Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign

by colin_jack • 4 years ago

965 504 4 years ago

EGreg10• 4 years ago

“There’s nothing wrong with capitalism. This is a problem of crony-capitalism / corporatism. <EOF>”

That is what people will reflexively say to any analysis that discusses the role of the profit motive and wall street earnings in leading to these outcomes.

The fact that systematic actions like this to amass advantages at expense of the public happen with regularity at Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, General Motors and many other for-profit enterprises, means there may be some room to improve the economic paradigm in which these things are built. And in fact, we have just such a paradigm, and the products of it (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) are of a completely different character. They don’t have an investor class at all, that needs to recoup their investment by extracting rents forever.

The alternative to for-profit venture funded companies owned by Wall St doesn’t have to be communism or socialism. It can be a gift economy such Science, Creative Commons, or Open Source Software and decentralized permissionless networks based around protocols like HTTP.

For example, Uber can be replaced with an open source, decentralized marketplace that doesn’t take 50% of all drivers’ revenue, but has a free market and ratings / reviews operated by the community.

But if a project is funded by venture CAPITALISTS, subsidized by money-losing unit economics through multiple rounds, and then dumped on the public in a Wall St IPO, and subsequently owned by pension funds and other pools of capital, then yes that is a quintessential example of Capitalism. And the result is that there is an investor class that will always tell Uber’s board to maintain centralized control and extract rents from the public, squeeze drivers, as well as try to hack the society around them (as in this article: secretly trick, get around the police, lobby state officials) whereas an open source decentralized system wouldn’t do any of that.

The dream of cryptocurrency was that the developers would sell the tokens to the public and make money on the primary sale, but after that, the network would belong to the public. Even any royalties that could accrue (such as on every transfer of the token) would be above-board and disclosed once, so everyone knows the deal. Sadly, rather than focusing on a “peer to peer cash system” as Satoshi’s whitepaper said, the entire space switched around 2013 to “store of value”, HODL and speculative investment. It’s actually a cop-out that happened because blockchains can’t scale well.

Bitcoin was the granddaddy and it solved the double-spend problem, but in a very brute-force way, by gathering all transactions in the world in one place every 10 mins to search for a double-spend. It’s actually even worse than that, because every transaction has to be gossipped to every miner, and all mined transactions have to be stored forever in an ever-growing history. The tech is a straightjacket but the vision is good. We do need smart contracts to replace privately-owned middlemen, but we need the smart contracts to run on a better DLT than Blockchain. There have been tons of innovation since 2008 but Bitcoin maximalists and Web2 maximalists both deride all of it, so progress depends on open-minded people who look past the grift of utility-less coins long enough to build something useful

HL33tibCe72• 4 years ago

This kind of collusion between the state and a company is antithetical to capitalism.

elcomet• 4 years ago

Yes but without a strong state to prevent this, the incentives do push the companies to collude

malermeister2• 4 years ago

It might be on paper, but that's a "No True Scotsman" argument, just like all the socialists saying "oh the Soviet Union wasn't real socialism!".

In reality, this seems to be what happens every time, empirically. So maybe this is just what real life capitalism is like?

fallingknife• 4 years ago

You talking about Uber or the cab cartels they were competing with?

Sebb767• 4 years ago

A better argument: People will always try to dupe, deceive, get rich and get their way. Capitalism is - so far - the best way to channel at least some of that energy into building something productive for society as a whole.

BrianOnHN• 4 years ago

Regulatory Capture ruins this.

EGreg10• 4 years ago

Second best. I think UBI + Open Source beats it over time. And I have examples to prove my point … you are welcome to provide some the other way:

  Wikipedia vs Britannica, Encarta

  NGiNx and Apache vs IIS

  OSS browser engines vs IE

  Science va Alchemy

  etc.

trentnix• 4 years ago

For example, Uber can be replaced with an open source, decentralized marketplace that doesn’t take 50% of all drivers’ revenue, but has a free market and ratings / reviews operated by the community.

Sure! I volunteer you to build it for me.

EGreg10• 4 years ago

I take you up on that challenge good sir

malermeister2• 4 years ago

It already exists: https://drivers.coop/

hnthrow10104• 4 years ago

The current plague of cryptocurrency proves that, by itself, the mere fact of the market being open source and decentralized doesn't do anything useful; it even makes it worse in a lot of ways. The scammers will do exactly the same thing, except they take a 100% cut of your money when they dump the tokens onto retail investors and then do a rug pull.

Smart contracts are a horrible invention that don't do anything new. The equivalent in a normal SQL database (the original DLT) is just running a transaction; every SQL database under the sun has supported this for ages.

EGreg10• 4 years ago

No, smart contracts are the realization of something just as revolutionary as Web1 and Web2 and just as likely to change the world, once people use them to help communities organize and coordinate their activities:

Smart contracts represent the first time in history when you can trust code to do what it says. The next best thing that even come close is Intel’s SGX extensions, where we trust Intel, or AWS key management service, where we trust Amazon.

The idea that everyone can custody their own private keys as they want AND no one can be “above the law” and circumvent the business logic, is really powerful. That assurance and level of trust in the code is what enables a whole slew of new applications that currently require human gatekeeper institutions, same as Web1 replaced radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and centralized platforms like America Online, Compuserve and Minitel.

You just are myopically focused on the silly Web3 phase, same as people derided Web1 personal home pages with <blink> and <marquee> tags until the Web grew up.

For example https://intercoin.org/applications

dcow3• 4 years ago

Who pays the volunteers?

You’re jumbling up a lot of things here. Fixing the economic paradigm does not lead straight to crypto. Maybe it’s part of the solution in some areas, but it doesn't prevent capitalism or encourage open source bootstrapped enterprises.

The closest thing IMO to a swing at fixing the economic paradigm would be something like requiring all companies to be nonprofits once they go public or something…

EGreg10• 4 years ago

Who pays volunteers on Wikipedia, Linux, BSD, Webkit, Chromium, PHP, Python and all those other technologies and languages who have taken over the world? Is TimBL rich through extracting rents from all users of HTTP?

Vitalik is mega-rich from selling his tokens once, and now he doesn’t control the network. That is the alternative I am talking about. The developers of a successful project make buck but then the project becomes bigger than them. There were was an article posted the other day from an open source author complaining that they are now being required to use two-factor authentication before they can continue releasing their product. They said “well, I guess I don’t pay for the distribution platform, so I will take what I can get.” But they are missing the point entirely — the distribution platform isn’t supposed to serve the one author/maintainer. It’s supposed to serve the public! Those are the actual customers, and even if the author pays $1,000,000 a month to such a service, the value to the public of NOT having a security backdoor on the next update can become far, far greater. At some point, what you built just becomes bigger than you.

That’s why science has peer review, wikipedia has talk pages and open source commits have reviewers before merging the code. No one wants something to be rolled out at 5am on the whim of one guy, EVEN IF he has two factor authentication.

There is a fundamental, fundamental difference in mindset between on the one hand the celebrity culture we have on Twitter, and various entertainment, and the peer review culture of science, wikipedia and open source. The latter is far more useful to society.

In fact, most of our divisions and strife in demicracies is a result of for-profit news media trying to write one-sided outrage articles with clickbait titles because the market selects for that, while our social network algorithms surface this and put us in angry echo chambers because that leads to the most “engagement” (and therefore, profit). Once you see it, the profit motive IS WHAT CORRUPTS these networks. Wikipedia and Linux may have their faults, but not these.

Who pays the volunteers? No one. They have enough financial stability to spend an hour here and there making a commit. There doesn’t need to be a billion dollar investment by any party to advance the thing forward. They’re like ants… and it beats closed profit-driven silos in the end.

blowski5• 4 years ago

Metapoint. You seem to keep significantly editing your comment, so I don’t know what’s been voted or commented on. Either responding, or editing with the —-EDIT—- line would help there.

ngcazz• 4 years ago

Cryptocurrency is a huge non-sequitur here.

HL33tibCe72• 4 years ago

Really feels like there’s a massive amount of corruption in European politics these days. Especially in the EU.

lancesells• 4 years ago

Outside of maybe freshman politicians I would think that corruption exists with many, if not most, politicians in the US as well. I can't speak to other countries but power tends to corrupt.

geitir• 4 years ago

More regulation => more opportunities for bribery => more corruption

NelsonMinar• 4 years ago

FWIW this is about the company's founding DNA: "The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick".

raverbashing2• 4 years ago

But the question is, how many politicians and lobbyists were on the other side, trying to keep the status quo as it was, in favour of taxi drivers?

AnotherGoodName6• 4 years ago

I don't know of a more corrupt industry than the taxi industry. The tight control of supply via taxi licenses, the low pay of drivers and the inability for any incumbents to enter. It was horrendous and hugely profitable for those in power and exploitative for anyone needing such services.

aunty_helen5• 4 years ago

All you have to do is look at cities where they don’t have Uber and you’ll find a strong taxi mafia. Sometimes a literal taxi mafia like in Budapest.

I was living in Valancia Spain, the first day I got there I remember walking down what turned out to be one of the main streets in the city to find it being blocked by hundreds of taxis in a peaceful protest. Ok fine, I didn’t know why and it was all cosure with the police.

