Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 573 posts

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#441

Post by robert_foss »

dvdhnt wrote: post #439
robert_foss wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company can be expected to behave morally? Is that what you are arguing?

Actually, no they cannot. It has been proven time and time again that most companies will behave only in ways that benefit its stakeholders. Sometimes, that happens to align with public or moral good. However, our only expectation should be that companies make decisions and take actions within the parameters prescribed by regulators. Anything they do beyond that is either a violation, and should be punished, or a sec…

I would agree that this seems to be the case almost always, but should it have to be that way?

Why can't public interest be aligned with the profit motive more often?

To some extent this is already the case, you don't see Dow Chemical grinding up children and selling them as couch stuffing, although sometimes they're not very far from that mark.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#442

Post by jaynos »

StevePerkins wrote: post #420
KirinDave wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is who lives in what swing state counties now. That's basically what the US voting system has been designed to measure. Quite surprising when you start to do the math.

What matters is TURNOUT. Always has. Trump received almost the exact same number of popular votes as Romney in '12, and McCain in '08. The difference is that 10 million Obama voters stayed home for Hillary: http://i.imgur.com/AT0kqVz.jpg Whether due to disappointment that Bernie Sanders wasn't nominated, or belief that voting wasn't important since Trump wasn't projected to win, or "OMG Russian hacker!!" conspiracy t…

>Trump received almost the exact same number of popular votes as Romney in '12, and McCain in '08. The difference is that 10 million Obama voters stayed home for Hillary: http://i.imgur.com/AT0kqVz.jpg Your data is from very soon after the election. Once all the votes were counted, Clinton had the same vote total as Obama '12 [1]. Perhaps an argument can be made that due to population growth she'd need 1% more (or some number) to truly match Obama '12.

That said, I agree with your general message about turnout.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#443

Post by mikeash »

robert_foss wrote: post #434
captainmuon wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is a company, it is not organized in a union. I would never expect them to participate in a strike and effectively order their drivers to stop working. Just like a taxicab company doesn't participate in the strike, but the drivers do. This is like if Coca Cola workers went on strike, and problem blamed Pespi Co of breaking strike by not sending their workers home??

No company can be expected to behave morally? Is that what you are arguing?

Is it immoral not to participate in a strike organized by people you have no connection to, who work for different people, and who never consulted me?

If I was going to work and some strangers told me not to because they were on strike, I'd tell them to get lost.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#444

Post by muninn_ »

wfo wrote: post #437
hueving wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This doesn't make scabbing any less vile This is a political opinion, and the context definitely matters. This wasn't a strike for higher wages, this was a strike to back a political stance. How would you feel if the cabbies went on strike because we allow Muslims to vote? Would you so vehemently blast people that want transportation to continue functioning in the interim in that case as well?

It wasn't a strike for higher wages, it was a strike to stop being banned from the country. Strikes are always political. The point of a strike is to say "you need us" and a HUGE proportion of taxi drivers are Muslim. Their family, friends, the people who keep their family and friends safe risking their lives helping the US military in their home countries were all screwed by this. They wanted to strike to say 'if yo…

Well then the price of Taxi rides will increase and people will stop working at McDonalds and drive taxis. That's how the world works.

And the "Trump supporters missed flights", yeah so did people who were flying home to see loved ones, didn't support Trump, or didn't care.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#445

Post by enraged_camel »

dvdhnt wrote: post #439
robert_foss wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company can be expected to behave morally? Is that what you are arguing?

Actually, no they cannot. It has been proven time and time again that most companies will behave only in ways that benefit its stakeholders. Sometimes, that happens to align with public or moral good. However, our only expectation should be that companies make decisions and take actions within the parameters prescribed by regulators. Anything they do beyond that is either a violation, and should be punished, or a sec…

>>Actually, no they cannot. It has been proven time and time again that most companies will behave only in ways that benefit its stakeholders.

