Federal judge rips Uber apart over dirt-digging investigation

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/federal-judge-rips-uber-apart-over-dirt-digging-investigation/

by unfunco • 10 years ago

60 31 10 years ago

ams6110• 10 years ago

Did anyone go to jail? No? Well then... it'll happen again.

ctvo• 10 years ago

I was going to type a reply about how I'll never take another Uber (not only due to this, but everything else associated with that brand too), but I realized I'd be lying. It's too convenient and available in locations lacking alternatives. My moral outrage won't stop me drunk and wanting to get home to give them more money.

pjlegato• 10 years ago

If it makes you feel any better, most taxi companies are even more reprehensible than Uber. They just operate at much smaller scale, so nobody notices.

eridius• 10 years ago

I deleted Uber off of my phone a long time ago. Everywhere that I've traveled to since then has had perfectly decent Lyft coverage. I'm under no illusion that Lyft is a saint of a company, but they're a hell of a lot better than Uber.

rabboRubble• 10 years ago

Try Lyft. The drivers make more money too!

kafkaesq4• 10 years ago

I'll step in an Uber in exceptional cases (basically only when someone else is ordering and I don't want to start a scene), but that's about it. Otherwise, I'll use Lyft or whatever local alternatives might be available, if at all possible.

FireBeyond• 10 years ago

Also, why was no mention made of the "avoid discovery issues" discussion?

I'm sure plenty of people would like to "avoid discovery". Few would be stupid enough to commit those words to text.

Normal_gaussian• 10 years ago

I wondered that at first when I came to these comments, but then it dawned on me that anyone with a strong opinion on that (read, has personal experience) is unlikely to post comments about it.

conistonwater• 10 years ago

How did this meme come about that the only possible penalty for any kind of offence is jail? There are so many more ways to influence human behaviour, all of them much less violent.

kafkaesq4• 10 years ago

Because for several years now there has been a much stronger meme in place in the business community -- particularly among "disruptive" technology startups -- that you don't really have to pay attention to pesky things like laws and ordinances.

And not only that -- if you can just eat the petty civil fine they slap on you, you're actually doing a positive moral good in presenting a middle finger to law if it enables you to bring your desperately needed innovations to a wider audiences.

So that's when people start to say -- "OK then - if they won't get the message, it's time to start locking a few of 'em up."

Just like you'd do with any other criminal gang.

neves• 10 years ago

Creepy. My city local taxis are a mafia. The global one is even worse. I'm afraid about what would happen when they became a de facto monopoly.

mabbo• 10 years ago

I don't get it. Uber are offering an extremely good service, one that I'd pay more money for than they're asking. They don't need to be terrible humans to be successful so why do they do it? This seems to be par for the course of them in terms of shady shit they've been accused of or caught doing.

kafkaesq4• 10 years ago

They don't need to be terrible humans to be successful so why do they do it?

That's what gets me, too. Though it can be easily copied, their service model is such a night-and-day improvement over the state of things previously that they should be universally loved for what they're doing.

And yet they keep pulling these asshat antics, and gratuitously making a bad name for themselves -- over and over and over again.

aetherson• 10 years ago

I think that to some extent, companies -- especially relatively young companies -- reflect their founders. And Travis Kalanick seems like he's just kind of a dick.

But more so, remember that everything's on a margin, here. Uber can obviously be very successful on the level of "a company that provides taxi services in a lot of cities." But they've taken in more than $10B in funding on the premise that they can be much more than "a company that provides taxi services in a lot of cities."

So even though it seems like they should be coasting into victory, they're actually super tense and worried, because what they could coast into victory for is not what they're now obligated to become, based on the money they've taken in and the promises they made to the people who bought them.

five3• 10 years ago

They should try being successful first. Burning VC w/o making a profit isn't really success.

bsder• 10 years ago

They don't need to be terrible humans to be successful so why do they do it? This seems to be par for the course of them in terms of shady shit they've been accused of or caught doing.

Because they are a bunch of rich people who simply do not give a shit and the rules do not apply to them?

A snotty bully gets the lesson "there will eventually be somebody bigger" beaten into him. A snotty rich bully never actually encounters that.

lvs• 10 years ago

Their starting point for the product was to barrel through (read: ignore) a widespread municipal regulation in order to manufacture a new market opportunity. This fact alone should be enough to understand their ethos.

erdevs• 10 years ago

I wish that more of silicon valley would penalize people for reprehensible behavior. If Uber execs were ostracized rather than lauded... if investors pounded the table about legal risks and the importance of ethical business rather than cheering along any behavior that makes the numbers grow (temporarily)... we might not have Zenefits melting down, nor sociopathic exec teams at major companies that are held up as scions of the tech world. If this is one of the best and brightest companies the tech industry has to offer, we have a deeply worrisome problem. If pursuing paper growth absolutely trumps ethical concerns, we are feeding into a horrible system. If nobody calls this shit out and there isn't actual financial and social/cultural consequence, things will only get worse.

WayneBro3• 10 years ago

I don't see what's so wrong about using an investigator to find out more about the guy who is suing you.

Can someone explain that to me? Is it against the law to find all publicly available information about someone or to follow them around?

The big criminal act that I can see here is that "Ergo" (the company that Uber hired) wasn't licensed in NY. Seems like that would be on Ergo, not Uber.

fatbird2• 10 years ago

"Investigation" covers a wide range of activities, and many things one would do while investigating can themselves be chilling, intimidating, or harassing; and using investigation to chill, intimidate or harass can be the point. The Church Of Scientology is famous for using "investigation" to destroy its critics. In this case, the judge clearly felt that Ergo's investigations were far beyond routine due diligence on a plaintiff.

Remember, there was previously an incident where an Uber exec bragged at a party about using investigators to destroy journalists who might investigate them. [0]

[0] http://www.dailytech.com/Uber+Exec+Threatens+to+Spend+Millio...

shalmanese• 10 years ago

People are doing it in their own, quiet way. I know plenty of talented folk who have been heavily recruited by Uber and the main deterrent to them joining has been the perceived lack of culture fit.

serge2k• 10 years ago

Jed Rakoff, has now, in a 31-page order, called “blatantly fraudulent and arguably criminal.”

So? It's Uber, they are above the law. Silly judge.

or is this finally the line? Ignoring regulations all over the place, fine. Questionable "Contractor" status for employees? That's cool. Sharing economy man.

yladiz• 10 years ago

I really wonder if Uber will stop doing these shady shenanigans before their business runs into the ground. I guess they'll be around for a long time with the enormous amounts of money they're been given through investments, but I feel like, at least in the US, where consumers prefer companies that aren't blatantly distasteful, people will start switching to other companies that have better PR or go back to the traditional taxi services. If what was said in February was true, that they're profitable in the US (which is difficult to believe because I doubt Uber uses GAAP), then they will eventually find themselves in a difficult position with one of their primary markets losing interest in their product. But, on the bright side, at least they're unlikely to have to worry about losing billions of dollars in China as much considering the new law that passed about ride hailing since they won't be providing the same incentive for drivers anymore[1].

1: http://qz.com/745337/china-finally-made-ride-hailing-legal-i...

Federal judge rips Uber apart over dirt-digging investigation

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