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

PR is a thing because public opinion is extremely fickle. Most people are going to go wherever the wind is blowing.

You can see this readily on HN (and most other social media). The tone of the title and the first several comments set the tone for the entire thread. You can post the same comment in two different threads, one that started with positive comments and a neutral or positive title and one that started with negative comments/title, and find your comment +5 or +10 in the thread it aligns with and -1 or -3 in the thread it doesn't (this is particularly true on controversial topics).

This is also true of survey design. The way the questions are framed and phrased and the surrounding context of the survey has a huge effect on people's responses to the same fundamental question.

So I wouldn't worry too much that this is unpopular when it's framed as the big bad dominant player getting sued by the sweet innocent upstart for lurking under the covers, when the title calls the program "Hell", and when the larger context has been a flurry of negative press for Uber over a variety of topics during the last few months. Consider a few alternative framings, especially if you swap Uber and Lyft's positions, and you'll see that the hubbub is not really related to the actions alleged.

All in all, people prefer to believe nice, soft things as opposed to true, hard things. The powers that be take full advantage of this to socialize people away from meaningful competition or resistance.

It's very common for people to loudly oppose a tactic and work to cast it in a negative light while they quietly go about practicing it. The negative publicity they drum up deters a lot of potential competitors from using the same tactics and makes people unlikely to believe that they're engaging in something they "fight so hard against". With a little diversionary work, it's rare for these things to get blown open.

>the reply was "No, it's actually really easy to believe that Lyft isn't tricking Uber's computer systems into giving Lyft real-time info on Uber's drivers and fare prices. Please stop trying to make excuses for Uber's shitty behavior." And that's probably a fair reply.

I would speculate that this reply is solely about the poster satisfying his own ego. There is no content aside from "nuh-uh".

It might be easy for the naive to believe that everything is puppy dogs and rainbows, but after they get out there and give it the old college try, they'll quickly learn that it's not and either retreat into the cocoon of wage slavery or try harder next time.

>Is it just a coin toss? Is there an objective way to navigate these questions? It feels important to figure out answers to this kind of thing.

There is no hard formal definition. There isn't a way to compile it. The closest thing we have as a fundamental baseline is the law, but the law itself is up for interpretation and has many contradictory components, as we all know.

That's not to say that there aren't some moral absolutes, but ultimately, each person must find lines of comfort for himself independent of the commentary, because as discussed above, that commentary/outrage is more likely manufactured by enemy action than anything else. pg discusses this some in his essay on taboos [0], which you will probably find thought-provoking if you haven't read it yet.

I mention the tech bubble because stepping outside of it is shocking, and we have to manually internalize some of these harder lessons about human nature that others have to learn and accept immediately.

Why do so many software engineers have a disastrous run at getting promoted to management before falling back and telling everyone they're just more comfortable with code? Because as soon as they enter a field where there isn't a compiler to give a binary yes/no to their work product, perception becomes the primary field of battle.

That's a hard to place to live for someone who is used to meritocracy. You soon discover that you're vulnerable to all sorts of machinations and weaponry that you hadn't really noticed before. You notice that people will respond to you in very strange ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with the chain of events that lead to it, demanding a type of reasoning that departs hugely from what we're used to when we're dealing with code.

It's easy for us to think we have all of that down until we actually get in there, and then most of us end up with our heads spinning. That's ultimately good for us because it really helps us differentiate between what people say and what people mean, and appreciate what would be politely termed as the "nuance" in human behavior.

Put simply, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on to craft an illusory world for the general public. As PR and marketing become more advanced, this only increases. Don't worry so much about what people are saying, because more often than not, they're acting as mouthpieces for someone else, whether they're conscious of that or not.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Is it immoral if I watch tapes of the competing team's last football game [...]

No, because they can do the same withyour last game. It's called a level playing field, which is clearly a foreign concept to the people who work at Uber.

What makes your competitors pleasure a barometer of morality? Almost always, winners are going to be happy and losers are going to be sad. Is it immoral for anyone to win or lose?

There's more to competition than the zero-sum variety.

> Is it immoral if I watch tapes of the competing team's last football game to figure out what plays they like to use?

Did you have to impersonate someone who's supposed to have access to it in order to watch it? That seems more like the question that would decide it.

"Because they don't want you to" is a bad way to phrase it, even if it gets to the core of things. After all, they wrote their license agreement based on what they want you to do, right?

> there's no subterfuge going on

"I want API access."

"We only give that to drivers."

"OK, I'm a driver."

"OK, here's API access"

Are you going to argue that Uber's devs could've had that theoretical conversation without being intentionally deceptive?

That's a worldview you choose to hold because it suits your capitalistic philosophy. I've literally fought for my life in dark alleys and I don't agree with your claim - the fact that competition exists and can even be deadly does not establish it as the baseline norm of human behavior.

a lot of this socialization is provided by people who simply don't want you to become a strong competitor, and have indoctrinated this imaginary, soft, cushiony world into everyone's brains so that it's easier for them to come in and take what they want

I could just as easily say that people like yourself attempt to indoctrinate people with the notion that Darwinian competition is the unalterable way of the world in order to inculcate a combination of stoicism and paranoia that will inhibit them from coordinating with each other to limit your predatory activities. See, I can make up specious motivations for my interlocutors too.

A better analogy would putting your chair in a private room with a locked door and sign on the door that says ask management for access to the chair. Anyone who breaks in to use that chair definitely knows they aren't supposed to be there.