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Uber CEO Plays with Fire

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#221

Post by smokeyj »

clample wrote: post #199
smokeyj wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we all expect journalistic integrity from Uber. Uber provides a service people need. Journalism is blogspam garbage.

You think that Uber is a service that people need? This sounds like exactly the kind of company that should be held to a high standard.

But how do you judge uber if you can't trust journalistic integrity? The very people you trust to think for you are unqualified - which leads me to believe so is your opinion. This seems to be the problem with Fake News.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#222

Post by akyu »

Mr. Kalanick, with salt-and-pepper hair, a fast-paced walk and an iPhone practically embedded in his hand, is described by friends as more at ease with data and numbers (some consider him a math savant) than with people.

I chuckled a little bit reading this.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#223

Post by jvoorhis »

ForHackernews wrote: post #187
ovi256 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's buried somewhere in the Terms of Use. Contemporary terms of use are a classic dark pattern. If one would like to setup an useful ML project, take as input Terms of Use, spit out the highlights, the buried ledes, such as user data being sold.

Wasn't there a project similar to that featured on here at one point? I don't think it used sophisticated machine learning or anything, but it used basic keyword search to produce "plain English" summaries of ToS. I remember it being somebody's hobby project; I can't seem to find it now.

Here it is: https://tosdr.org.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#224

Post by jlarocco »

jldugger wrote: post #208
rosser wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their own site: "Unroll.Me is a free service ", emphasis added. If it's free for you, you're the product.

While it's generally true, I'm not sure that's really an excuse for deceptive behavior.

The saying isn't meant to be an excuse for companies, it's a reminder to end users to pay attention what they're signing up for.

Situations like this one are exactly why the saying became popular.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#225

Post by shimon_e »

odonnellryan wrote: post #148
daxelrod wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is a low-wage job that is extremely easy to get (no interview required) and has very few skills as a prerequisite. McDonalds fits those criteria as well.

Not incredibly easy to get, you do need a pretty-nice car. I make okay money and my car would not suffice.

In India, Uber helps drivers get loans to buy the cars. I've seen drivers who utilise their cars 24/7 (i.e. their brother drives at night) say they are making more than their previous office jobs. While regular drivers who aren't as economically savvy complaining about how uber scammed them to get loans that makes them slaves to the uber company.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#226

Post by irfansharif »

ErikAugust wrote: post #138

Buried 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…

I had revoked unroll.me permissions right after via google connected apps & sites, amusing that in order to delete your unroll.me account[1] you'd have to give them the very same permissions again.

[1]: https://unrollme.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200165526-How...

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#227

Post by omarchowdhury »

specialist wrote: post #141
ars wrote: post #45

For all the criticism he is getting, this would never have happened without him. Taxi companies are too strong, and the US needed someone like him to break barriers. Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies. It happens all the time that the company that invents or creates something new, does not actua…

The idea was in the air. Someone was going to it big. Even my buddy and I prototyped a crappy ride hailing app. When I scouted potential competitors, I found about a dozen. Uber's innovation was financial (fleecing investors), not technical.

Seriously? Show me a ride hailing UX similar to Uber's at the time Uber launched...

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#228

Post by greenyoda »

JorgeGT wrote: post #201
savanaly wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>anonymized It would be much bigger news if they were selling data that could be used against the consumers on an individual basis.

"Hmm, 90% of this anonymous guy rides start/end at this residential address which the public property deed says it's registered to Mr. John Smith, I wonder who this anonymous guy could be."

...and 10% of John's rides are to an address whose only tenant is a drug addiction rehab clinic, but he apparently doesn't work there because 50% of his rides are from a tech company's headquarters to his home late at night. So it looks like John may have a little bit of a drug problem.

You can find out a lot of personal information about someone by tracking where they go on a regular basis.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#229

Post by odonnellryan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #165
odonnellryan wrote: post #120

Earlier 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.

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.

NYC absolutely cares about pedestrian deaths: which is directly linked to congestion.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#230

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

pyre wrote: post #214
rosser wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their own site: "Unroll.Me is a free service ", emphasis added. If it's free for you, you're the product.

If you take out a loan from a loan shark, you should probably know what to expect. That doesn't mean that the loan shark isn't breaking the law when you get roughed up for non-payment.

Also, the thing is this is not really the loan shark situation.

People who go to loan shark know exactly what they're getting into--borrowing money.

People who signed up for unroll.me signed up because they got sick of all the the spammers and wanted to get away from all that easily.

Most people including me, thought they would somehow monetize with ads or something like that, but never thought they would sell our info to 3rd parties like this. So No, it wasn't at all obvious what to expect.

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