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Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

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Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#41

Post by rajathagasthya »

devy wrote: post #32

First off, I empathize her horrendous experiences of being harassed at Uber and applaud her courage to speak out. Susan runs a book club [1][2] and is a published author[3]. Her quick fame rising from the recent press and a 24k+ follower and the amount of product placements on her tweet feed has reminded that old saying: All Press is Good Press. [1]: https://twitter.com/susansbookclub [2]: http://www.susansbookclub.c…

> the amount of product placements on her tweet feed

Not on her twitter feed. It's on the feed of her product susansbookclub, which is where it should be. What's wrong with that?

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#42

Post by chaser7016 »

jefftchan wrote: post #24
thedz wrote: post #15

The title of this submission is a strict paraphrasing (despite being in quotes) of an already short tweet, which is pretty meh. The full tweet is: "Uber names/blames me for account deletes, and has a different law firm -not Holders - investigating me. I have hired" "Uber names/blames me for account deletes" is a pretty bold claim, and doesn't feel like a routine investigation.

For context, "Names/blames me for account deletes" is probably related to: http://www.complex.com/life/2017/02/uber-users-deleting-app-... https://twitter.com/FamousCeleb/status/834567373214539776/ph...

Why does a user have to email a company to delete their account? How is that consumer friendly, especially after Uber lets your account get hacked/1k stolen!

This happened to me (I never used Uber.. signed up and forgot about it) and in my research I found out they know about the hacks and their PR message is its the user's fault for using a lame password.

What a horrible company.. run by the worst vile, corrupt, arrogant sociopaths ever!

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#43

Post by rfdub »

Because she's a woman and women never lie and only ever tell the truth and couldn't possibly have anything to gain by martyring themselves and having the media heap praise and attention upon them.

It may not be reflected in societies laws, but for women at least the burden of proof has shifted to the accused. Anyone accused of anything by a woman is now immediately guilty and regardless of what facts they may present to the contrary their guilt will forever be sustained by the courts of public opinion.

Here's the rub though. She's probably right. But so am I.

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#44

Post by noonespecial »

Neliquat wrote: post #2

It seems to me, that any decent Law firm would have told her not to tweet about it imho. /ianal

You are right. A lawyer's job is to minimize your legal risk. The least risky thing to do is to keep silent. That's what he'll reliably tell you to do.

It's your job to decide how much risk you are willing to take to speak out. Some fights are worth fighting.

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#45

Post by yummyfajitas »

arkona wrote: post #34

I may be missing something but why isn't the burden of proving those allegations on Susan Fowler? Why are we so quick to point fingers at Uber without even giving them the chance to defend themselves? Many people hate Uber and what they do. There is a strong incentive to smear the company. Smearing Uber has been done in the past when the whole #deleteUber was started becaude Uber drivers were not force to participate…

Because Kalanick is awkward and unlikeable.

Just look at how he behaves in that video in the back of an Uber - rather than empathizing with his driver and saying nothing substantial, he actually discusses the business reasons for creating UberX. He treated his driver a a rational human being like himself rather than an emotional being to be placated.

See also this blog post by Jeff Atwood, where he advocates for pointless theatrics and emotional manipulation. It's quite insightful, and Kalanick's refusal to do such things is probably hurting him: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-hugging-will-continue-unti...

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#46

Post by gsylvie »

thedz wrote: post #15

The title of this submission is a strict paraphrasing (despite being in quotes) of an already short tweet, which is pretty meh. The full tweet is: "Uber names/blames me for account deletes, and has a different law firm -not Holders - investigating me. I have hired" "Uber names/blames me for account deletes" is a pretty bold claim, and doesn't feel like a routine investigation.

Fowler has probably received a letter from an Uber hired lawyer asking her to take down the blog and threatening to sue her for damages.

Why else would she hire a lawyer? I see no other reason why she would hire a lawyer except to respond to a scary letter on scary letterhead that was probably personally served to her doorstep. (Which alone is a horrible experience one wishes on no one.)

