Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#121

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #109

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, good reply. Thanks! I think this convinced me. My issue was that I see myself as a pretty moral person, but if I were working for a startup and was tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road," I could see myself doing something very similar to what Uber did, and also feeling mildly clever about it. Isn't that what we call out-of-the-box thinking? It seems like there's a fine l…

I have to wonder how much business/competition experience some of these guys replying to you have. Tech people live in a bubble. Because our skills are in high demand and there's a pretty strong natural aptitude barrier limiting the number of new competitors, our experiences competing in the tech bubble can be very misleading. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. If you are lazy about competing, or trying to "go easy"…

>This ethos from some of the other commenters that you shouldn't do something because it might make your competitors unhappy is absurd.

I'm not sure that's what these other commenters are really saying. It seems to me that this sort of competition actually ends up being bad for the consumer. Good faith competition where you make your product better is what we hope our markets will do. When companies like uber instead try to hamstring the competition that's bad for consumers and should be discouraged.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#122

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

RegEx wrote: post #41

zvpxdlk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you set up a server to respond to only people you choose, it's on you to make sure it's only people you choose that use it. Then you can make any restrictions you want and invalidate access for anyone who goes against your rules

In other words, every hack is legal?

If they break a security measure, it's a hack. If there was deliberately no security, it's not a hack.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#123

Post by sanjoy_das » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

dinedal wrote: post #28

How does anyone, when asked to build such a program, not raise an objection, or say something? The ethical compromise made on behalf of all involved is startling, if this is true.

I can never understand this attitude. Programmers are people -- why is it surprising that some of them are ethically flexible?

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#124

Post by Mz » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:29 AM UTC

venture_lol wrote: post #115

Mz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run faster, don't kick the other racer's ankles. That sounds like a good rule of thumb for trying to apply to questions of business morality. "Are we trying to run faster than them? Or are we trying to kick them in the ankles?" I mean, lots of people are young and just starting out and haven't had the time to think a lot of things through. Or they are busy developing expertise in things other than law and morality, b…

Both are perfectly fine, within limits, within laws, and certain moral guidance and generally accepted social principles. An example: In American football, it's perfectly fine to take down the other guys hard if you cannot catch up. That said, rules such as "don't kick other racer's ankles" are generally for the overall good -- we don't want a wild west approach and end up with wounded and hurt players all over the p…

Football and running a foot race are not the same thing.

Generally speaking, you should endeavor to create rules that you can agree with regardless of which side of the fence you happen to currently be on. If the roles were reversed and your reaction is now "Hey, wait a minute, that's not fair!" then you should reconsider your current position.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#125

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:33 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #117

nols wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CFAA is absurdly broadly worded, so much so that it's extremely easy to wield against people accused of violating it. The DoJ uses it as their hammer, if they targeted everyone who violated it the jails would be overflowing.

Yes, my understanding is that criminal prosecutions under the CFAA are relatively rare. It's primarily wielded in civil cases. It seems very unlikely that Kalanick et al would be brought up on criminal charges for this. I'm not a lawyer.

CFAA criminal charges (and the associated sentencing guidelines) were famously used as leverage against Aaron Swartz.

https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

"Even first-time offenses for accessing a protected computer without sufficient "authorization" can be punishable by up to five years in prison each (ten years for repeat offenses), plus fines. Violations of other parts of the CFAA are punishable by up to ten years, 20 years, and even life in prison. The excessive penalties were a key factor in the government's case against Aaron Swartz, where eleven out of thirteen alleged crimes were CFAA offenses, some of which were "unauthorized" access claims."

I doubt Uber had authorization to use Lyft's API in the manner they did.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#126

Post by foxylad » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:44 AM UTC

Mz wrote: post #71

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

So, no one was really able to answer my question last thread. In fact, I mostly got snarky condescending replies. I've stopped caring about such things though, so hopefully good-faith questions are still welcome: What's wrong with Uber tracking Lyft drivers? What is wrong with using a competitor's API to get real-time tactical information about them? Not only did it not harm Lyft drivers, but it actually aided them:…

My opinion: This is not about the drivers. They were engaging in activity intended to be actively hostile to a competitor. That is why this is wrong. It is one thing to build a competitive business. It is another to try to actively undermine the competition, and not because your service is simply better. I get rather tired of a world in which "Well, technically, it didn't break any existing rules, so it should be oka…

Laws are just our social norms ("how we do things around here") codified into actionable rules.

