes in one way or another to their customers, drivers, competitors, and governments of all types. The ends don't justify the means.
- milesskorpen 12y ago
  The single most shocking thing in the story is this reveal of the tracking — the other "bad" thing Uber did was mess with Lyft, which is is old news. If Uber is actually sharing rider location information, that's an awful awful breach of trust.

kapnobatairza 12y ago

You can probably trust Uber just about as much as you can trust the TLC. The only real difference is that Uber has a bit more real--time data they can mine. Even if you only pay for your cabs in cash, your privacy can be compromised by pick up/drop off point meta data (http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/ http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars...). Then what about all the other plethora of apps and OS features that do background location tracking. Can we trust them? I think this problem really goes beyond Uber and touches on something fundamental about how we can maintain privacy when everyday technology asks for so much more personal information to operate..... Maybe we need more robust data privacy laws. Maybe we need better technology that allows for identity obfuscation or anonymity. Maybe we need to mature as a society so transparency is less likely to lead to harassment, violence or discrimination. Maybe it is a combination of all of the above. I just don't think you should leave it up to Uber.

wdewind 12y ago
Except that the the yellow cab leaks are unintentional and based on ignorance, and these are (allegedly) based on intentional disregard for privacy. So I don't agree that the two are the same at all.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

lemcoe9 12y ago

However, for the vast majority of users, who cares? The service is useful at a usually-fair price. If it works, use it.

300bps 12y ago
The service is useful at a usually-fair price. If it works, use it. Hopefully we can agree that Uber doing things like corporate attacks against Lyft might say something about their character that should give you pause on dealing with them. For example, someone willing to unfairly attack a competitor might also think nothing of disclosing a customer's location in real time without permission for promotional purposes. Oh, they reportedly did that too. With a pattern of poor judgment, it only makes sense to question whether you should use them even if it generally just works.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- morganvachon 12y ago
  For me at least, it's not even the questionable morality of pulling dirty tricks on your biggest competitor. It's the fact that Uber feels they have to do these dirty deeds to get ahead in the game. If you feel you can't compete on a level playing field and you have to do such things to keep up, it tells me that you don't have a clue how to really do business in the first place. If I can't trust Uber to build a better product instead of sabotaging their competitor, I'll go with their competitor by default.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    Why do you think they're doing it because they 'have to' instead of doing it because they 'can'.
    - 12y ago

DodgyEggplant 12y ago

The question is even bigger: should we trust startups that claim "no evil" when they are small, and quickly forget it when they grow? Here is another example: http://blog.garrytan.com/infanticide-how-anti-competitive-lawsuits-by http://blog.garrytan.com/infanticide-how-anti-competitive-la...

zyx321 12y ago
Short answer: No. If faced with a choice between money and doing the right thing, corporations are legally obligated (c.f. Dodge v. Ford) to pick money every single time.
- GVIrish 12y ago
  Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford. Even then, making money and doing the right thing are rarely a strict dichotomy. Trying to sue start ups out of existence is not the only way to ensure the profitability of an incumbent company. Lawsuits always have the risk of losing and flushing all of those legal costs down the toilet, or potentially inviting countersuits. A company like Fab for instance could've just as easily decided to buy the new competitor or get more aggressive on price or marketing to snuff them out.
  - zyx321 12y ago
    Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford. ...or startups that have publicly traded corporations as investors (which is approximately all of them). Don't delude yourself into thinking you can trust a corporation. Corporations are sociopathic by design, barely kept in check by threats of lawsuits and bad PR.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      > ...or startups that have publicly traded corporations as investors (which is approximately all of them). What definition of startups are you using here?

jnaglick 12y ago

My fairly worthless opinions as an NYC Startup Programmer: 1) 'Disruption' is just a code-word for skimming margins in legal grey areas 2) The founder of Uber's twitter avatar used to be the cover of "Atlas Shrugged" (update: it's now a picture of Thomas Jefferson.) 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations) No idea why this company ever deserved my trust in the first place.

chasing 12y ago
> 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations) Spoken like someone who never leaves Manhattan. ;-)
- random28345 12y ago
  > Spoken like someone who never leaves Manhattan That was my first thought as well. For those who don't live in an "outer-borough", the way you obtained car services was by dialing a phone number, talking to a dispatcher, trying to communicate pickup and dropoff locations through the fog of accents, and then you have a 25% chance of the car showing up when promised, a 75% chance of it showing up no more than 15 minutes late, and sometimes 2-3 additional follow-up phone calls were required. If I'm going from tribeca to the east village at 11pm, sure, I'm taking a cab. But if I need to come home from New Jersey, being able to press a button and get a car is a huge convenience.
Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
Curious as to what makes you believe #3. Transplant here, but many life-long friends are NYC born and bred, and nearly all of them choose Uber over cabs quite often. Maybe the locals you know have just become numb to how shitty cabs here are ("it is what it is") and are fine with it?
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Life-long born-and-bred New Yorkers probably didn't grow up in Manhattan. "New York City" is not synonymous and interchangeable with "Manhattan below 96th St".

bingobob 12y ago

in uber we trust.??