Then a few months later my ability to use a good quality app with verifiable trust (extremely important in some parts of the world) and recourse to the operator was suddenly taken away.

I had to order taxis using one of the crap taxi middlemen apps which offer little to no support for when things go a wrong and I was back to riding in cars where the driver was actively trying to rip you off.

Oh you’ve lived here 10 years but you need to look on the map of where one of the main streets is? Ok great, make sure the meeter is started before you do that.

Oh it’s after 8pm so that short 4.50€ journey is automatically a minimum 6€ Ok great enjoy.

25€ to the airport? I’m sure this used to be 14…

Taxis suck, lack accountability and will do anything it takes to maintain their market share while providing a horrible scammy service.

nprateem3• 4 years ago

Which app was that?

aikah• 4 years ago

2 wrongs don't make a right. Uber operates like the mafia. I'm not going to take their defense just because they are a "just an app" or that the competition is as bad...

Uber became popular because it leveraged VC and cheap credit to subsidized rides, it's becoming much less popular as we speak since ride fares are going up fast and it now needs to actually make money.

ethbr0• 4 years ago

When you have a massive leak of pervasive illegal behavior throughout the company, from the CEO down, and your response is...

> "Kalanick’s spokesperson said Uber’s expansion initiatives were “led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber’s robust legal, policy and compliance groups”."

... I don't think that messages what Kalanick’s spokesperson thinks it messages.

nathanaldensr• 4 years ago

"It's all okay because our legal and compliance teams said it was."

Talk about non-sequiturs.

exhaze5• 4 years ago

Disclaimer: at Uber 2014-2018

Travis has not been CEO for 5 years. Based on this article, what do you want the people who actually presently work at Uber to do?

jeffrallen4• 4 years ago

Quit? And find a job in a legitimate company?

pyrale2• 4 years ago

Appear as witnesses in a FCPA lawsuit.

Granted, for that to happen, it would take a prosecutor to start a case.

AnotherGoodName6• 4 years ago

Still a million times better than what it replaced. About 20 years ago I was working with the Australian taxi cab industry. The hq of the regulatory authority shared the address of the main payment system. The regulatory authority was made up of representatives of each taxi cab company that each had one vote. There was one taxi company (the one that controlled the payment system allowed) with 200+ subsidiaries that made up that organization. If anyone tried to get into the taxi industry they'd use their 200 votes to say they are not allowed by regulations. This was a company making 2billion a year in one state of Australia alone (NSW). It was so incredibly fucking corrupt and i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in. It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption.

seibelj• 4 years ago

It’s hilarious how everyone acts like the pre-Uber taxi world was one of generous wages, honest hard working companies, and politicians working hand in hand with stakeholders.

The taxi industry was (is?) insanely corrupt. There are literally state-sanctioned limits on taxis and artificial markets for medallions that made early purchasers absurdly rich.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Sounds though like an orthogonal problem that could have been solved independent of destroying the entire industry?

onion2k• 4 years ago

Replacing a corrupt system with a different corrupt system isn't progress.

urthor• 4 years ago

Much of the general public genuinely believed that.

The picturesque London Taxi driver lives on even today.

Many of the 21st Century's worst attributes aren't due to society falling apart in the digital age.

Online life is exposing the seediness of society, which wasn't reported in old world media.

Lying on the internet is... difficult.

adra2• 4 years ago

Forget the reason for the change a minute, and focus on the outcomes. You've replaced a terrible set of local players with a handful of international mega players who I'd argue are just as crap as the ones you've displaced. There is still corruption in the sense that these platforms make the rules, and the drivers have basically no freedom to push back (baring some form of unionization).

All of this medallion nonsense can just as easily come back with Uber whenever they feel that competition has driven down prices too low. With a wink and a nudge, all the large players will play ball because they can.

As for what it is today, these companies still aren't profitable which means you're still living in a halo of speculative investment supporting you're current quality of service. The only viable remedy is to raise rates, which puts the service as a more expensive solution that could actually cost more than taxied ever did in the long run.

blowski5• 4 years ago

The technology definitely made life easier for passengers, especially in big cities. Prices were cheaper for some time, but only because they were subsidised by investors, so hardly a net gain. Arguably, they made the environment worse by pushing middle income off public transport and into taxis

For drivers, things seem to have got worse. I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped.

But there is an argument to say that the local taxi cartels needed breaking up, and only a company prepared to engage in these kind of tactics could have done it. I don’t know what I think about all this.

alisonatwork3• 4 years ago

A key point here is that Uber didn't just disrupt taxi cartels, it also undermined public transport services. In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. To me this is the true long term damage of their VC-funded predatory pricing model.

jbullock35• 4 years ago

I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped.

I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped. (And not one has said that he would prefer driving a taxi.) They do make criticisms, more of Uber than of Lyft. But the main sentiments that they express are appreciation of scheduling flexibility and of not having a boss.

Ekaros• 4 years ago

Uber and others should really have been punished harshly for dumping. Banned from operating without extra taxes to bring them in line with other operators and fined for billions.

asdfjkhasjkdfh2• 4 years ago

Still a million times better than what it replaced.

Uber didn't replace taxi. taxi was dying on it's own. Uber actually kept the bad designs of taxi going but they monopolized the Medallions.

"what it replaced" was the ongoing outcry to minimally decent public transit. Some of the international offshoots of the Occupy movement actually had this as their central theme.

legalcorrection• 4 years ago

This is fantastical. Paying someone to drive you somewhere is not going anywhere anytime soon.

twblalock2• 4 years ago

People even use Uber in Europe despite having world-class public transit. That should tell you something about the utility it provides people: they could have used top-tier public transit but they chose to use Uber instead.

registeredcorn• 4 years ago

I don't know if this really qualifies as the same sort of thing, but I do recall hearing a story about cabbies somewhere in Asia:

A sociology professor I had assigned us a project to do something that would be "considered abnormal to the general public", and then document the results. He had mentioned over and over again to try and implement "as many safety measures as possible during planning". The professor went on to explain that the reason for harping on safety was such a big deal because a student of a previous class (decades before ridesharing) decided that their project would be to bring their personnel vehicle to where cabbies would line up. The student would instead offer rides to customers completely for free. I believe they even had a little sign they put on their window.

After this occurred two or three times, all of the cabbies completely boxed the students car in and called for the police to come. If I recall correctly, they were yelling, screaming, and honking at the student about how they were taking money out of their pockets. Some were accusing the student of taking customers to an undisclosed location and robbing them in order to get paid, while others were saying that doing this for free was essentially stealing from the cabbies, since the student didn't have a taxi permit.

I'm not sure if this was a matter of corruption as much as it was messing with/hurting people trying to make a living, but, I did think it was interesting that all of these different cabbies, from all of these rival taxi companies were all willing to work together spur of the moment, to stop someone who they couldn't possibly compete with. As I understand it, the depths of the rivalry between some of these companies ran pretty deep; it was shocking how willingly they all were to join up to crush this outside threat.

sschueller2• 4 years ago

No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too.

Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom when it's the opposite and you are basically a working slave. It did everything possible to go around government worker protections.

[1] https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-mill...

dsco• 4 years ago

I know a bunch of people who are happy Uber drivers as they couldn’t afford becoming regular taxi drivers. Do you often point out to your Uber divers that they’re lower class and being preyed on? How do they take it?

chrischen4• 4 years ago

They swapped masters from evil medallion rent seekers to software engineers. I’d pick the engineers any day and I’m glad they broke corrupt laws to make changes.

FrenchDevRemote• 4 years ago

I don't see how it's slavery to work for uber. If uber wasn't there, the drivers would be either unemployed, working another minimum wage job, or taking 30 years loans to get Taxi licenses(which most of them wouldn't be able to get).

It's just the same as any other precarious job

O__________O• 4 years ago

Taxi Drivers in Switzerland typically earn around 40,700 CHF per year and Uber drivers make roughly the same if working full-time, more if they are working more than 40-hours a week.

Unless the union is able to explicitly explain their claim the Uber is somehow unfair to drivers, to me sounds like the union is just complaining they not getting their member dues.

Possible I missed something, so here are my sources:

How much Uber drivers make in Switzerland

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ride-sharing-app-_uber-reaches-...

Taxi Driver Average Salary in Switzerland

http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=210&loct...

olalonde2• 4 years ago

No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too.

It seems that this ~billion USD is an hypothetical amount Uber would have had to pay if its contractors had been employees? If so, I'm not quite sure "steal" is the appropriate word here. It also ignores the many things Uber might have done differently if its drivers had been employees: increase fare rates, decrease driver payouts, hire less drivers, possibly get out of Switzerland entirely, etc.

labrador• 4 years ago

Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom

Sounds like Uber was the original web3 business

cornel_io2• 4 years ago

Jesus f with the "slave" overdramatization, that is just ridiculous. Most of the people driving for Uber would not have been driving cabs and living wonderful lives otherwise, they'd be slinging burgers at McDonald's or just unemployed. They wouldn't be making the choice to drive if it didn't make sense for them, which makes it "work", not "slavery".

