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How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
31–40 of 805 posts
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#32Are there legal grounds here for a court decision against Uber based on this? I suppose the answer depends on the nation or state in which this tactic was deployed. This behavior doesn't surprise me based on their strategy of negotiation regarding regulation.
Some of the tactics could fall afoul of anti-discrimination laws - particularly, grabbing device numbers of cheap pre-paid phones could have an adverse impact on minorities.
Thinking about it a bit more, the next-level approach is to make sting activity look like african-american activity, then grab members of the african american community who now cannot hail an uber and sue under anti-discrimination measures.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speculating: possibly they may be safe if their TOS prohibits using the service to ticket drivers, which is not the intended purpose of the service. Courts have generally been kind to private company's TOS.
Which courts? US ones are you talking globally?
Good point, I updated the comment to reflect that complication.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#34I am so sick of Uber news
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#35So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail?
We've seen:
* Systematic flouting of laws in public
* Even further hidden avoiding of laws
* Sexism complaints across the board
* What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO's behavior
Are they actually too big to fail?
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#36I'm not excusing Uber at all because what they've done is extremely bad in multiple cases but find it strange all these hit pieces are coming out of the wood works. There is a large section of society that hates Uber and will spring at any chance to bring it down. Which is partially what I think happened with the whole #boycottUber thing and the new video of kalanick yelling at the driver. However, the sexism and dys…
My running hypothesis is that many journalists have found "dirt" on various companies or individuals, and have written it up as ready-to-release hit pieces... and then let it sit, because it currently goes against the sociopolitical zeitgeist. The moment anyone or anything becomes disliked, all these pre-written stories get published.
I'm fairly certain that the Google lawsuit, the video of them running the red light, and the yelling video were timed. How long did they have them? They just happened to get them the week Uber was plastered all over?
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#37I'm not excusing Uber at all because what they've done is extremely bad in multiple cases but find it strange all these hit pieces are coming out of the wood works. There is a large section of society that hates Uber and will spring at any chance to bring it down. Which is partially what I think happened with the whole #boycottUber thing and the new video of kalanick yelling at the driver. However, the sexism and dys…
Well, yes. Dan O'Sullivan (who spawned #DeleteUber) is a socialist and not shy about it. Of course he hates Uber for many reasons, all of which are entirely legitimate if you share his values.
Always more enlightening to talk earnestly about differing values than suspecting some kind of hidden agenda or irrational bias.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#38Uber's disregard for local laws and regulations is well known, so I find it hard to be shocked by this. But the chutzpah to implement something so blatantly designed to aide in breaking the law is still surprising. It reminds me of Zenefits in a way. It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and…
That struck me too. A normal company might do this, but they'd at least pretend it was meant to deter criminals or catch abusers or whatever. Instead their statement says:
"This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers."
It's rather blatant. I assume they think that last part makes them look good and "officials" look bad, but to me it just says "we built this to avoid getting caught breaking the law."
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#39This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising.
One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html). In that essay, he specifically discusses 'Naughtiness' as a positive quality, and how it's one of the most important features of potential founders.
The problem is that being clever and hacking around a system for curiosity is governed by a very different set of incentives than being clever and hacking for profit. Feynmann's safecracking at Los Alomos was done to complain about an absurd system and to play pranks on his colleagues, not to enrich himself.
Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comments like this confuse me. Are you accusing the author of fabricating facts? Do you contest the facts or testimonies in the article? What is the justification for calling this a "hit piece"? Did you actually read it? Why is it surprising that a company under the spotlight... winds up with more journalistic investigations?
Do you not think the boycottUber thing was a little overblown? What about releasing the video of Kalanick being illegally recorded and framing it as him "exploding" when he was relatively calm? All I'm saying is that focuses on silly stuff like that undermines the larger disturbing cases of law breaking and sexism.
But you don't think this story is "silly stuff" do you? And besides it's not like Uber hasn't also benefitted from illegal recordings: http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/15/12201134/uber-ergo-admit-l...