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[edit: typo]
Uber CEO Plays with Fire
161–170 of 529 posts
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are other reasons why you'd want to limit the number of drivers. It is not good for NYC to have too many taxis, or too many Uber or Lyft drivers. There should be enough, but there is a point where there are too many people driving through the streets of NYC looking to pick up riders.
Firstly, what's "not good" about having too many taxis or Uber/Lyft drivers? I don't think people in the outer boroughs would complain. Secondly, even if there's a good reason why that's bad, it's a problem that would sort itself out. The supply (drivers) will decrease until it meets demand (riders).
The limits of Taxis is historical and stemmed from unsafe behavior: not because Taxi companies want to sell medallions for a lot of money.
Maybe that's a good reason now, but it's unfair to say it's the only reason.
> The supply (drivers) will decrease until it meets demand (riders).
Maybe? Economics is rarely perfect like this. See the government subsidies of many industries, farming for example.
Maybe in the middle of the ebb-and-flow lifecycle you'll have something that works really great: but at the extremes you'll have something that hurts a lot of people for a good amount of time.
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#163From the article, explained: At the time, Uber was dealing with widespread account fraud in places like China, where tricksters bought stolen iPhones that were erased of their memory and resold. Some Uber drivers there would then create dozens of fake email addresses to sign up for new Uber rider accounts attached to each phone, and request rides from those phones, which they would then accept. Since Uber was handing…
>" Some Uber drivers there would then create dozens of fake email addresses to sign up for new Uber rider accounts attached to each phone, and request rides from those phones, which they would then accept. Since Uber was handing out incentives to drivers to take more rides, the drivers could earn more money this way."
Could someone explain the logic behind how a driver requesting rides benefited them? Did the drivers fake the ride and pay for it themselves? Was there a cash incentive where they were reaping enough to offset paying for the fake rides themselves and profit hanseomely? Is that correct?
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#164I really hope Lyft doesn't do anything to screw up, as I've uninstalled Uber and will probably never use the service again. However, I don't see myself going back to regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable. I just hope Lyft plays the game with a social conscious and makes positive decisions and continues to treat drivers well (most Lyft drivers I talk to say they like driving for Lyft way bette…
>regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable. The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda. The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous. Uber and Lyft are better than taxis because of the on demand nature and they are cheaper because of better utilization. B…
> The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda.
Here's links to stories of investigations into taxi bureaus and dispatchers for bribery and other schemes in 3 states:
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/06/federal_investig... http://astoriapost.com/taxi-dispatchers-arrested-for-alleged... https://nypost.com/2014/03/19/16-jfk-taxi-dispatchers-busted...
Perhaps there's a city where Taxis are a good, clean business, but there are enough bad ones to support the generalization.
> The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous.
There's a distinction between the drivers and the taxi regulatory agencies and dispatchers in the above stories. In this case, Uber/Lyft are replacing the agencies and dispatchers that are the bad actors, not the drivers. Your point about not making drivers out to be evil is well taken, but I don't think that's what anyone refers when they talk about "the evil taxi industry."
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The immigrants driving 12 hours a day are paying hella rents to the taxi companies for that privilege. There is a reason NYC taxi medallions were being traded for over $1M, because the taxi companies lobbied to limit the supply of taxis and were making massive profits leasing those medallions to drivers.
There are other reasons why you'd want to limit the number of drivers. It is not good for NYC to have too many taxis, or too many Uber or Lyft drivers. There should be enough, but there is a point where there are too many people driving through the streets of NYC looking to pick up riders.
Limiting taxis is an inefficient way to control congestion. Taxis efficiently utilise roads. (App-hailed cars more so, since the time spent searching for a hail is traded for more time transporting people.) Contrast that with streetside-parked cars. If New York City cared about congestion, we'd approve congestion charging. Medallions are a racket.
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#166Buried lede here: "They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of…
If they sell your receipt data to Uber, who else might they sell it to? An insurance company? A hedge fund? Your bank?
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "to be clear, a # of companies practice 'fingerprinting,' and it is fully breaking the App Store rules. But also very clever fraud detection." https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/856180005977677825
100% sure that all decent banking app use device fingerprinting. 100% sure that it is not breaking the rules and it is really important that they keep doing it.
While you're right that a lot of FinTech applications do use fingerprinting, it is absolutely against the rules. It's rather annoying from a mobile security perspective but given the rampant abuse of persistent device identifiers on Android, I understand and appreciate Apple's stance here.
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#168What a shitty world it is that allows total sociopathic ass holes like Mr.Kalanick to raise to the top and become successful.
It's been this way literally forever.
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#169Buried lede here: "They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of…
Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here. I am an unroll.me user, but had no idea they sell user data to companies this way. Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..
Hahaha, welcome to the future ...
Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire
#170Buried lede here: "They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of…
If they sell your receipt data to Uber, who else might they sell it to? An insurance company? A hedge fund? Your bank?
>anonymized
It would be much bigger news if they were selling data that could be used against the consumers on an individual basis.