Everyone, buy that Microservices book! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491965975/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

(I grabbed the link directly from Fowler's blog in case it includes any affiliate juice for her.)

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#47

Post by tonmoy »

rrggrr wrote: post #20

Pro tip for whistleblowers: Hire an attorney before you blow the whistle, and listen to their advice. Preferably an attorney who has litigated against your employer in the past. If you simply must write a diatribe beforehand then stick the facts of the issue at-hand (eg. discrimination) and avoid the temptation to author a tell all. Even the best future employers will be given pause upon learning of your tell all blo…

And people were asking why these women just don't sue. It seems people need to be careful and think twice even when writing a blog post let alone sue.

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#48

Post by hikewitme »

jmduke wrote: post #36
devy wrote: post #32

First off, I empathize her horrendous experiences of being harassed at Uber and applaud her courage to speak out. Susan runs a book club [1][2] and is a published author[3]. Her quick fame rising from the recent press and a 24k+ follower and the amount of product placements on her tweet feed has reminded that old saying: All Press is Good Press. [1]: https://twitter.com/susansbookclub [2]: http://www.susansbookclub.c…

It seems unwise to trot out "all press is good press" given the onslaught of bad (and objectively damaging) press that has gone Uber's way in the past week, which is to say nothing of the rest of your comment.

Somehow, even at scale, "all press is good press" still rings true for Uber, as "bad press" has a way of reaching an unaware, untapped market for them. Uber would regularly experience their largest spurts of user growth during times of "bad press". Taxi protest in the UK? Record numbers across the board in Europe that week. Driver accidentally kill a child? Millions download the app to see what that's all about. Best yet is when a metro's city council poo-poo's Uber's model or regulations, you'll see record growth in that city based off of local news, and now Uber has a localized movement of riders they can lobby to campaign for Uber against the city council. There's a playbook for that.

The number of deletes rarely surpassed the number of signups during any given "PR crisis" or #delete campaign. Fowler wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#49

Post by tobtoh »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #23
mikestew wrote: post #6

Umm, okay. I would fully expect this. Ms. Fowler seems to be a large liability for Uber. I don't find it unreasonable that "Uber has a law firm investigating ", if for no other reason than to find what she knew and when she knew it (or something along those lines), were she to sue what are the potential ramifications, et. al. IOW, I'm not going to run in circles over a seven word tweet that could mean about anything.

I think this is probably right. It is very common when a company has been sued (or, in this case, probably worries that it will be sued) for the company's lawyers to conduct a pretty deep background investigation on the (would-be) plaintiff. It's not necessarily a savory practice, nor is it universal, but it is definitely common. I think it's unfortunate that Fowler has to go through this indignity as well as what sh…

Just to nitpick ... 'on the (would-be) plaintiff.' ... IIRC, Susan has not made any indication she intends to sue. Her article merely commented on her experience at Uber and I didn't pick up any language which indicated she was still annoyed or angry enough to want to sue.

Re: Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler

#50

Post by handedness »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #10

I had an extended exchange with an Uber employee the other day, in which he steadfastly refused to believe that Uber was going after Fowler after the initial reports of this. Despite countless examples of this kind of behavior in the past, he kept insisting that everything was only "alleged" or "unverified." I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there, but it sure is effective at getting people…

> I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there

Cargo cultism has nothing to do with getting people to see past "straight up awfulness."

Is Uber practicing sympathetic magic in hopes that they'll receive what they're after? And if so, after what more-technicially-advanced society are they patterning their behavior?

Maybe you meant something like that (e.g., [tech figure/company] is predatory, they were successful, therefore being predatory might bring success–could go the argument), but I have no idea from your comment whether that's the case.

For anyone who isn't familiar with cargo cults, they're pretty interesting, yet for some reason the word "cargo" has become this word we prepend to "cult" when we want to make a cult sound more scary, but it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with what can happen when certain societies make contact with ones that are more technologically advanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

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