There is definitely an Uber presence on HN doing damage control.
If the tactics are not shady, come out and plainly state it. No such statement has been made that I can see.
They are simply revolutionizing the old-fashioned and corrupt HN commenting industry.
Sure, malice does sometimes exist on these things, but most instances of this stuff in major apps turn out to be entirely benign. Ill-planned perhaps, but not malicious.
Why do Uber need that permission in the first place? What exactly are they doing with the permissions that are granted?
So it's not people with tin foil hats speculating that shills might exist - we know shills exist and are pervasive. Given that, we should have a certain non zero belief that any given poster is a shill. Not sure what is the best way to proceed when you know for sure that there are spies around you all the time. That's a bigger discussion. But jumping on people as if we should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there's a shill is really counter productive and helping "them" win.
It's not only irresponsible but dangerous to take a guilty until proven innocent approach. You should expect somebody to prove it if they're making a claim. That's not letting anyone "win".
Look at profiles. Look for unusual voting patterns. Is it more likely that Uber is secretly watching and manipulating a forum for hackers, or could it be that a lot of people here actually quite like Uber as a company? Occam's razor suggests the latter.
Or maybe - like me - this story just seems shaky as hell with people not understanding that Android permissions (like license agreements) often over-extend themselves. That a permission requiring X doesn't mean X is being used. All the time we see things like "App requires contacts list" where it's only grabbing the owner's info.
Honestly, playing the shill card is lazy and irrelevant. If you have proof, show it -- otherwise you're just spreading FUD.