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

501–510 of 573 posts

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

#501

Post by sleepybrett »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #490
titanix2 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the taxis are doing a strike, you can speak of strike breaking only for taxis not participating in it. Uber are not taxis per se, so there is no way they can break a strike they aren't doing in the first place. Also there seems to be a confusion made on strike and strike consequences or demonstration. Being on strike only means stop working, not directly blocking access or service (although it is often done in con…

> Uber are not taxis per se Of course Uber (and Lyft) are taxis. It's a service that you call to have a guy in a car come pick you up and take you directly to your destination. It's a different kind of taxi, certainly, but it's still a taxi. It's very fashionable right now for startups to pretend that they're really a completely different industry than the one they're trying to disrupt, to distance themselves from th…

> to distance themselves from the stodgy image

or, ya'know, regulatory laws.

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

#502

Post by andrewmcwatters »

angry-hacker wrote: post #290
general_ai wrote: post #58

Kalanick and Musk are basically the only two remaining adults in SV. Musk basically said on twitter, "I'll go and talk to the guy". Everyone else is more concerned with political correctness and virtue signaling. Hundred thousand bombs dropped into five countries on that list -- not a goddamn peep from anybody. 2150 people killed by drones -- same. Iraqi refugees banned for half a year -- no one has even heard of it.…

Don't forget wiretapping the whole world - - a move that would have made your every dictator jealous. You, Americans, really are crazy sometimes. And you voted for him twice.

A lot of people love Obama because of his personality, not because of his policies.

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

#503

Post by alphonsegaston »

david38 wrote: post #500
alphonsegaston wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scabbing is breaking the strike. Uber dispatched drivers to break the strike. I'll say it again, it's not complicated. Scabs have historically operated under the cover of a private entity. This was the express function of the Pinkertons, for example. You can't rewrite the history of American labor and what its accomplished with neoliberal circumlocutions. Just because corporations became clever enough to describe sca…

Uber dispatched nobody. The drivers dispatched themselves. You're saying it was Uber's responsibility to side with the strikers (who are their competition) against the wishes of their own drivers? Seriously? If Uber had forced a strike on its drivers (without a vote no less) people would have been pissed that they were left stranded. If enough Uber drivers wanted to strike, they would have. They didn't. Maybe they ar…

No, they're not exempt, and I already said as much before in other comments on this post.

Saying the didn't dispatch drivers is just another cavillous circumlocution. They created, maintain, and profit from the platform through which the scabs were sent to break a strike. People see through these kind of dodges, although they could do a better job of seeing through Lyft's PR.

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

#504

Post by prodigal_erik »

sethev wrote: post #429
titanix2 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the taxis are doing a strike, you can speak of strike breaking only for taxis not participating in it. Uber are not taxis per se, so there is no way they can break a strike they aren't doing in the first place. Also there seems to be a confusion made on strike and strike consequences or demonstration. Being on strike only means stop working, not directly blocking access or service (although it is often done in con…

That seems like an absurd splitting of hairs. Under that logic the concept of a strike breaker couldn't exist. "It was coal workers who were striking, but the replacements are not coal workers per se they were non-participating laborers who happen to perform the same function"

If my mom arrives at the airport and needs a ride, am I supposed to refuse because of the strike? Will the union let me vote on the strike on that basis?

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

#505

Post by Nadya »

noir_lord wrote: post #339
cderwin wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lonely to consider the other side these days. Dare to consider Trump's side? You're a fascist. Dare to consider the progressive side? You're a communist. It's no wonder nobody does it anymore.

Indeed, also considering someones viewpoint doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Its quite reasonable to find it abhorrent, just don't take it as abhorrent because other people to you that it is. I like statistics and politics, I dig into the numbers and the actual reports behind news stories and the agendas are so obvious, I get the reasons why, in the UK newspapers are sold on outrage and worldview confirmation…

>I don't believe there was ever a golden age of media but I do think they had more integrity in the past.

I disagree. The bullshit was just harder to discover in the past - without internet and 10,000 independent sources stating contrary to whatever the media was trying to peddle.

Media's job isn't to educate people. It's to educate people to see things "their" way which is where media bias, however major or slight, comes into play.

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

#506

Post by ajamesm »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #499
ajamesm wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect Uber to ensure drivers are organized and informed about strikes and empowered to join them, if they were truly a neutral ride-sharing platform. Really, they're just a business that employs people whom they don't want to classify as employees, and would sooner drown their riders in a lake than see them organize.

> I would expect Uber to ensure drivers are organized and informed about strikes That seems absurd. Uber is not a union. There is a dangerous conflict of incentive in relying on the people harmed by a strike to be organizing them.

Yes. That's because Uber ISN'T a neutral platform for ride sharing, it's a taxi service with employees.

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

#507

Post by ajamesm »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #491
ajamesm wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The taxi drivers' strike was in poor taste anyway. Most taxi drivers are immigrants and many are refugees, whose families are directly affected by this ban; I'm sure your own personal notion of good taste was far from their minds.

Source on "Most taxi drivers are immigrants and many are refugees, whose families are directly affected by this ban"?

uh, going outside? I thought that was a 'sky is blue' level of common knowledge.

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

#508

Post by gumby »

captainmuon wrote: post #263
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.

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??

> This is like if Coca Cola workers went on strike, and problem blamed Pespi Co of breaking strike by not sending their workers home??

Consumers could still vote with their dollars, as they should. If you think Uber did nothing wrong then feel free to continue using them.

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

#509

Post by wpietri »

hueving wrote: post #380
tiles wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, MLK has much to say about "inconvenient" protests. https://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2014/12/31/mlk-on... He disagrees with the white moderate proclaiming "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action." You are committing that error.

>You are committing that error. No I am not. I am fine with disruptive protests, but they should be disrupting the people who need their minds changed. What is so difficult to understand about the fact that we are talking about protesting in the wrong place entirely? The analogy is MLK protesting in an all-black church to prevent the constituents from hearing a sermon from a civil rights activist. This has nothing to…

> they should be disrupting the people who need their minds changed

No. You continue to fail to understand MLK's theory of protest. If you have read his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, you give no sign of it.

If the people being disrupted are already active in a movement to change things, they will not mind the protest. But if they are merely people who say "I agree with you in the goal you seek" without active support, then they are the very moderates that MLK was addressing here: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate [...]".

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

#510

Post by wpietri »

taneq wrote: post #271
wpietri wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand protest. Sure, one thing you can do is disrupt the specific people doing something bad. But that's pretty rare. As MLK explains, the point is to create a more general disruption so that everyone has to take notice of an issue they might otherwise ignore: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is…

> As MLK explains, the point is to create a more general disruption so that everyone has to take notice of an issue they might otherwise ignore The problem with this approach is that unless you do it in a way that's relevant to the original issue, you're just dragging innocent people into your fight and victimizing them. Depending on how much of an asshat you are to them (like, say, stranding them for several hours a…

Innocent people are already being harmed. Here, refugees and Muslims. The protest is to call attention to that harm.

But let's run with your notion. Suppose there is somebody who says: "I guess I didn't know about the civil rights violations and the deaths that this policy will result in. And I guess it's terrible that these refugees have been waiting years in limbo trying to rebuild their lives. But what's really important is that I expected to be home on time for dinner, so now I won't help them."

I don't think a person like that was every going to be sympathetic to the cause. They weren't going to do anything. They were going to ignore it.

And that's exactly the point of MLK's style of protest. It is to make a problem for some into a problem for all. It is to make it impossible for comfortable people to keep ignoring the problem.

Post reply on HN