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I was going to post the following (below -----), but I read the stories and they mainly focus on the signup process for Uber. While I still mostly feel like my

I was going to post the following (below -----), but I read the stories and they mainly focus on the signup process for Uber. While I still mostly feel like my original post, it is troublesome to hear that Uber employs people with no background check or verification into a job which, if you think about it, entails a trust-relationship not unlike that of a doctor or cleaning lady/man: someone in in an intimate setting who you entrust to care for you. For a doctor it's obvious, a cleaner enters your home, where you trust they don't steal sneakily or assault you. And for a taxi driver who drives you home at night, you expect when you hire through a large company that you're in the hands of a professional you can trust. Not a person who went through background checks/verification/training as much as if you took a random stranger and put them in a car. So to that extent I'd say Uber has a lot of work to do in its signup process. But beyond that, it still feels like an incident that doesn't justify a post on HN. I wonder what the process is like for regular taxi companies in India and if it's much different. Did you guys remember the Polish woman who was raped earlier this year in a non-uber Indian taxi? ------ original post below ------- As horrible as this is, it's a non-story for me. That's not to say the rape isn't horrible. But we need relevance, we can't just report any horrible fact. About 17k children die each day, it doesn't make sense to fill HN with that daily unless there is some direct relevance. If we didn't have a 'relevance filter', I nor anyone else would visit this particular community anymore. Now what's the relevance here? Uber? And...? Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone (pretty much 100% guaranteed one of them did in the past decades). Should that be a story we talk about on HN, just because it's bad and because it's a tech company and no other reason? Of course not. So why should it be a story that a non-employee freelance driver rapes someone in a country of over 1 billion people? Look if this story had a sociological context about gender relations in India that was interesting for HN, sure. I'd love to read about that. My girlfriend was just in India this summer for social work and we chat about this every now and then. If it was a story about gender-violent policies at Uber, sure, that'd be interesting. If this was a story about how Uber attracts disproportionately higher rates of criminal drivers, sure. But there's none of that. So I don't see the relevance, and without any kind of trend, evidence of bad policies or whatever, it's just a single incident. Shit happens, and without context this is a story that smears a company. I'm no fan of Uber, but there's a lot better things to focus on IF this was an incident. Anyway I'd be happy to hear otherwise, I could totally be missing something.

plinkplonk 12y ago
"Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone " This is somewhat iffy logic. If Microsoft's purported USP was "our OS is way safer than the alternatives" (this is, partly, how Uber positions itself in India[1], which is smart, given the horrible "rape in moving vehicles/by taxi drivers etc" history in India) and then it turned out that Windows was much easier for cybercriminals to hack into and steal your credit cards (than say OSX, which made no such claim) that would be worth discussing on a site about OS es. Or maybe not. Hence the question. [1] Uber Delhi used to have this in their marketing copy (emphasis mine) "Uber is New Delhi's best way to request a safe, reliable, affordable ride"
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Yeah fair enough, although it does seem as if they just went with the 'standard' message, by your analogy 'windows is a safe and reliable OS to make payments', as opposed to 'windows is out now, enjoy the safest way to make payments ever conceived'. If you then get hacked after the first message ('it's just safe and reliable'), and it's a single case of 1 person being hacked due to a single 3rd party app not behaving like it should without permission from Microsoft, I don't know if it's worth discussing. As another member said, it feels like a tabloid story that's only interesting because Uber has a $40b valuation and rape is a justifiably concerning topic in general. But it doesn't seem like anything systemic is going on here. I've never used Uber and am not too familiar with their marketing, but I'm not aware of them ever pushing hardcore the notion that they're the safest concerning the trustworthiness of the driver. I don't even think that's a marketing variable, even in a place with a history of rape in moving vehicles that you mentioned. (reliability of the driver concerning trip duration, professionalism etc, sure, but whether you can trust him not to hurt you?). I think the core question is whether they really missed out on something in the screening process. If not, it kind of feels like this is a lone incident in a country of 1 billion people, one of few such cases (2 or 3 now?) after tens of millions of rides.
  - plinkplonk 12y ago
    "country of a billion people". Oh please, not that tired cliche again. Police verification of employees is standard in India, even for software jobs. Uber as usual seems to be cutting corners, playing fast and loose, operating outside the law. The drivers aren't really 'employees' just 'licensed driving partners' and so Uber has no responisibility. If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people") everybody would rightly be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix. But hey some third world country half a world away and it is just people being unreasonable. And this "numbers" logic is fallacious. Why is the police shooting of an African American causing such ripples in a "country of 300 million people" with millions of police/citizen encounters. Surely the proportion ending in unarmed citizens being shot for no good reason are really really low? Then why all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged? Yeesh. Some people.

plinkplonk 12y ago

"Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone " This is somewhat iffy logic. If Microsoft's purported USP was "our OS is way safer than the alternatives" (this is, partly, how Uber positions itself in India[1], which is smart, given the horrible "rape in moving vehicles/by taxi drivers etc" history in India) and then it turned out that Windows was much easier for cybercriminals to hack into and steal your credit cards (than say OSX, which made no such claim) that would be worth discussing on a site about OS es. Or maybe not. Hence the question. [1] Uber Delhi used to have this in their marketing copy (emphasis mine) "Uber is New Delhi's best way to request a safe, reliable, affordable ride"

IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Yeah fair enough, although it does seem as if they just went with the 'standard' message, by your analogy 'windows is a safe and reliable OS to make payments', as opposed to 'windows is out now, enjoy the safest way to make payments ever conceived'. If you then get hacked after the first message ('it's just safe and reliable'), and it's a single case of 1 person being hacked due to a single 3rd party app not behaving like it should without permission from Microsoft, I don't know if it's worth discussing. As another member said, it feels like a tabloid story that's only interesting because Uber has a $40b valuation and rape is a justifiably concerning topic in general. But it doesn't seem like anything systemic is going on here. I've never used Uber and am not too familiar with their marketing, but I'm not aware of them ever pushing hardcore the notion that they're the safest concerning the trustworthiness of the driver. I don't even think that's a marketing variable, even in a place with a history of rape in moving vehicles that you mentioned. (reliability of the driver concerning trip duration, professionalism etc, sure, but whether you can trust him not to hurt you?). I think the core question is whether they really missed out on something in the screening process. If not, it kind of feels like this is a lone incident in a country of 1 billion people, one of few such cases (2 or 3 now?) after tens of millions of rides.
- plinkplonk 12y ago
  "country of a billion people". Oh please, not that tired cliche again. Police verification of employees is standard in India, even for software jobs. Uber as usual seems to be cutting corners, playing fast and loose, operating outside the law. The drivers aren't really 'employees' just 'licensed driving partners' and so Uber has no responisibility. If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people") everybody would rightly be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix. But hey some third world country half a world away and it is just people being unreasonable. And this "numbers" logic is fallacious. Why is the police shooting of an African American causing such ripples in a "country of 300 million people" with millions of police/citizen encounters. Surely the proportion ending in unarmed citizens being shot for no good reason are really really low? Then why all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged? Yeesh. Some people.