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The only way Uber could have participated in the strike would have been by paying its drivers for the time they didn't work if they decided not to. Uber, as a taxi drivers employer, cannot just decide on its own that its workers are striking and won't get paid.

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You can always disable the service. Then you will get angry drivers that cannot earn money because of a choice you made, but you can participate to the strike.

That would have meant forcing other people (their drivers) to strike, and share the economic loss for it as well. Not very fair, don't you think? Being on strike with other people's money?

Yup, that's the short-term drawback. You correctly identified it. Now, contrast it with the long-term drawbacks of not organizing at all.

Uber could have participated by changing the surge pricing to 20X, 100X or some similarly high number. That's not to say that they should have.

A lot of the anger at Uber is also due to their CEO being an economic advisor to Trump.

Meanwhile, Lyft played this perfectly. Stayed out of the fray and then donated $1MM to the ACLU.

If Uber increased surge pricing they would be accused of trying to make more money off of the protest. It would probably be a worse PR disaster than removing surge pricing

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