I'm sorry that the world doesn't offer magical fairyland jobs that are super easy, require zero skill, and pay super well, I really am - as a society we should be aiming for an abundance economy fueled by automation, where everyone shares in the spoils. But running a business that gives people work that they are generally happy to have the option to take is not infringement on anyone's independence or freedom. Just don't drive for them, and you'd be in the exact same position you were in without them existing (unless you were profiting from the heavily cartel-ized taxi system which abused all the customers, in which case I can't give a bigger shrug).

np1810• 4 years ago

Uneasy co-incidence, that recently an Indian Uber competitor (named Ola) also had a report of lobbying efforts...

https://twitter.com/shrutisonal26/status/1544540603932758016

Edit: Apart from the tweets, the actual article is behind a paywall.

AnotherGoodName6• 4 years ago

Btw I'm being a bit coy about naming names but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabcharge#Findings_of_the_Taxi... has all the details of what i spoke about above in case any doubts how corrupt the taxi industry is (although absolutely no one has doubted that to be fair).

pjmlp2• 4 years ago

Maybe some places have shitty taxis, in my European corner I haven't seen anything good about Uber other than bringing the US gig economy of employee exploitation.

maccard• 4 years ago

Not sure where you're located but I'm from Ireland living in the UK. In Edinburgh, all Ubers are private hire cars (it's not just anyone in 4 wheels). Uber has forced all of the major taxi firms to accept card payments, have apps with tracking, etc. Uber itself funnily is actually less reliable than the other operators. My experience in Dublin is the same. It's also completely removed the "take someone the scenic route and charge them 3x" (which happened to me in a taxi in Dublin from the airport in 2014!)

Meanwhile, visiting my parents in a smaller part of Ireland, getting a taxi involves phoning, waiting to see if they decide to pick up (if it's busy they don't), then having them tell you it'll be 10 minutes only to arrive after an hour, not accepting card, etc.

winternett4• 4 years ago

Slightly better circumstances don't exonerate corruption.

Laws and regulation are supposed to reign in bad industry.

Brigading and PR spin is rampant with Uber online for some strange reason, when in truth, they could provide a far better service by relaxing their tendency to spin bad PR by paying and insuring drivers better, and by operating more like a legit Taxi business.

It is NOT Uber that swept in and fixed the corrupt transport for hire system... It was passengers choosing a less expensive (subsidized by company investment) service, which is now dramatically increasing in cost to users now that they have stable market dominance.

The online PR spins only hold up for people who don't properly recall the past and for those who are unaware of the deception involved in use of "folksy" individual personal tropes used to over-simplify complex issues.

TheDudeMan2• 4 years ago

now that they have stable market dominance

Do they? I'm trying to find some data on how much market share Uber has vs Lyft vs taxis.

spaceman_20204• 4 years ago

Uber is only “better” because it is unprofitable.

The minute it starts turning the screws to be profitable, the service quality will go back to what it replaced.

Here in India, its already less reliable and often more expensive than old school taxis.

awillen2• 4 years ago

Not true. In SF when Uber started, it only had black cars and was meaningfully more expensive than a cab. The difference was that if you called a cab, depending on where you were in the city, there was a pretty decent chance you'd be told it'd take 15 minutes, but no one would ever show up. The Uber would be there 100% of the time.

Uber held drivers accountable. The taxi lobby did the exact opposite - they brutally abused an advantage gifted to them by the government because taxis are supposed to be a valuable public service.

In India it may be different, but in the US it continues to be extremely reliable.

nyolfen• 4 years ago

uber is already profitable https://www.barrons.com/articles/uber-stock-first-profitable...

marcosdumay2• 4 years ago

That's just wrong.

Ok, Uber in particular may be very badly run and incapable of turning a profit. But on most places they have competitors that are profitable and usually, cheaper.

Nasrudith2• 4 years ago

If they slash their operating developers from dropping out of the self driving cars race that would make them much more profitable. Whether doing so would be a good idea is another topic.

curious_cat_163• 4 years ago

End does not justify means.

Disruption can (and does) happen without resorting to breaking the law.

runarberg9• 4 years ago

I wonder if there are any examples of a company that disrupted a bad industry with malpractice and then magically stopped it ones they succeeded.

For some reason I would think the opposite was more common, i.e. if a company gets away with bad behavior, they will continue to do so until stopped by their government authorities.

jimnotgym• 4 years ago

How does that follow at all. Uber breaking the laws was not the only possible way to break up a cartel!

runarberg9• 4 years ago

What is your point? Is it that we can’t have nice things and we should just settle with whichever company is able to make the most money from whatever corruption they can get away with?

You are posting an anecdote and non-substantiated accusations against an industry based on your area. And you are doing this under a news where they have evidence that their competitors are as corrupt as it gets, a company which has been accused in the past of violating labor rights, disregarding local laws, bribing officials, exploiting workers, etc. And your point is that their competitors in Australia are worse “because you say so”.

Nah, I’m not buying it. The fact that the Australian taxi industry is bad, does not excuse Uber’s conduct. In fact I don’t care what the state is in this industry regarding this conduct and I wish Uber all the worst.

AnotherGoodName6• 4 years ago

I worry that stories like the above article will be used to justify outlawing ride share in favor of the cartels. This is actually the case in many jurisdictions where ride-share apps are still not allowed and the taxi industry still operates in a cartel fashion. I don't care about Uber or Lyft fwiw. No stake in either in any way shape or form.

My post is a very relevant warning (in my view) about allowing politicians to use the above stories as an excuse to close down an industry. They are looking for such an excuse. Be warned and call it out.

ccvannorman• 4 years ago

whataboutism isn't useful for highlighting corruption - is why you are being downvoted.

AnotherGoodName6• 4 years ago

FlyingSnake• 4 years ago

Still a million times better than what it replaced.

Not really. It is not easy to paint existing systems with a wide brush. The situation in Germany is not the same as in Croatia which is not the same in India. I will always trust taxis in Mumbai and Berlin over Uber, whereas in a foreign location I will look for local options like Ola, Grab, FreeNow.

Uber did act as a catalyst for the incumbents to get off their butts, but it created another set of problems which are equally bad.

drevil-v2• 4 years ago

This is such a stupid simplistic view - read the BBC article on this leak of Uber files. The corruption they (Uber) instituted was just as bad as this anecdote you are alleging.

How does replacing one set of elite corruption with another set of elite corruption get to " i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in"?? You are thankful to them? What are you on about?

dang• 4 years ago

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

akira2501• 4 years ago

It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption.

Why do you think the current state is "/past/ this corruption." It sounds like Uber spent a bunch of money to just "own the corruption for itself." On the whole, I don't believe it's an actual improvement.

You may like the state of the cars more, but the continued overt monopolization and the worse outcomes for labor are massively negative outcomes, even if you aren't in a position to be personally impacted by them.

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

So instead of virtual domination by one very large local incumbent with 200 subsidiaries, you have two foreign cab companies. That's an improvement?

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

Still a million times better than what it replaced.

Not in my experience at all. I can't count how many taxis I've taken, with hardly any problems ever.

corrupt

They lacked anywhere near the resources to be as corrupt as Uber!

oefrha2• 4 years ago

Meh, any corp of this caliber lobbies as much as they can. It wouldn’t have succeeded if cabs weren’t so shitty.

burntoutfire• 4 years ago

They "succeeded" because every ride so far was subsidised by investors. It's not a level playing field for the cabs, which have to make a profit.

nprateem3• 4 years ago

Or their competitors who played by the rules.

oefrha2• 4 years ago

I’m sure the cab cartel was on life support and only tried to scam every tourist and sometimes even locals because they couldn’t make a profit otherwise.

oriettaxx• 4 years ago

“Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.”

Nextgrid2• 4 years ago

Regardless of what you think about the company or their products, letting them get away with this sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion. Whether you agree with the specific laws they’ve broken, the precedent would allow companies to break other laws you might agree with more (and do more damage as a result).

dannyw3• 4 years ago

Companies break laws every minute. Basically every US company operating in the EU is breaking GDPR post-Privacy Shield right now: it's illegal to transfer data of EU residents to US data centers.

Oil and gas companies have been blatantly breaking laws for decades.

Volkswagen, along with a majority of car manufacturers have been cheating emissions testing for ages.

Big banks literally rigged LIBOR through intentionally lying about numbers and laughing and not a single executive is in jail.

asdfjkhasjkdfh2• 4 years ago

And they all set dangerous precedents, and now uber is setting yet another. And we all got dumber by taking the discussion to this direction. Enough defeatism.

orzig• 4 years ago

Agreed! And they should be held accountable too!

monooso• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what your point is.

IIRC, Volkswagen were fined several billion, and a number of senior executives were charged.

Nextgrid2• 4 years ago

IMO there's a big difference between breaking the law to optimize some otherwise-legitimate activity and starting an entire business on something that (at least at the time) was illegal in most countries.

Entinel3• 4 years ago

Basically every US company operating in the EU is breaking GDPR post-Privacy Shield right now: it's illegal to transfer data of EU residents to US data centers.

