Uber can't seem to stay out of the news.
Because they're a horrible company run by criminals.
Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
161–170 of 228 posts
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure you've fully read and understood every ToS for every product you've ever signed up for, and also never violated any clause? I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS. But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding. A…
You shouldn't need an ethics course in a university to think ethically. I've never taken one. Moral philosophy is something you either care about or don't. If you do care, it's easy to refine your thinking through the use of books by debating, though the latter is slow. The simple question 'would I be pissed off if I were on the other side of this situation?' will get you halfway home in almost every case. It is your…
I don't owe you anything. I don't have a duty to you. It's not my responsibility to be ethical toward you or to anyone else. If I were out on the street begging you for money, how much do you think you'd give me? Would you take me in, let me use your shower, eat your food, patiently wait for weeks for me to get a job? Would you treat me like family? How far will your ethics go when pushed to the limit?
Now, I'd like to be ethical. I want to choose to be. And I'd like us all to be ethical to each other. But you should make the case that it's beneficial for people to be ethical to each other because XYZ, not because they have a "responsibility" to do so, or that they're "half-alive" if they don't. And to say that ethics -- a massive topic that has flummoxed philosophers for thousands of years -- is easy, is just wishful thinking.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#163So, 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'm going to repeat my previous answer to your previous question, as I posted it late and you probably didn't see it :
Uber supposedly has no competition relation with drivers. Adding that drivers may choose to work both for Uber and Lyft, this gives Uber leverage against a category of population they have been known to abuse. The danger here is the combination of undue knowledge and a de-facto dependency relation in the hands of a known offender.
In your example, you're saying Uber had to offer several hundreds of dollars for drivers to switch sides. However, nothing is said about how this spying contributed to this : maybe the offer could have been bigger. Maybe some drivers were precluded from receiving monetary deals because of it. etc.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
Is it really a fine line?
Lyft explicitly say you can't use their API to compete with them. How can violating their terms of service be in any kind of grey area?
I'm not posing rhetorical questions. I'm asking you an honest question. Why would you think it's okay to use a service in a manner that the service explicitly prohibits?
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
> 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.
Being pretty moral and having strong work ethics are two different things. I believe (or at least hope) that our profession mostly sees itself as moral.
However, in terms of ethics, we suck. We rarely take time to think about the consequences of our action, and what impacts it may have. We rarely build elaborate thought about what we should and should not do. Therefore, when the time comes to do something, we are left unprepared, we cannot envision the moral dilemnas of things and the consequences of what we do, and we go for it without even thinking about it.
This is why so many IT people end up doing things they may regret : they are not necessarily immoral, but they never thought seriously about what they should and should not do in their job.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#166Earlier 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…
What boggles my mind is the notion that a potential HIPAA violation is some grand immorality. It's just information about somebody. It's nice to keep secret, but no great loss to society if it was made public.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#167So, 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:…
"What is wrong with using a competitor's API to get real-time tactical information about them?"
Legal terms of service.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. And Lyft can access Uber's API, unless they're scrupulously avoiding doing so for legal reasons, which doesn't seem all that likely. There's a lot of stuff that is technically illegal, but we'd all be paralyzed if we followed the letter of the law (or every contra…
There's a lot of stuff that is technically illegal, but we'd all be paralyzed if we followed the letter of the law A very convenient excuse, which is precisely why I don't find it convincing. Please spare me your patronizing explanations of Terms of Service; having already studied law they're not very impressive. OK? It's not zero-sum just because some are happy and some are sad. Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by def…
>Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here.
Only in a very restricted framework. If one side goes out of business and one side only makes a minor gain (and lots of remaining competition exists), that is obviously not zero sum from any perspective
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just send the rockets up, where they come down is not my department. Why do people build weapons? Why do people pay taxes, that are used to fund immoral actions? Why do people provide services to immoral actors? Typically, the answer is money.
> Why do people pay taxes, that are used to fund immoral actions? ... Typically, the answer is money. That seems like a stretch; people pay their taxes because they don't want to go to prison, not because of money. If anything, money would be an incentive not to pay your taxes, so it seems obvious that there's something stronger than money at play there.
Or, in not-libertarian-land, people pay taxes because they enjoy having access to public services such as police, fire departments, working roads, water, etc.
Re: Uber gets sued over alleged ‘Hell’ program to track Lyft drivers
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're making it available, but isn't it being made available under a specific license? > 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, ev…
>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. Is it impersonation if I just don't go in wearing the opposing team's colors? What if I go wearing the playing team's jersey? What if I'm the coach of that other team so I wear a hat and sunglasses? Where's the line of "impersonation"? This can't be taken as an absolut…
It is interesting to note that, were they applied to physical private property, most of your arguments would clear the stealing of anything that is not bolted to the ground.
So I'm trying to answer to you in this light.
Who has legal property of the data in question : Obviously, Lyft. Does Uber, by accessing this data, benefit from it : obviously, yes. Do they, by accessing the data, deprive Lyft from the use of this data ? At first glance, the answer would be no : when you access data, you don't remove it. However, one of the benefits of owning data is to be able to sell it. By accessing this data, Uber removes or lowers the ability for Lyft to sell this data to Uber. In a more general way, one of the benefits of property is to enjoy the sole use of the owned item. Uber violates this.
Now let's look at deniability : Did Uber know the owner of the data did not want them to access it : yes, obviously. Did Uber get access to this data without seeking it ? No, they deliberately sought to access it. Did Lyft put in place barriers to restrict access to this data, and give a clear warning about who was to use it ? Yes, they did.
> This can't be taken as an absolute unless we concede that we must say "OK" just because they say "Please don't"
Well, our laws work like that for pretty much every other aspect of property laws. The owner's only responsibility is to make sure that potential users know the thing is not up for grabs.