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Uber CEO Plays with Fire

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#371

Post by dajohnson89 »

tedmiston wrote: post #243
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…

> 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. Lyft rolled out in many cities before Uber. It certainly can / did exist without Uber's aggressive approach in several cities.

But the business model was proven by Uber.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#372

Post by gdulli »

Spivak wrote: post #327
gdulli wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the privacy policy explains in clear English that your data will be sold it would be more deceptive if they didn't sell your data.

And since no one actually reads the privacy policy, users likely expect that the only data they're retaining is about email subscriptions, and that it will only be used internally and not sold to 3rd parties. It's still unethical.

If someone has strict privacy needs, why wouldn't they read the privacy policy? Read it or don't read it, it's your choice. But if you choose not to, don't complain that the terms you agreed to don't work the way you arbitrarily expected them to. That's on you, it's not unethical that the terms don't work the way you want them to.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#373

Post by geofft »

maxerickson wrote: post #84
geofft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In American culture, gaslighting is a valued leadership quality. You get things done by making people think you're in control of the situation. See, for instance, Mike Pence's behavior during the VP debate, saying with a straight face that certain things never happened that did happen (it's a very different experience watching it once you understand that gaslighting is a thing that exists), or Hillary Clinton talking…

Is talking about an achievable political goal instead of whatever you think would be ideal really the same sort of thing as gaslighting?

No. But Pence was definitely not talking about achievable political goals. He was just flatly denying that certain things happened.

Clinton wasn't gaslighting; she was just espousing the (correct, as far as I can tell) idea that in order to be a successful leader, you have to convince different sides that you believe different things, even if those sides are talking to each other to figure out what you believe. That seems at least a little bit gaslighty if you never admit your duplicity. (In Clinton's favor, the speech in question was effectively admitting the duplicity - and the backlash made it clear how bad an idea that is if you want to remain in positions of leadership.)

I think it's certainly possible to tell everyone you meet, "In an ideal world, I'd support X, but for the following reasons I think only X' is achievable right now; these are the ways in which I'd be convinced that X is in fact achievable." And you could be effective doing that. But probably you'd not be as effective in the American value system as someone who says "No, I genuinely support X and will fight for X" to one person and "Of course I don't support X, that's unrealistic" to another.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#374

Post by gloverkcn »

hgdude wrote: post #345
karlkatzke wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that nearly acquired unroll.me. At the time, which was over three years ago, they had kept a copy of every single email of yours that you sent or received while a part of their service. Those emails were kept in a series of poorly secured S3 buckets. A large part of Slice buying unroll.me was for access to those email archives. Specifically, they wanted to look for keyword trends and for receip…

tech has become a cesspool of slimy founders + and unbridled capitalism - this needs to stop for the greater good

In 20 years I haven't seen a time where this wasn't the case.

Seed money is the first to take the risk and deserves the majority share of profit

VC (series A,B,C) are putting in the most money and brining big hitters for the board and advisors. They clearly deserve the majority share.

Founders do all the work and it's their idea so they deserve all the money.

The second generation leaders productive, operationalize, and bring legitimacy to the company, so they deserve all the money.

Whichever group has the leverage forces the table to tilt their direction.

It doesn't matter how good the potential is, how sure the victory is, how close the first breakthrough customer is, if you don't trust someone, or there's a slimy/smarmy vibe then just walk away. It's not worth putting in years of effort to have to resort to contract lawyers to get paid.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#375

Post by brazzledazzle »

mrlatinos wrote: post #354
goflyapig wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So hypothetically, if you paid $5 a month for this service, you would be confident they were NOT selling your information? No. A statement's truth doesn't imply its inverse [1]. It simply means if a company has employees, and they're receiving paychecks, and the money is not coming from you, then it's definitely coming from someone else. If you are giving them money, it doesn't mean they're not also getting money fro…

This is implying that you're able to prove that all free products sell/profit from your data.

I think the idea is to help you think about the free services that you use and your privacy, not be a perfect way to describe every free service.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#376

Post by InclinedPlane »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152
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…

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..

Did you pay money for unroll.me? Did you read the entirety of the TOU/EULA? How can you be so naive? If you're not the customer you're the product.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#377

Post by rattray »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152
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…

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..

Here's the link to revoke perms: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions

I just disconnected from one or two services which had access to my gmail (reasonably so).

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#378

Post by awqrre »

I hope Uber burns to the ground, the sooner the better. So far they get away with so much, I can't believe it... Maybe Uber's only problem is that its CEO is not as good as others at avoiding the press.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#379

Post by matt4077 »

gdulli wrote: post #372
Spivak wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And since no one actually reads the privacy policy, users likely expect that the only data they're retaining is about email subscriptions, and that it will only be used internally and not sold to 3rd parties. It's still unethical.

If someone has strict privacy needs, why wouldn't they read the privacy policy? Read it or don't read it, it's your choice. But if you choose not to, don't complain that the terms you agreed to don't work the way you arbitrarily expected them to. That's on you, it's not unethical that the terms don't work the way you want them to.

So you've read every TOS for every iTunes, or Android, or Windows update, ever? And if not, you'd be fine with handing over the keys for your house if one of them had a sentence in there that transferred it to Apple/Google/MS?

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#380

Post by urbanj »

gdulli wrote: post #342
allover wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't 'get shut down' for it, but if the service was transparent about what they were doing people would likely unsubscribe/cease to sign up. It really depends if anyone is prepared to take them to task on it. > 'consenting adults' Are you consenting if you don't know what you're consenting to. > anonymized data Widely understood that anonymized data is bullshit, which is why the term "de-anonymized" exists.…

Deciding not to read the terms of service isn't the same as being in a situation without transparency. The beef industry would also collapse if all the meat-eaters who thought killing animals wasn't ideal in principle had to watch the cow get killed before every meal.

Gosh, look at you trying to be cool by being contrarian.
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