This is not true and the devil is in the details. It's illegal to transfer "personal data" of EU residents. The definition of personal data under the GDPR is what US companies would consider PII or personally identifiable information and not all companies collect PII. In fact, I would argue most companies go out of there way to not store PII.

c2h5oh• 4 years ago

Maybe it's time for mandatory penalty minimum set somewhere in the 3-100x profits made due to breaking the law. I'm tired of reading about how e.g. an investment fund settled for 100M with no admission of guilt after making a billion breaking the law.

melenaboija3• 4 years ago

What is the point of this? That new companies should be even smarter than the stablished ones and therefore try to game the system even more? Or that we should learn from them and try to improve the situation and make all of them follow the rules?

blablabla123• 4 years ago

Basically every US company operating in the EU is breaking GDPR post-Privacy Shield right now

No expert but in New Relic you can select in which data center your data should be. In fact many websites of US newspapers are not accessible from the EU. Just recently I had to order a gadget through reship.com because I couldn't buy it directly...

guerrilla3• 4 years ago

Yes, but why are you saying this? Because you think we should allow more of it? Or because you think we have fundamental problems we need to fix? Or some other reason?

sitkack• 4 years ago

This will codify that breaking the law is a cost of doing business. Uber already killed a person by disabling the brakes on their self driving car.

But this isn't about Uber, this is about power and corporate personhood.

zouhair• 4 years ago

Their "legal" business model should already be illegal. They are just testing the system to see how far they can get away with stuff.

And even this I highly doubt anything will come out of it.

sillyinseattle• 4 years ago

I despise how they operated from start through 2017. But do I wish Uber had never happened? Nope. Also, when you say "letting them get away with .." are you including Macron, Biden etc in "them'?

nprateem3• 4 years ago

And now they enter the "ask for forgiveness" stage, get a slap on the wrist and get to bank their billions.

miles• 4 years ago

and get to bank their billions.

The only billions Uber has is in losses:

2022:

Uber lost $6 billion to start the year, but reports a rebound in ride-hailing and no issues with driver supply https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billio...

2021:

Uber is still losing a lot of money https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-still-losing-a-lot-of-m...

12 Years After It Was Founded, Uber Says It Might Finally Make a Profit https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/12-years-after-it-...

2020:

Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019, but it thinks it can get profitable by the end of 2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126965/uber-q4-earnings-...

2019:

Uber lost over $5 billion in one quarter, but don’t worry, it gets worse https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-qu...

bambax• 4 years ago

Uber may be losing billions, but Travis Kalanick still has his.

In the weeks leading up to [his] resignation, Kalanick sold off approximately 90% of his shares in Uber, for a profit of about $2.5 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick

amelius• 4 years ago

Sadly, this is normal for growing companies. Amazon lost year after year at some point.

Uber's CEO is still laughing their way to the bank.

F...ing up our economy is profitable.

0x_rs• 4 years ago

Inexcusable. Yet no considerable action will be taken against this corporation nor the corrupted, lobbied politicians that enabled this will ever be held accountable, let alone be cornered to resign from whatever seat they occupy. It's not a good indication for the future how the EU seems to be one giant toybox for fraudulent activities such as these, with all the recent scandals.. there seems to be very little interest in even just keeping a façade of legitimacy.

skilled• 4 years ago

Biden being shown as a puppet in this context is certainly something.

Admittedly, Guardian is the only news site I check ever (last 5 or so years anyway), and even I am impressed that they went with a straight arrow. Good job.

// Weird seeing downvotes for my reply without any comments/input. Just goes to show - ignorance is bliss.

wronglyprepaid3• 4 years ago

Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne

They can't be very smart, Joe Biden is the least corrupt president ever and has committed to total transparency: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-briefing-idUSKB...

ratsmack• 4 years ago

pledges

A pledge has the same value as good intentions.

wronglyprepaid3• 4 years ago

It is not just a pledge as so far he has not broken it https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-prom...

Entinel3• 4 years ago

There are some particularly bad things here like

Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to press ahead regardless. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no? Agreed that right place and time must be thought out.”

However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate. Break the law until they get caught and pay a small fine. Uber will get away with this and people will continue to use Uber.

electrondood• 4 years ago

However, this is how all "unicorn" startups operate.

No it absolutely isn't.

Uber is uniquely corrupt. Their toxic tech-bro culture has been baked in from the start.

effingwewt2• 4 years ago

It absolutely is when paying fines for breaking the law is called 'cost of doing business'.

Businesses want to pretend they are people with rights, then they need to be punished. Send the whole C-suite and Board to fucking prison.

Uber is super corrupt but hardly unique.

javajosh• 4 years ago

I don't think "they broke the law" has the same weight it used to. The American justice system has been so entirely captured by capital that such an accusation merely tells me that one of Uber's enemies spent real money on a PR firm.

Plus, the laws they broke are ones that almost no-one except taxi companies (and perhaps city tax officials) care about.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

Interesting reporting about behavior that goes somewhat beyond business-as-usual for corporate lobbying efforts (not a justification, just a note that these kinds of tactics are relatively common and this report is not an extreme outlier, compared to pharmaceutical lobbying for example).

However, it's curious that there's no mention of Uber's largest backer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which put an unprecedented $3.5 billion into Uber (initially, that may not be all). All the article mentions is this:

"From Moscow to Johannesburg, bankrolled with unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidised journeys, seducing drivers and passengers on to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable."

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/how-much-of-uber-does-sa...

Uber's relationship with Saudi Arabia certainly deserves some mention:

"In the interview with the digital news platform, Khosrowshahi said the 2019 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi shows that "the (Saudi) government said they made a mistake. It's a serious mistake, but we've made serious mistakes, too right?""

0xmohit• 4 years ago

How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide (2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...

SilasX• 4 years ago

HN discussion of that Greyball article (not just linking because my comment is the top one and explains it, or anything...).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564

ajaimk• 4 years ago

Why is this news? It's from 2014... We already knew all this. They even made a TV series about all this.

jeffrallen4• 4 years ago

Corporations are people, and people can be terminated by the state. Corporate death penalty. Easy.

(Except that I agree neither with corporate personhood, nor the death penalty.)

theplumber• 4 years ago

Uber is the best thing that happened to the taxi industry, from client's perspective

quickthrower22• 4 years ago

Except all the weird/interesting cab stories are no longer going to happen.

Mine include:

Cabbie suggesting we pick up girl from bus stop on the way to club. we did and yes we had to pay the extra for his amusement.

Cabbie runs out of fuel. Gets help, gets to petrol station, wants to charge us extra for the time!

Ordering 2 taxis just in case. Anger ensues.

Cabbie looking on the floor for his phone while driving. Seemed stoned.

Doing a few hundred miles in a random cab because the whole train system was screwed up.

wizwit999• 4 years ago

Honestly, I'm happy they resisted the pressure. Visiting Istanbul, and the taxis suck here (apparently the taxi drivers got Uber banned here)

marban• 4 years ago

Lots of early stock holders in the comments.

spaceman_20204• 4 years ago

All this effort and legal chicanery just to build a mediocre, unprofitable business.

oneepic• 4 years ago

Yes, let's focus on the business and forget all about the product, which just so happens to be ubiquitous today, used in most developed countries and 10,000 cities, and people use "Uber" as a verb the same way "Google" is used for searching the web. /s

spaceman_20204• 4 years ago

Well in my country, it has gone from being ubiquitous to being rarely available, to the point that Uber is considering exiting the market.

JNCO jeans and Cabbage Patch Kids were ubiquitous too at one point. Doesn’t mean that they represented anything more unsustainable fads.

xwdv5• 4 years ago

Everything Uber has done is pretty standard for a lot of big companies, people just love to bash Uber for some reason, probably people with ties to the utterly corrupt Taxi industry.

unyttigfjelltol4• 4 years ago

No. The behavior described in the article is not "standard." When you identify a law in a big company that forbids you from doing a business practice, you stop and obey the law. There is no alternative approach, particularly in a big company.

The conduct described in the article is basically reckless win-at-any-cost nonsense that reflects Uber's very survival was forbidden by law. The politicians who prevented subordinates from enforcing the law should be called out one-by-one and made to explain themselves. The lesson from the parent comment is not the correct lesson.

xwdv5• 4 years ago

I see no reason to be a staunch defender of bullshit unjust laws meant to stifle innovation and uphold monopolistic behaviors. The executives can hold their heads high at their acts of corporate level civil disobedience.

bighead7772• 4 years ago

This! I don't use Uber often but when I use it, it's pretty good and I like the experience very much.

The hate of Uber on this forum is ridiculous, some people are just so out of touch of the l reality of modern companies, society and business.

kurupt213• 4 years ago

I don’t know what’s worse. This, or VW writing software to identify an emissions test was being done and entering a low emissions mode that car never used when under normal operation

stef25• 4 years ago

Uber isn't the most ethical company for sure but here in Brussels the taxi industry is pretty shady as well.

Getting a taxi license costs an exorbitant amount of money and it's done through all kinds of dodgy deals.

There's 1-2 companies that have a monopoly on the whole industry.

There's weird rules about which types of taxis can "serve" the airport, akin to what mobsters are responsible for collecting trash in what areas.

You'll often get "sorry the payment terminal is out of order, cash only" BS.

A study a few years ago showed the main taxi company, according to their tax documents, earned a ridiculously low amount of money per day (= obvious dodging of taxes).