Social norms develop and act much faster than laws, and I would suggest they are more powerful. In Uber's case, publicity about their underhanded tactics have caused huge numbers of people to delete the app. We don't have Uber where I live, but a visitor who suggested getting an Uber to the airport elicited an instant "No way I'm using those scum" reaction from me. That hurts Uber far more (and far more quickly) than any legal process.

I think the big lesson here is that you have to consider social norms at least as carefully as you do legal requirements. That's painful for software people because we love precision and predictability, so laws are cool and all those nebulous and confusing opinions that you have to talk to people to understand are icky.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#127

Post by ziikutv » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:46 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

So, no one was really able to answer my question last thread. In fact, I mostly got snarky condescending replies. I've stopped caring about such things though, so hopefully good-faith questions are still welcome: What's wrong with Uber tracking Lyft drivers? What is wrong with using a competitor's API to get real-time tactical information about them? Not only did it not harm Lyft drivers, but it actually aided them:…

I think the main problem is.. No Consent. Consent it the cornerstone of all things.

P.S: Literally paraphrasing my Engineering Professional Practice course. An exam of which I just crushed!

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#128

Post by exergy » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:47 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #120

mquander wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the relevant part that distinguishes whether it's ethical is whether you are deceptively taking advantage of another party. If Uber wouldn't be willing to tell Lyft what they are doing with their API, and Lyft would stop them if they knew, then that's a good signal that it's not very ethical to do it. (Of course, if you're a consequentialist, then you might still like the action if it were serving some greate…

Lyft is making this information available to anyone who signs up and accesses it, there's no subterfuge going on. They didn't plant a mole in Lyft to send them secret internal documents. They didn't steal their code and copy its innovations. The mere fact that Lyft "would [try to] stop them" makes it immoral? How does that work? Is it immoral if I watch tapes of the competing team's last football game to figure out w…

I think the party that sued are the drivers themselves who allege that collection such information is tantamount to wiretapping. I could be wrong in my interpretation though.

On the other hand, I completely disagree with your last paragraph. That kind of world is my definition of hell. Winners are "happier"? On what metric? Is Lyft a "loser" company? Are it's employees losers? Who's "unhappy" in this scenario? A "win at all cost" culture that leaves the losers in the dust sounds like a nasty, vile dystopia.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#129

Post by lucasmullens » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:48 AM UTC

nulagrithom wrote: post #114

cmahler7 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

silicon valley has filled up with the types of money chasing individuals who would have once become investment bankers on wall street and brought similar morals with them

Today I was asked for the 10th damn time to build something that could expose a small amount of HIPAA data. The last 9 times I explained how building this feature would, at the least, require a security audit, but nobody understood why I was making such a big deal. Today, I almost said "Fuck it, if you want to make a blatantly negligent mistake then just reply to this email detailing once more how stupid this is and…

If you're a software engineer at Uber you can more than afford to feed your family, and you probably have comparable opportunities elsewhere. IMO people making $250k+ a year lose the "I just need to put food on the table" excuse used to justify their immoral job.

Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers

#130

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:49 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

So, no one was really able to answer my question last thread. In fact, I mostly got snarky condescending replies. I've stopped caring about such things though, so hopefully good-faith questions are still welcome: What's wrong with Uber tracking Lyft drivers? What is wrong with using a competitor's API to get real-time tactical information about them? Not only did it not harm Lyft drivers, but it actually aided them:…

Consider the difference between a race and a boxing match. They're both sports but if you sign up for one and find yourself involved in the other you'd be unhappy. In law this sort of things is referred to as 'tortious interference'; Uber isn't running their own business here, but trying to fuck up Lyft's If they want to play that game, then why shouldn't Lyft send spies to their offices and attempt o steal Uber's corporate info? This sort of no-holds-barred capitalism has been tried before and people didn't like it.