freshflowers 12y ago

We can answer this question by simply looking at what Uber is without the smokescreen of "tech" and "disruption". Uber is simply a very old and familiar way to circumvent labor, safety and consumer protection laws. It just happens to have two new elements enabled by tech: an app and dynamic pricing. There is nothing "cool" or innovative about Uber. Many of the laws and regulations Uber runs afoul of aren't outdated, they exist very specifically because of operations like Uber, which existed in the days before smartphones and the internet. And Uber brings absolutely nothing new to the table that changes the rationale behind those regulations. What the fuck is innovative about facilitating unlicensed taxi drivers in private cars? Hell, in Dutch we even have a word, "snorders", for such people, a word that has been barely used in decades until Uber popped up and revived it. Uber is basically the kind of "business" that you would expect from an organized crime outfit, and their other dubious practices should come as no surprise.

ry0ohki 12y ago
We call them Jitneys or Hacks here in the US. Very common means of transportation in poor areas, but an app makes the same concept hip I guess.
- fubu 12y ago
  In New York City "gipsy cab" is a common term for it.
- Evolved 12y ago
  "Hack" is a slang name for a taxi driver in general not necessarily a gypsy cab. Livery cab might be the term you're looking for.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Hack specifically refers to gypsy cabs in many places esp. Baltimore: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-09-15/news/0909150013_1_hack-cabs-guglielmi http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-09-15/news/0909150013_...

vonklaus 12y ago

THIS IS ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE, and MAY BE COINCEDENTAL: I was having serious problems using Uber because both forms of payment I was using were failing processing. They were both credit cards I had used earlier in the night, and were both certainly valid. I became frustrated, and as Uber has no customer support I had to sort out contingency. I downloaded lyft and then Uber started to work. It processed both cards and let me request a a car (if it does not process it saves the info but does not let you request). So instantly, without me doing anything, I was immeadiately able to use Uber after I downloaded lyft, without doing anything extra. So I now exclusively use Lyft. It has been cheaper for all comparable distances I can track.

atmosx 12y ago

Of course you can't. That's crystal-clear by now. They've been called out more times than I can count in the last 6 months. "Does it matter?" That's the question that puzzles me, because seems that Uber got the pockets and backers to continue it's aggressive progression towards cabs annihilation.

declan 12y ago

These are shocking and worrisome allegations, but I do want to hear Uber's response. Perhaps they asked certain well-known users if they wanted their locations to be revealed and there was a miscommunication? It seems unlikely, I admit, but there tend to be two sides to every story. If the allegations are true and there was no miscommunication, Uber violated its privacy policy and should be held accountable. Note I'm not calling for FTC action, but (again, if this is true) Uber's management owes me and other users an explanation, an apology, and a plan for privacy controls to ensure this doesn't happen again. Firing the person responsible would not be inappropriate. You can read the privacy policy yourself here: https://www.uber.com/legal/usa/privacy#3 https://www.uber.com/legal/usa/privacy#3 It's also a little depressing. I've taken pains to try to get privacy "right" when working on http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/, including being extremely sensitive about location privacy, and examples like this (again, if true) will make folks less likely to trust apps in general. It's a shame because phone owners will assume that if you can't trust the billion-dollar lawyered-up companies to get privacy right, you surely can't trust the smaller ones. So it becomes safer not to install the apps in the first place. :(

Evolved 12y ago

Uber cars aren't gypsy or livery cabs because the difference is that gypsy and livery cabs often try to shake down the passenger for more money than what was previously quoted or agreed on. I had the exact experience that monksy outlined and it happened with Yellow Cab (largest taxi provider in So Cal afaik) and I discovered the next day that my card was used to ring up almost $1000 in gas and purchases almost 80 miles from my house in a city I've never been to in my entire life. This obviously doesn't mean that all taxi drivers are unscrupulous like this but you can't help but appreciate that Uber and Lyft provide something not so trivial as a way to pay without having to factor in an unethical driver. Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives?

morganvachon 12y ago
> Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives? But at that point you still must answer the question: Do you trust Lyft or other alternatives more than Uber? Given the evidence we have, I don't trust Uber to tell me the sky is blue; I'm damn sure not doing business with them.

gainorpain 12y ago

I suspect this is a bogus article designed to stir up the name Uber and draw some attention to them. Stealth marketing, or "murketing" as Rob Walker calls it in his book Buying In. Seriously. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced this article is a sneaky Uber marketing ploy. Don't trust it. I call fake.

godisdad 12y ago

When I moved to the Bay Area, I was amazed at how bad cabbies were. They were expensive, took a long time to show up, often flaked out on even showing up and often refused to take me where I wanted to go. Über was a breath of fresh air. I rationalized their competitive gaffs with Lyft as "they're just competing" and their syncretic religion of Ayn Rand books and Clayton Christensen as objectionable but tolerable. But I don't use them anymore. I started to use Uber constantly, refer friends and some OSS I've written even powers Uber's node.js components today. But their support of Urban Shield is the straw that broke the camel's back. And I do not want to line the pockets of anyone accelerating the militarization of the police in the US. Like the author, I can't see myself trusting them to do what's right.