They clearly refused to innovate for years. When you called their number you'd get some unintelligible voice on the other end that would give you about 10 sec to state your details before they'd clearly run out of patience.

You could only request pickups at specific addresses that would then be connected to your phone number / profile. So "pick me up on this street corner" was impossible.

The last time we called one for a ride to the airport they didn't show up at the agreed time so we got an Uber. Taxi company called us many times screaming insults down the phone, followed by an offensive email with an invitation to pay and threats of small claims courts.

In light of all that, I have zero problems with someone else moving in fast to break things.

tialaramex2• 4 years ago

I don't use Uber. Several friends do, and, as a third party watching I'd suggest the experience is no better but now with a shiny phone app and exploitative would-be unicorn tech corporation at the helm.

Most recent experience, we were in the docks, the docks are restricted access for terrorism prevention, on entry you need a specific purpose. Our purpose was to inspect a possible party venue (an actual steamship, it's awesome, for a few grand we could have them steam it out into the sea while we celebrated - but, on viewing it seemed like if weather was bad on the day it'd suck as a venue because there's only very limited indoor capacity). So after we've looked around we need to get back out of the docks. Friend summons an Uber. No problem initially, "This is why I use Uber" she says. Her ride gets to the edge of the docks and cancels, presumably because the driver sees scary warning saying "Restricted Area. State your business at checkpoint" and hit cancel because he has managed to live in a port city for years without knowing about this. She summons another one. It too gets to the edge of the docks and then cancels. "Uber says if this keeps happening they're forbidden from cancelling" she claims. Sure enough now her requests are just denied automatically.

So once she gives up I called a regular taxi. That driver couldn't find us, because apparently a massive sign with the name of the ship is too hard to notice ("I had no idea that was here"), but once we walked a few minutes to somewhere this driver could recognise we were driven out of the docks to go for cocktails with another friend.

magnuspaaske2• 4 years ago

This is my experience too. The ride is only as good or as bad as the driver makes it and I have more trust in a system where a number of local taxi companies compete for my business than one massive far-away corporation that somehow can't geofence.

In Copenhagen Uber made a splash until they decided they didn't get all they wanted when the taxi legislation was liberalised and they left. My reading of it is that they didn't want to give other European countries ideas and they were losing money anyways, so it wasn't really worth it to subject themselves to the same kind of regulation that exists in London or New York.

And what did we get instead? 5-10 different taxi apps offering taxis at much the same speed it takes to get an Uber, but regulated locally and paying taxes. It's literally a question of installing a different (or multiple different) app and then the flow is the same.

The kicker: Uber came to Denmark late enough that the taxi companies already had apps (or at least some of them which was then the ones I used). Ultimately it was just a big fight over nothing and Uber left with red numbers and a bad image.

lesstenseflow5• 4 years ago

You couldn’t be bothered to walk outside a “restricted access” area with what you call “scary warning signs” at the entrances, and you blame the Uber drivers for not wanting to take their chances driving past that sign to pick up you and your companion? Oh and the taxi driver also failed to pick you up there, and you finally move your butts to go meet the taxi.

The Uber drivers probably thought the pickup location was a mistake- they get there and say “I can’t pickup here, this is a wrong location” and cancel the job.

So three drivers can’t find you, including a taxi, and this is Ubers fault somehow, not yours for making unreasonable demands of drivers. I suppose it was Ubers fault that the cab couldn’t find you either? It amazes me how people rationalize blaming others in situations like this.

ppsreejith• 4 years ago

I remember this being true in my home place (Kerala, India) till ~2016. Local autos/taxis were unreliable in some parts or would charge you exorbitant fees depending on your situation (Eg: if you were a woman traveling home at night). Uber really changed things in terms of reliability. Local taxi drivers would often resort to violence against Uber drivers for encroaching on their turf. Example video: (The driver eventually steps out of the car and gets beaten up).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okqxNEVYu7E

goopthink• 4 years ago

… and in retrospect, was it worth it? Or was it a pyrrhic short term victory at a huge expense for something that would have happened eventually anyway but at a slower pace? Was this all just a quest to accelerate the inevitable outside of what overlapping Overton windows allowed for?

jmyeet• 4 years ago

There’s nothing particularly surprising here. This is capitalism. Pretty much every company operates like this.

That doesn’t make every company the same. Goldman Sachs literally killed people for profit. Defense companies made up for their revenue loss from the end of the Afghanistan war by earning almost that same amount in military aid to Ukraine (seriously, our ~$50B in both cases).

Those aren’t tech companies FWIW. Even there there’sa error spectrum. AirBnB is cancer, for example.

But at last Uber killed the taxi industry, which was almost universally awful, corrupt and horrible to use. Seriously, good riddance.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Uber, Lyft, etc have to operate as commercial enterprises rather than VC money incinerators. This business isn’t going away.

rob_c• 4 years ago

But don't worry they're a changed company in the valley now and they're so sorry for past behaviour (nothing to do with being caught)... https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4

speeder2• 4 years ago

I actually joined a political party in my country, because they had the intention of protecting Uber.

Some people wonder, but why? Why protect such scummy company?

Well, it was literally to save lives, as much illegal Uber behaviour is, what they were trying to replace was worse, MUCH worse.

Where I live "Taxi Mafia" was a thing, not just in the usual sense people imagine, like blocking competitors using regulations, but people were murdering others, there were beatings, assassinations, theft, high level government corruption, the Taxi Mafia was evil and destructive as any other "<drugs/guns/slavery> Mafia" you can imagine.

A lot of people claim Uber is evil because they say their workers are contractors and not employees. Well, before Uber if you wanted to be a driver, you had to purchase your own car, open your own company, and then give 50k USD to the local mafia boss, and promise to join combat whenever called. Combat? Yes, combat, gathering up drivers to kill a competitor was a thing, one infamous case for example: out of town driver parked near airport to deliver someone, a client in a hurry got on his cab as the other client was leaving, the local mafia didn't like this happened, so they surrounded the car and invited the driver for a "walk", took him under a nearby bridge, and they all kicked him until he was a mangled mess, and then they kicked him some more to make sure he was dead.

foepys• 4 years ago

I don't understand why breaking up the mafia wasn't a more pressing issue? What makes Uber drivers different that they won't be dragged from their cars and kicked to death?

SSLy• 4 years ago

the politicians from the parent commenter's city/state aren't in uber's bed

soneca2• 4 years ago

They were definitely threatened and beat in Brazil several times at the beginning (I don’t recall anyone dying on the news, but I maybe it happened). The difference is that anyone could become a Uber driver, where not everyone could become a tax driver (due to governmental regulations and tight control by the mafia)

marcosdumay2• 4 years ago

I'm wary of adding a me too comment, because we may be talking about the same mafia. But yes, it looks like most large cities in Brazil had an organized mafia that lived on extorting small amounts from the people unlucky enough to need a taxi ride. It helps that the government was the one organizing them, mandating meetings and price fixing, but the rampant extortion was not called for.

And yes, there were about 3 years of very public beatings and assassinations from the taxi mafia on my city before they finally went bankrupt and disappeared. And now, suddenly the taxi service has a similar quality to Uber.

px432• 4 years ago

This is true in lots of cities in the US too. In Portland, our police were working with the taxi union, and kept creating phony Uber accounts, requesting rides, and then fining the drivers. Obviously those riders were getting horrendously negative reviews, so they got added to the "greyball" list where the phony users would log onto the app, and it would look like there were no cars available. They had the gall to complain that they were being targeted unfairly.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyba...

Fuck the taxi unions and especially the PPB for so many reasons.

In Las Vegas, where the corruption is much, much deeper, police, at behest of the taxi union, were just driving around and towing any car with an Uber or Lyft sticker. When the ride sharing companies finally broke through, they were still forced to only pick up at the farthest point in the parking lot of their airport, and at the back end of any casino, which could mean 10-15 minutes of walking in the 100F weather to get to the rideshare pickup spot. Vegas is the only place in the US where I'll still take a taxi, which I hate, but ride share there is so horrible that there isn't really much of an option.

I also got robbed in various ways about 50% of the time when taking a taxi in Miami, with taxi drivers driving circles, or threatening to drive off with my luggage if I didn't leave a tip that was several times the actual fare of the ride, etc. People who complain about ride sharing companies are obviously people who have had the privilege of never needing to ride in a taxi. Maybe they're okay in some places, but they've been terrible pretty much everywhere I've been. The reciprocal rating systems that ride share apps use is a godsend.

morelisp3• 4 years ago

This is true in lots of cities in the US too.

What speeder is describing is not even close to true in any US city.

morelisp3• 4 years ago

Why do you think Uber would not have participated in the same corruption (or worse) once it was sufficiently entrenched? Remember, this is the company that in the US threatened journalists, and in India stole medical records of critics. It's not hard to believe they'd cross any line someone else was already crossing relative to local mores.

squiffsquiff• 4 years ago

Not poster you asked but:

With Uber you don't pay the driver directly. The price is set by a third party and so is the recommended route. Tricky to swindle the rate, route or tips. In areas where drivers have to be licensed, that is enforced so passenger and driver identity has some verification

speeder2• 4 years ago

What made Uber special was that it ignored medallion/license laws. Those were central to taxi mafia. For example in São Paulo there was a period of time where some 30.000 or so drivers had passed all requisites, paid all fees, but whenever they applied for a license the government would only say they needed to wait. But if you paid 100k USD to certain guys, they would drop a cab, license and everything you needed at an agreed drop point, without any of the exams, testing, courses, etc...

hourago4• 4 years ago

but people murdering others

What is stopping them murdering Uber drivers? Your story seems a caricature and makes little sense. "Uber saved my country from assassins"

Which country it was? Wich political party?

soneca2• 4 years ago

Brazil (I am assuming). Here, mainstream media (use Google translate to read it):

https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/07/imagens-...