I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that the current situation is benefiting Uber's shareholders.

The point being that by breaking the strike, Uber made a terrible business decision. They massively underestimated the backlash they would get. Now they have a (yet another) PR nightmare in their hands.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#446

Post by Vraxx »

jdietrich wrote: post #404
mcv wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost nobody interviewed for occupy Wallstreet could even agree on what the goal of the group was. Protests are rarely about setting policy. They're about voicing their disagreement. Even if people at Occupy Wallstreet (and many other protests) can't agree on the solution, they do tend to agree on the problem.

That may or may not be the case now, but it certainly isn't true historically. There's a reason why "What do we want? Something! When do we want it? Now!" is a protest cliche. Grassroots activism used to be better organised. Trade unions and other working-class organisations provided structure and institutional expertise. Discontent could be directed as part of a broader strategic campaign. The atomization of society…

It seems our means of communication have grown beyond our ability to organize through those means. This seems to be a trend with the Internet in general where arguments like gamer gate etc. are fractured into two sides, but even on each side you won't find a coherent set of ideals that unifies.

I believe cases like these are just spotlights on how different we as humans tend to think while assuming those grouped around us tend to be more similar than in actuality.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#447

Post by kj01a »

panarky wrote: post #69
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Dan Primack summarised this well; Uber failed on messaging: "Uber has done a lot of questionable things over the years, but its actions this past weekend vis-a-vis Trump's immigration ban weren't among them. An actual timeline from Saturday, which may differ from what you saw on social media: • 4:20pm ET: CEO Travis Kalanick sent email to employees. It stopped short of explicitly opposing the ban, but did say: (1) Th…

This isn't about "messaging" or "optics". Kalanick is playing a double game, collaborating with the Trump administration on the one hand, while simultaneously trying to be seen as moral. This is too transparent and Kalanick got caught trying to play both sides. If he believes the Muslim ban and other policies of hate are immoral, he should loudly and publicly resign his position on the president's economic advisory g…

Everything is about optics. What world do you think you live in?

EDIT: I don't know what to tell ya, but downvoting doesn't make it less true.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#448

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

StevePerkins wrote: post #420
KirinDave wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is who lives in what swing state counties now. That's basically what the US voting system has been designed to measure. Quite surprising when you start to do the math.

What matters is TURNOUT. Always has. Trump received almost the exact same number of popular votes as Romney in '12, and McCain in '08. The difference is that 10 million Obama voters stayed home for Hillary: http://i.imgur.com/AT0kqVz.jpg Whether due to disappointment that Bernie Sanders wasn't nominated, or belief that voting wasn't important since Trump wasn't projected to win, or "OMG Russian hacker!!" conspiracy t…

Campaign finance reform, gerrymandering reform, compulsory voting...these are all good things to have in a democratic republic, but they're difficult to sex up for mass appeal.

Instead we get stuck in the mud with tangible topics that affect regular lives like universal health care and free public higher education. Good things, sure, but not the solution to our deeper problems.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#449

Post by jaynos »

Udik wrote: post #241
alphonsegaston wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber broke the strike by breaking the strike. This absurd focus on whether surge pricing was a multiplier or disincentive is a complete distraction. The taxi drivers reached out and asked Uber for solidarity. They dispatched drivers to break the strike. They made their bed in the court of public opinion, now they can lie in it.

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

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

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

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

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#450

Post by jaynos »

kelnos wrote: post #274
rosser wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I'm saying is that it would really suck to be someone caught at the airport in the mess... Then imagine how it must feel to be one of the people affected by the ban. That's the point of the strike: "Oh you think this is inconvenient?"

Ironically, if the court order to put a stay on the ban had come in during the strike, it would have made it even harder for those poor people to get home. How's that for "inconvenience"? The strike was a bad plan.

It's not ironic because that didn't happen. I'm sure the strike could have been called off very quickly if that happened.
Post reply on HN