>Uber was an asshole, but they were OUR asshole.
In other words, they played us like fiddles.
In other words, they played us like fiddles.
Some folks may hate them because of Susan Fowler, but that doesn't change the fact that they've drastically improved the world for consumers.
Initially, Uber set itself out as the hero of the day, riding on a shining horse to fight the Evil Taxi Mafia. Anyone who looked closely at how they did that could easily predict that what they want to become is the new, but worse, Taxi Mafia. They've been assholes almost from the start, they continue to be assholes now. That so many people only got angry after sexism accusations, of all the things, only makes me sad about the state of humanity.
As a consumer, what exactly should I be angry about?
As a responsible citizen of a civilized society however, one should be interested in how such a service comes to be, and what it means to people involved and the society at large.
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BTW. I'm founding a biotech startup now; we provide personalized medication for free, OTC, ordered through our mobile app. We can do that because of our innovative manufacturing model, which involves doing BSL-4 level work with pathogens in our garage. I.e. we're disrupting the corrupt dinosaur regulations to provide a cheaper and better service.
In a taxi you can rip off a firangi or fail to pick up a black passenger at your leisure. With Uber, this will cause your ratings to drop below 4.3, or your acceptance rate/cancellation rate to drop below/above whatever threshold they use. Then you get kicked off the platform.
Uber is providing the necessary regulation of the system that governments fail to provide.
While I'll agree that Uber used to provide a higher quality experience (nicer cars etc), this is no longer the case. The rating system is also broken-eg it now offers too much power to drunk customers. Uber now operates only to benefit itself-not its customers, not the drivers and certainly not the public. Perhaps you'd prefer to be regulated by the whims of a corporation & their pursuit of profit extraction rather than the democratic legitimacy of government, but thankfully, most of us would not. Hence, even if its taken some time for local & national governments to get up to speed, Uber is being banned, taxed, and forced to abide by the public & workplace safety rules every other company must follow.
On the contrary, most of us would prefer this. That's why yellow cabs are losing market share everywhere that men with guns don't take away their right to choose.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/uber-ly...
And that makes racism more acceptable?
Also I guess you are not familiar with The Atlantic.
It is a 160 year old institution, it is very well-respected. Past writers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Harriet Beacher Stowe. It does not trade in Clickbait.
For reference on the logical fallacies used in your comment, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy.
Racism isn't like homeopathy, where any quantity at all has the same effect. More is worse, less is better.
In that study, the median black taxi rider is passed by 2 taxis before being picked up, vs 0 for the median white (see fig A.6). The difference for Uber is not remotely as large.
The rest of your comment is basically the "argument from authority" logical fallacy.
An article being a "dud" is highly subjective, even if you yourself haven't found an article to be a worthwhile read does not qualify qualify an article as "clickbait".
There is nothing sensational in the article, it is simply discussing findings in a study.
The Atlantic has actually fared pretty well:
[1] "The Atlantic saw the highest increase in circulation, expanding slightly by 2% in 2015."
http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/news-magazines-fact-she...
This 2016 is the most recent data available.
I haven't. I'm simply pointing out that their venerability doesn't guarantee that everything they put out is of the highest caliber. The bevy of think (or whine) pieces it has published about millennials and safe spaces speaks to that, I feel.
>There is nothing sensational in the article, it is simply discussing findings in a study.
Which is sufficient as a rebuttal to the claim that it is clickbait.
When I just opened up the Atlantic now, it showed me ads -- err, "content" -- from Revcontent, which is some of the worst clickbait on the Internet.
Any revolutionary, disruptor or change agent will be perceived as an asshole. They're looking at the state of things, saying that doesn't do, and then launching into the machinations necessary to replace it. Rooting for "your asshole" is perfectly rational.
Disruption is all fun and games when it stays within business context. When all you play with are abstract spending points on your bank account. When you breach that, when you start to disrupt law and social order, that pretty much always end in tears and blood for many, many people. You don't do that unless you're very, very careful or the goal is extremely important. You definitely don't root for assholes who don't give a flying fuck about society, and want to mess things up only to line up their pockets.
Uber is literally behaving like evil megacorp since almost day one. Why people would root for that is something I can't really comprehend. You don't cheer the plunderers that came to the village just because they just slaughtered the neighbour you didn't particularly like - because when they're done with him, they'll come for you.
What matters is the drivers.
And as soon as rates go up on Uber, people can switch to something else.
All you need is a car and a taxi medallion(the price for which has gone into the ground) , and you too can compete with Uber if they raise prices.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-profit-and-loss...
People were saying the same thing 5 years ago, but I've still got my 5$ taxi rides.
I am not particularly worried that Uber could raises prices on me.... 20 years from now.
I hope not.. that's not progress!!!
Started for me when they updated the app to ask for location information 100% of the time a few months back. I remember seeing the notification and thinking to myself "do I really trust Uber with all my location data?" and realizing the answer was no. They made the app much more frustrating to use if you didn't provide that level of location so I deleted it shortly after.
You seem to suggest that Uber's toxic culture gave them a business advantage. Like, riders got some benefit that a conscientious person ought to have guessed was derived from the suffering of others.
I think what really happened is that Uber successfully assailed a bunch of stodgy monopolies just by taking a modern approach to dispatching. Then others saw the opportunity and there was a goldrush. Today Uber and everyone else are squeezing the drivers (same is true for all the "Uber of X" sharing economy variants). But the crappy backoffice culture surely didn't make it more convenient or cheap to get a ride.
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[0] - I really, really don't get why people only started caring after information about back-office sexism came to light, like if this was the worst thing Uber is doing; it isn't even remotely.
I do think it's stupid we had and continue to have laws that say it's illegal to offer someone a paid ride if you notice that they need one with your own senses ("hailing"), as opposed to via a phone call or app notification.
Maybe many people share this view, and that solves the mystery: people haven't only started caring recently about the local regulations; they started caring about the completely different issues that only recently came to light: backoffice culture problems, reckless administration of the self-driving car project, worsening conditions for unskilled freelancers generally, etc. That explains how it could be that suddenly lots more people are averse to Uber, and yet no more people care about taxi businesses or their legal moats than before.
It did. Unethical miserable people broke laws and cleaned up. And people loved them for it. Until they didn't.