The police officer quote mentions a series of similar attacks. There used to be a video of the act, but probably link rotted.

notyourwork3• 4 years ago

Taxi bad. Uber not as bad. Uber is ok? I don't see the mental gymnastics to give one a pass because another is bad.

novok2• 4 years ago

Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.

silveira• 4 years ago

I highly recommend the episode 271- Uber from the podcast The Dollop which goes about the history of Uber.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVkb2xsb3AubGl...

mtlynch• 4 years ago

The Dollop just plagiarizes content from other sources. They have a (not always complete) list of sources on their website, but on the podcast itself, they read other sources word-for-word without giving attribution:

https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/n...

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/07/15/how-a-comedy-podc...

jollybean2• 4 years ago

Someone describe to me why politicians even bother to meet with Uber.

Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others?

Where is the 'money flow' happening here? Is someone being bribed? Was Uber funnelling money to a related cause?

I can understand ministers wanting to please a big up and coming company, sure, that's their job in some way, but not like this.

How does Uber have the ability to get the VP to 'change their speech'.

What's going on? That's not in the article.

wronglyprepaid3• 4 years ago

Why would Biden, Macron bother with this company, and not others?

Yes I agree, Biden is also very tough on corruption[1], historically so in fact.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

zbird5• 4 years ago

Obviously we are to trust whitehouse.gov on how tough on corruption the administration is.

Ericson23142• 4 years ago

There is an ideological attachment to the gig company. See Macron trying to change the labor laws in France. In Macron's mind, France is "uncompetitive" and so Uber is like a straight-to-the-veins routing around the political system to change that.

jollybean2• 4 years ago

Having lived in France, I would definitely agree on some level with that, I see an entire nation of people fighting over surpluses and a lot less productivity - but I wonder if even that would be enough.

Agree with Macron or not - that's at least him doing is job to 'make things happen' - but the degree of complicity is just to much.

There's money going somewhere somehow, that's the missing piece.

I don't suggest there is outright bribery because that's 'illegal' and would 'really get them in trouble' but something softer like campaign contributions or related causes, or favours here and there.

tapatio• 4 years ago

The new norm: to become a unicorn you have to lie, cheat, and steal.

jsemrau• 4 years ago

How is this news? This has been known for a long while. I, myself of all people, have written an article about how dangerous lobbying from these tech companies is [1] Corporations need to get their funding out of politics because it perverts the democratic process. The same applies to foreign influence. It bothers me greatly how much right-wing parties all-over the world are taking a pro-Russian stance.

[1]https://medium.com/@jsemrau/uber-and-lift-set-a-very-dangero...

ETH_start• 4 years ago

Uber has massively improved taxi services around the world. The labor laws and taxi medallion rackets they circumvented were massive barriers to improving transportation services.

lesstyzing5• 4 years ago

The Uber propaganda here in this thread is insane. Taxi’s maybe have been shit but that does not in anyway justify Uber breaking the law to conquer the market (btw, now that they’ve done that, they’ve also turned to shit because it was unsustainable).

Perfect may be the enemy of good but we shouldn’t excuse companies using endless VC money and law breaking to achieve something that’s marginally better for consumers.

Obviously there are some exceptions to this in the comments but generally, in modern countries where the taxi firms aren’t run by literal mafias and killing people, we should condemn Uber’s behaviour.

hourago4• 4 years ago

Uber is well known for paying to manipulate on-line discourse. The amount of propaganda just adds to my grievances towards the company.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

My observation is that nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press, isolated in local news under different taxi brands, and in municipal court filings. This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves.

Whereas any incident with Uber is international news.

Makes it harder for me to elevate Uber’s issues as being as egregious as presented. I recognize their flaws, I also recognize the market need which still remains. So sure, make a better one thats more compliant. When I and others point this out we’re not giving Uber a pass. Just assigning a weight to the problems.

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

This being about local taxi that bent the law to become entrenched themselves.

Can you give an example? I've never heard of that. They usually lack any power at all.

nearly every municipality had a taxi service with negative press

Everyone seemed satisfied in my experience. I did see Uber's talking points everywhere on social media - how terrible taxis were. Unforunately, taxis lacked the money to run their own information campaign.

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

I've taken many, many taxis with barely a problem. They weren't (and aren't) shit at all to me.

simonbarker872• 4 years ago

I won’t use Uber. It’s terrible and far worse than my experience with taxis. I’ve also said here before that many UK cities had better taxis systems before Uber but was shouted down. The only way Uber could compete was unprofitably undercutting the local market with a worse service.

Just because SF needed a new taxis system doesn’t mean they had to inflict it on the rest of the world.

You want to get to the airport for 5AM tomorrow morning? Good luck getting an Uber, they won’t let you book ahead and if you want to hail at the time they will cancel on you 4 times.

I’ve never had this issue with a taxi company and have got a pre booked taxi to time critical things a lot of times in my life.

But yeh, they have an app (weren’t even the first though) so HN loves them.

azinman2• 4 years ago

At least in the US you can pre-book. I’m no Uber fan but I haven’t experienced this cancelation you mention.

bogota• 4 years ago

I mean “inflict it on the rest of the world” come on. They wouldn’t be selling if you weren’t buying. Uber categorically provides a better service than taxis in almost all places and provides a far safer experience in others. But once again it’s likely some self righteous first world person’s opinion who has no context for how other countries function. Par for the course on HN.

kortilla4• 4 years ago

The only way Uber could compete was unprofitably undercutting the local market with a worse service

If it was worse, why were people using it? Maybe people didn’t like, or more likely couldn’t afford, the taxi service you refer to.

they won’t let you book ahead and if you want to hail at the time they will cancel on you 4 times.

This is exactly what getting a cab was like before Uber in nearly every city in the US. That’s why Uber had no problem disrupting taxis.

pmoriarty• 4 years ago

"I won’t use Uber. It’s terrible and far worse than my experience with taxis."

Is Lyft any better?

badrabbit2• 4 years ago

I agree with you except with the marginally better part. Their service is profundly revolutionary.

It isn't lack of capital or brains that prevented the taxi indistry before and after uber to provide the same service but beneficial to their interests. After all these years they are not even trying to compete with Uber they just want things to go back to the way they were where consumers are taken advantage of or discriminated against. Like it or not, Uber is more accessible to all types of consumers not just the ones drivers think will tip the most, they have better background checks and uniform and scrutinized safety controls and providen a viable primary or secondary income to drivers.

The local laws and regulations should get out of the way and enable what uber is trying to do with or without Uber. The livelihood of taxi drivers is not the law's problem, the well being od consumers and the economy however is. An outdated business model should not be put on a respirator by politicians. I am of the opinion that traditional taxi system with medallions and all that should be done with. Anyome who provides consumer transportation can compete fairly with Uber and pals.

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

After all these years they are not even trying to compete with Uber they just want things to go back to the way they were

Who are you describing? Can you name anyone?

where consumers are taken advantage of

I've never felt taken advantage of in a taxi. I know Uber pushes this all the time, but can you give examples? I know with Uber or Lyft they collect data on me such as where I am and where I go.

or discriminated against

Is there any evidence that it's better with ridesharing apps? I mean evidence, not the same claims long made by Uber.

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

Their service is not revolutionary if you're trans: https://xtramagazine.com/power/uber-trans-drivers-discrimina...

Their service is not revolutionary if you're non-white and a driver: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58831373

Their service is not revolutionary if you're handicapped. The TNCs charge wait time fees which end up discriminating against handicapped passengers who take longer to get from their home to the waiting vehicle, and to get into the vehicle. In fact, they were sued over this, more specifically for not making accommodations: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-uber-... and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-10/uber-sued...

The TNCs are not required to operate a minimum number of paratransit vehicles like taxi fleets are. Uber has been sued for not providing paratransit vehicles https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/18/uber-accessibility-lawsuit...

The TNCs and local regulators have done nothing to address widespread problems of drivers refusing to provide service to the handicapped. I remember being shocked at the posts in TNC driver subreddits and web forums regarding handicapped passengers. Many drivers see someone in a wheelchair and just bolt - using various methods to cancel/reject the ride - because they see picking up such a passenger to be time consuming, a risk, or annoying.

