Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

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You act as if it's this one thing that has people upset about Uber. Uber has actually done a lot of sketchy things-

* Threatening to dig up on dirt on journalists who aren't nice to them.

* Having a "god mode" available to all of their staff to see who drives where, which was only restricted after it became public.

* Creating a blog post about how they can figure out who is having one night stands (or, as they called it, "rides of glory").

* Blatant and repeated sexism. Anyone who lives in the bay area knows people who have worked at Uber and have heard the stories.

* Encouraging drivers to sign up for subprime auto loans.

* Tracking users locations even after they get finish their ride (even more ominous when combined with their "rides of glory" privacy invasions)

* Hiring a firm comprised of ex CIA agents to pry into the lives of people who screwed with them.

All of that can be confirmed with multiple news sources by a quick google search. It's not just their lack of diversity that makes them a cringeworthy company, it's the fact that they repeatedly and regularly go out of their way to disrespect privacy and generally act super sketchy. They're practically comic book villain level at this point.

I think half of these were done out of incompetence, not maliciousness:

* Threatening to dig up dirt: You try working hard on a product and listening to reporters bash you every day of the week, sometimes blatantly making things up. I don't condone the exec's actions, but Sarah Lacy doesn't exactly have the greatest reputation.

* God mode - it's arguably what made Uber. There was initially a lack of restraint on its use, but I've heard of people getting fired for its misuse well before it was public.

* The blog post was very stupid.

* The sexism is quite rampant across all of SV.

* The subprime loans were pure incompetence: it got fixed. Nowadays it's easier to walk away from the loan than at any other dealership.

* The user tracking I heard was to prevent fraud - there's close to $1 million being taken by fraudsters per week. Fraudsters have also physically assaulted employees.

* They investigated a lawsuit being filed because it was targeted specifically at Kalanick, and their security team deemed it a possible threat. The guy happened to be ex-CIA in his previous career.

I have never in 30 years in the Bay Area seen the kind of sexism reported recently about Uber. The fact that your only response to it is to claim everybody does it just reinforces the allegations against Uber.

For a company with a billion-dollar valuation, incompetence of that magnitude has a quality all its own. These sound like pretty flimsy excuses for a company that has enough cash on hand to buy competence in all these areas.

Exactly - which is what they did

You are right, they have fucked up in the past. There will be some more fuck ups going forward. What i have seen is employees fiercely question each & everything in weekly town halls & there are positive steps that have been taken to make things better. I am optimistic that Uber will become much better going forward due to genuine efforts taken, question is can they do it fast enough to overcome the cultural debt they have accumulated during the hyper growth period.

Out of all, below happened after i joined for which i have some info. * Tracking users locations even after they get finish their ride (even more ominous when combined with their "rides of glory" privacy invasions) This is done for 5 minutes after the ride ends. This is required to fight fraud & ensure safety of riders. This can't be opt out because fraudsters will opt out & we still have fraud.

Those do not look like fuckups to me, i. e. things what happened accidentally. They look like the logical outcome of the very same culture and that thing does not change easily.

"This is done for 5 minutes after the ride ends."

First of all: We only have Uber's word about that. A company not known as the most forthcoming when it comes to telling the truth.

"This is required to fight fraud & ensure safety of riders. This can't be opt out because fraudsters will opt out & we still have fraud."

This is about the most ludicrous reasoning I have heard in a long time. Fraud prevention doesn't really require that you spy on your customers. You're not dealing with Random Q Shmoe spontanously jumping into an Uber. All of those users need to create an account and provide a valid credit card in the process. User accounts can be locked immediately if fraud is suspected and even if fraud occurs the amount could be a couple 100 bucks, max.

Look, I understand that Uber needs to come up with some excuse to justify spying on their customers. But please tell your communications department they shall try to come up with something more plausible and to stop insulting the intelligence of the general public.

1. If they really want to spy on customers why would they do it only for 5 mins after the trip ends? Why not do always like some of the other apps? I remember waze had it like that for a while.

2. Fraud at Uber's scale is not few 100 bucks.

I have decent critical reasoning skills not to agree blindly if the message came from communication department (it did not).

Lol, a couple 100 bucks max

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