Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Should Postmates be more careful about where they send their non-employees? Why are they sending people to areas where beatings are known to occur?

He really shouldn't be using his phone while riding a bike though. Know your area and know your destination first. Postmates is sending their non-employees out on bikes on to streets with massive vehicles, with sometimes careless drivers, which can result in severe injury and death. It is probably best to be fully alert and capable of quick responses when sent to those areas.

View on HN

Do we really want companies refusing to service areas because the police in those areas are too violent? This seems crazy to me, basically accepting and working around the problem instead of fixing it.

Also, where are the police not too violent?

No, seriously. Someone should make a map that graphs these incidents... like a crime heatmap.

Europe. Asia. Pretty much every civilised country.

Throughout China, the chengguan have a reputation for brutality. If you meant to say "Asia (except for China)", is it possible you stated your point too flippantly?

Well, except for China, Malaysia, India. In India the cops will do whatever they want and get away with it. I'm wealthy enough to bribe the police as needed, but many folks aren't.

A fellow I met in Kuala Lumpur told me they are starting "black lives matter", though the word "black" doesn't identify any particular ethnic group. Migrants from poorer islands/regions are more commonly targeted than locals, however. (Kuala Lumpur is quite wealthy, roughly US poverty level. However rural areas are significantly poorer.)

In the Philippines, police shoot suspects in custody and say the (handcuffed) suspect tried to grab an officer's gun, thus necessitating the (always fatal) shooting. People then applaud how tough on crime the police are, and anyone who brings up human rights are derided as bleeding-heart idiots.

> Do we really want companies refusing to service areas because the police in those areas are too violent? This seems crazy to me, basically accepting and working around the problem instead of fixing it.

On the contrary, I think that would be a good way to address the problem. I imagine you'd get more pressure from the community if customers called up to order and were told, "sorry, we don't deliver to your neighborhood because the police have been known to assault our delivery couriers."

This isn't a case where the police are attacking couriers and leaving everybody else alone. This stuff affects everybody (or at least everybody who looks a certain way). If frequent beatings by the police don't create sufficient community pressure, I hardly see how being cut out from some delivery services is going to tip the balance.

> If frequent beatings by the police don't create sufficient community pressure, I hardly see how being cut out from some delivery services is going to tip the balance.

It depends on how much of the local population the frequent beatings affect. If it's only directly affecting a marginalized portion of the population, the rest might not notice. The point of this protest would be to reach additional people, if it increases the fraction of the population that's affected (directly or indirectly), it might just tip the balance.

I think that is already happening. Will Postmates service deliveries to ISIS controlled territory?

The questions here are:

1) If Postmates knows that someone will, or may, be at risk due to following their instructions, should they still give those instructions to that person?

2) What liabilities does Postmates have when a person is injured after following their instructions?

If companies did boycott some areas for police violence, where could they send employees?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com