The service is not revolutionary if you live in the "wrong" part of town. I lived in a "not quite wrong, not quite right" neighborhood where there was plenty of wealthy young people but it was also close to the "wrong" part of town...and when I tried using the service, it'd be 20 minutes to get a ride and usually at least one cancellation. In the "right" part of town? A quarter of the wait, and never a canceled pickup.

cyanydeez• 4 years ago

Their business was defacto to ignore local laws. And you'll find libertarians as a advocate of that business model.

zbird5• 4 years ago

A lot of folks here seem to be confusing breaking the law in the name of justice and social progress (e.g. Rosa Parks) vs the blatant corruption of companies like Uber. At least the Uber VPs knew they were corrupt.

lawgimenez• 4 years ago

In my country we used to have Uber but they pulled out maybe 4-5 years ago. I wish they have stayed, because now we only have one and it is driving the price way up high due to lack of competition.

RONROC• 4 years ago

The Uber propanaganda is always insane on HN.

Where do you think these people work?

TLDR; Their parents are proud of them, let's not fuck that up for them.

zbird5• 4 years ago

Indeed. And many may have joined not knowing the real workings of the company; heck, the same situation could also be true for many of us now. But to continue defending the company even after knowing the facts is certainly a thing to marvel at.

sfifs• 4 years ago

Maybe it is "marginally better" where you come from. Uber and their ill have always been always parity priced or more expensive in the markets I have lived in. The killer value proposition is the car actually turns up in a timely manner and actually takes passengers to where they want to go. Taxis often simply were eother not available to call, rarely showed up even if called and would often refuse to go where passengers want. Uber and its competitors literally makes it possible to live in the cities i live in without owning a car because even if you regularly commute by public transport, for those occasions where you need a car, you know you will get one reliably. In the past that was not an option and you would have to own a car.

Hopefully a good reminder to not extrapolate personal experiences or propaganda of the circle one may be a part of to the whole world.

jackson1442• 4 years ago

The best part about Uber/Lyft imo is that I know exactly how much I'll be charged before I even request it. Taxis you get to do a bunch of math that depends on factors like traffic but in the rideshare apps you can decide if the ride is worth it.

If taxis could replicate this more ethically, I would switch in a heartbeat.

charrondev• 4 years ago

In my market I can now get an taxi in more consistent time than an Uber. It seems drivers don’t get matched in a timely manner. Unfortunately I was using Uber primarily because of how fast it arrived previously, but the driver numbers fell off a lot during Covid, between some drivers churning out, not wanting to wear masks, and or switching to Uber eats.

Sometimes I wish I could just “even though there is so surge, I would gladly pay a 2x surge to just get a car to arrive here within the next 30 minutes”.

alasdair_3• 4 years ago

and would often refuse to go where passengers want

This happens to me all the time with Uber when I land at LAX and want to go to Anaheim or I’m in SF and want to go to San Jose.

And unlike a taxi, half the time Uber charges me $5 claiming that I ghosted the driver rather than them refusing to take me, something I don’t always catch.

varunprasad• 4 years ago

Well, iphones have also only existed since little before Uber came around.

The reason that was the only way cabs were available because those were the only communication technologies available.

Maybe what you should be demanding is that cab services provide apps so you don't have to hail/call, etc. There are several companies that can provide this for your cab jurisdiction area as a third party service and they won't price gouge the cab drivers and/or the customers, and they won't use illegal threats and bribes to change laws to suit their needs.

spiantino• 4 years ago

Did you read the article? You like Uber a lot, congrats, what does that have to do with this?

synicalx• 4 years ago

the car actually turns up in a timely manner

Here in Australia this is becoming a real problem with Uber - drivers seem to apparently have unlimited "cancels" and just cancel rides continuously to drive up demand especially at the airport where they know passengers have no other choice. They'll also almost always refuse rides that are too far, or don't finish in or near a high-demand area (like a CBD or airport). Other ride share apps are worse (DiDi really sucks), but Uber is the most expensive by far and the experience is pretty bad.

Our taxis on the other hand mostly seem to have uber-like apps and you can reliably get picked up just about anywhere even if you live in the middle of nowhere (within reason, of course). They're about the same price as Uber, with no surge pricing as well.

Spooky233• 4 years ago

Uber varies dramatically in different locales.

In my area, they aren’t very available and don’t like to pick up in many areas, and hate driving to the airport or train station. Previously, the airport and train station authority held cabs to high standards there and they were responsive and clean.

In places like Boston I’ve been straight up stranded in the airport when Ubers just won’t show - don’t know why.

heliodor• 4 years ago

Another important benefit of taking an Uber is that the price is clear.

jjmorrison• 4 years ago

In the modern country of America taxi firms are run by literal mafias... Like actually.

lesstyzing5• 4 years ago

They’re not.

aunty_helen5• 4 years ago

Obviously there are some exceptions to this in the comments but generally, in modern countries where the taxi firms aren’t run by literal mafias and killing people, we should condemn Uber’s behaviour.

hehe love it. In the first world, ...

How about this, I want to arrive at an airport, walk out the front, check a number plate and put my suitcases in the boot knowing that if anything happens I'm not going to be risking 10k worth of stuff.

Oh officer, it was a yellow car that said taxi on the side, you think you'll find my stuff?

In Germany, Berlin of all cities, I had my bagage held to ransom by a taxi driver who "forgot" to start the meter and then decided the 250m we drove was worth an extra 10eur on top of the 15eur trip.

So sorry this is more Uber propaganda, but for the ~1000 Uber reciepts I have in my inbox, I've had few and only little problems. And a lot of these are from a city where people do go missing if they get in the wrong taxi.

Do I love Uber? No. They're sometimes shit. Surge pricing, allowing drivers to pick up a trip and then just cancel, 6 minute arrival timers that are actually 10 minutes away, wait fees from the first minute onwards, grumpy covid mask reminder emails even though I'm always wearing a mask, reissuing fees when they adjust the price and holding extra money on my card until it's all cleared.

But touch wood, I've never been in a crash in an Uber, I have in a taxi (single car, solely the drivers fault), even though it's a 20:1 ratio for journeys I've taken.

Edit: 1051 trips according to my inbox

mccorrinall2• 4 years ago

If you’re in germany, use the mytaxi (freenow) app and pay in the app.

https://apps.apple.com/de/app/free-now/id357852748?l=en

usr11063• 4 years ago

1051 trips supporting a clearly criminal business. They admit that basically themselves, until they claim to have changed their direction a couple of years ago.

E.g. here in this country drivers got criminal charges, got all their fares confiscated and some ended up in personal bankruptcy. Uber even kept the 20% commission and the leaked documents say they knew they were operating fucking illegally.

joe_the_user3• 4 years ago

Ex-taxi driver,

Taxi’s maybe have been shit but that does not in anyway justify Uber breaking the law to conquer the market (btw, now that they’ve done that, they’ve also turned to shit because it was unsustainable).

Literal or not, taxi companies really are as a rule something akin to local Mafiosos. They break the law all the time. The extent to which Uber screwed over it's drivers and to an extent risked the safety of it's riders bothers me. That Uber flouted local regulations intended to keep taxis services in the hands of local politicos' scumbag friends bothers me not in the least.

And as Uber rose, lots of drivers would drive both taxis and Uber, with each having advantageous and disadvantageous. And I also remember finally checking tire pressure on a cab I'd been paying to use for a bit - random amounts between 10 psi to 40 psi with half the tires bald. Taxi companies are filth and I laugh to hear any of them out of business. Sure Uber isn't much better but the point is Uber vs local Taxi company isn't a fight where people should be routing for a side. Tossing bottles at both sides, sure but not taking a side.

blobbers2• 4 years ago

Appreciate the driver insight here! We often play off “the good old days” before tech took over industry X.

Nice to know history isn’t all roses and sugar in reality.

hourago4• 4 years ago

Literal or not, taxi companies really are as a rule something akin to local Mafiosos.

Uber is NOT better. Read the article. They just take a bigger chunk from drivers and do not pay taxes.

I want Uber to disappear because their uncontrollable power, they use ride data to spy politicians, they avoid paying taxes, they mistreat their "employees", ...

Both sides are the same is false, and it is false in almost all situations. (Vote!)

1vuio0pswjnm7• 4 years ago

"Tossing bottles at both sides, sure but not taking a side."

In the 1920s, Yellow Cab and Checker Cab engaged in shootouts on the streets of Chicago. A guy named John Hertz owned Yellow Cab. He also owned racehorses. In 1923, he bought a rental car company. In 1929, arsonists targeted his stables. He then sold Yellow Cab.

However the story told by this Uber leak is not about one company versus another. The sides in this battle are (a) Uber and (b) the people, as represented through the state or government.

Scarblac• 4 years ago

This really depends on where you are, taxi laws and companies are not the same everywhere, Uber mostly is.

noptd• 4 years ago

You should include this disclaimer as you commented below

I should admit that I drove for only a month

so that readers can properly weigh your experiences when forming an opinion.

charlieyu1• 4 years ago

I would take Uber lobbyists over taxi lobbyists in Hong Kong any day. Manipulating the number of taxi licenses so the current license are worth millions of HKD, holders get rich just by letting hundreds of licenses to drivers who don’t earn much after rent, while also being pawns of CCP? I don’t think people would really like them.

onphonenow• 4 years ago

I’d support anyone who broke the sf taxi cartel. For all the high minded rhetoric folks spew about how the regulations protected the consumer - it was a clear cartel - racist, poor service, insultingly bad in fact. The fact that govt agencies and departments bent over backwards to support this garbage is all you need to know about the peoples representatives

jeltz3• 4 years ago

There is a world outside SF. Some places had great taxis, others had awful and most somewhere inbetween. Uber used the same underhanded tactics in all places.

JumpCrisscross3• 4 years ago

Uber propaganda

Propaganda is idealistic. It runs counter to its audience’s real-world experience. To the degree anyone is propagandising, it is those condemning Uber. Uber’s supporters, not of all of it, but certainly of its raison d’être, have practical, real-life experiences to sustain their arguments. The other side, condemning Uber, evokes moral outrage.

Not making a concluding argument for either side. But would hold back on the accusation that one side or the other is serving corporate or populist propaganda.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

Taxi’s maybe have been shit but that does not in anyway justify Uber breaking the law to conquer the market

Why not?

MLK (and Im sure others before him) said you have a duty to disobey unjust laws. The law should conform with what is right, not just be followed blindly. If uber can improve outcomes and do no net harm then good luck to them and anyone else in a similar situation.

intrasight• 4 years ago

Rules are meant to be broken. That's how progress occurs. The courts will decide what, if any, sanctions to apply. This is as it should be in a liberal democracy.

zbird5• 4 years ago

Looks like you're quoting a book on social progress. This isn't it.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

ITT: How Softbank and A16z broke up regional taxi mafias, while absorbing disproportionate press from many jurisdictions at once

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC [and the Guardian] will in the coming days publish a series of investigative reports about the tech giant.

OT: What happened to the NY Times? They seem to have stopped doing ground-breaking investigations of the powerful, including government. Instead, we get investigations of trends and porn sites. What are they doing? It would be an incredile resource to lose. Seriously, please share the last investigation they did that fits that description?

flakiness• 4 years ago

https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/about-uber-fi...

Only US media listed is WP. I guess this is because the file is about international (non-US) behavior of Uber and ICIJ might have asked for help in media in each country.

Uber's behavior in the US is well covered by this very popular book [1] and it is authored by an NYT reporter, based on his own reporting on NYT.

I won't argue about NYT's general trends, but it's not very fair to complain NYT not to cover Uber.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

I'm concerned more than complaining, and not about Uber coverage but about investigative reporting in general. The reporting in that book was years ago.

wolverine87610• 4 years ago

I think it's important to realize that Uber is what SV has become: Corruption and abuse of power as the primary tools of business, not innovation. Embrace of the powerful, not the little guy in their garage. Destroying other people and embracing sociopathology..

There's a long way from Steve Jobs' Apple, or Netscape, or many others (including FOSS!), who made exciting ground-breaking innovations, to Uber.

mi_lk• 4 years ago

... the leak is from 2013-2017 when Travis Kalanick was still CEO, I mean it was bad but we already know it.

Kalanos• 4 years ago

and scheduled me a 5:15am ride at 10pm the night before so i could get to their airport at the click of a button. where else is the driver going to make $25 (guessing their actual profit from $40 ride) in 20min at 5am? it's in the best interest of the people and progress. that's what the law should be enabling, not defending taxi licenses and unions

Nursie6• 4 years ago

Uber don't schedule anything in most markets, they just look for a driver a couple of minutes before.

I'd never rely on that for something important like an airport trip.

WalterBright• 4 years ago

Laws that enshrine and entrench the taxi monopoly are bad laws.

polynomial• 4 years ago

I don't feel great about taking Uber, but until NYC gets the TV screen out of my face, it's a no brainer from a user experience pov.

dnissley• 4 years ago

The laws being broken were clearly unjust and Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition) by breaking them. That doesn't mean every underhanded thing Uber has ever done has been justified, but in this particular instance it seems like it was. No one wants to be sympathetic to a large corporation of course, but that's a conversation most people aren't willing to have...

pyrale2• 4 years ago

The laws being broken were clearly unjust

We're talking about laws from foreign countries too here, some of which were clearly aimed at preventing civil servants from becoming corrupt.

Uber committed civil disobedience (in the American tradition)

Comitting "civil disobedience" against a foreign country to force them to open to business? Sure, it may be a tradition if you refer to Matthew Perry or William Walker.

entwife• 4 years ago

Uber was better than taxi because it had an app and taxis did not. However, taxis in many cities now have some taxi-hailing app. Once the app became available, I began to prefer taxis over "ride sharing" services like Uber and Lyft.

dayvid• 4 years ago

I went to Vegas earlier this year. The taxis were far better and cheaper than the Uber. Uber's are also a lot more expensive now.

I think UberPool was going to be Uber's killer feature. It made taking Uber's more regularly affordable for different groups of people, but COVID sadly ruined it.

aftergibson• 4 years ago

I see this is hitting the front page of the guardian with that heavy hitting colour scheme but reading through the articles I feel a big… so what? Maybe I’m just apathetic but it feels like a company that’s fought to exist in a world of crappy, shady incumbents and made life meaningfully better for a lot of people.

I’m skeptical of a lot of technology and generally would prefer that status quo for a lot of things but this feels like a storm in a teacup for what is a pretty decent product disrupting an industry that deserved disruption, I’m almost hope Uber provides an example of how this can be done for other industries.

bradgranath• 4 years ago

Duh?

us0r• 4 years ago

Ugh ICIJ. Cherry picked stories without ability to look through raw files/data.

elforce0022• 4 years ago

God, I love this comment section. Let's justify Uber's behavior since taxis were/are bad.

halamadrid• 4 years ago

I can’t imagine a world without Uber. Every city I go to, this or similar apps simply makes my commute easier and better.

ChrisMarshallNY• 4 years ago

Damn. That’s gonna leave a mark.

It’s above the fold, on BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321

jwilber• 4 years ago

Taxis suck. But Uber sucks now, too.

I’d still rather ride share than use a taxi, and use door dash over Uber (lest we forget Uber’s previous lawsuits), but all of the choices in the market are kind of grim.

sylware• 4 years ago

ofc, microsoft, its owner, has _nothing_ to do with all that.

...

blobbers2• 4 years ago

They’ve made multiple movies/series about WeWork. Where is the movie in Uber??? Take my money! Show me the Kalanick!

rmatt2000• 4 years ago

"Behind every great fortune is a great crime." - Balzac. Was there ever an industry that this quote described more accurately than tech?

hahaitsfunny2• 4 years ago

People on here pretending like unelected rich elite influencing politics via NGOs by meeting with elected government officials in Davos every year isn't a big deal or anything to worry about, and that Uber's behavior as well as the behavior of corrupt world leaders who enabled Uber, is justified because Taxi companies and labor unions are also corrupt.

People unconcerned with this stuff are probably the same folks who think Klaus Schwab is a benign leader of the WEF which is just some benign global humanitarian organization, and that when Schwaab talks about penetrating government cabinets, and people owning nothing by 2030 and liking it, it's just a conspiracy.

This is one of the major problems with the world - tech overlords and globalists have everyone brainwashed into thinking this dystopian shit is normal, and that we should accept it, or that it's necessary to build a "sustainable" future - whatever that means. Sounds to me like the rich and powerful will do whatever they can to become more rich and powerful, damn the costs. Their purported ends justify their means, no matter how violent, destructive, unethical or immoral.

Edit: I just thought more about this. This article literally painted a scene at one point where the effing POTUS, supposedly the most powerful person in the world, was being spoken to like a child by the CEO of a corporation, and then changed policy on the spot after being bullied around at a secretive conference that I won't even get into the sketchiness of. If this isn't concerning, I don't know what is.

piyushpr134• 4 years ago

Uber works like a terrorist organization. Their city teams work like terrorist sleeper cells...no office, no call center only email contact. They bribe, they buy, they infiltrate and they have a huge fanatical base who won't listen anything against them.

jheriko• 4 years ago

this was always obvious to me from day one. i didn't need a leak to notice this. it was flagrant and blatant at the time.

everyone was so busy being a fanboy it drove me a bit mad... especially operating without licenses and looking as if nobody had done the basic due diligence on what was needed to operate at all.

honestly the entire "genius" of the idea itself is "ignore the law and do whatever"

TwoHeadedBeast• 4 years ago

Indeed, the app, while nicely implemented, contained nothing groundbreaking.

CodeWriter23• 4 years ago

Isn’t this leak about 5 years old?

DLA• 4 years ago

I just wonder when companies just stopped caring at all about doing the right thing? Are there any objectively honest big companies out there?

- Enron. We all know what happened there.

- Facebook. Industrial-scale slimy.

- Exxon. Poor Alaska.

- BP. OMG poor Gulf Coast.

- McKinsey. Here’s how to sell more Fentanyl.

- Experian. Let’s lie about that giant data leak.

- AIG, Bond rating agencies, Lehman etc. We’re printing money from total crap paper, and we know it, but SHHH the OMG the $$$.

- J&J. Talc powder is very bad and we knew it for a long time. - Purdue Pharma. Evil opioid empire.

- Bayer. Roundup poison (someone explain why this is still legal to sell anywhere for any purpose).

And the list goes on forever! So sad and utterly morally bankrupt.

Corporate boards are part of the problem. In so many case are they not doing their oversight job because they are on the take or utterly incompetent or maybe both.

</rant> Sorry, this just makes me crazy.

Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals

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