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Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

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Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#181

Post by Asparagirl »

DontBeADick wrote: post #160
throwaway09F911 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm writing this as a throwaway because this feels like mob and pitchforks. I'm a regular here and have no ties to Uber except using it. This whole story feels like they took a frustrated guy venting at dinner and making it into a conspiracy. Meanwhile, Sarah Lacey comments publicly and insultingly on people's political positions, emotions, and dating life. What the man said was very stupid. But it feels a lot like,…

Not to mention the fact that Asparagirl has intentionally interpreted his comments in the most sensational way possible, even going so far as to fabricate threats. "Look into your personal lives, your families" somehow magically became: > threatening to reveal details of the location of their children There's clearly a great deal of stupidity on both sides here.

In the same story that they talk about digging up dirt on reporters' families, Uber revealed details of a different reporter's movements to her, without her consent, and supposedly an impossible thing to do. Is it such a stretch to think that revealing details about your family + revealing details about your movements and location could also = revealing details about the movements and location of your family?

Again, read Sarah Lacey's rebuttal piece in PandoDaily. Her first thought after hearing about the threats (by phone) is for the safety of her kids, who are not with her at that moment.

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#182

Post by zo1 »

smrtinsert wrote: post #110
Asparagirl wrote: post #3

Attempting to blackmail the press if they challenge your company's PR? Specifically targeting parents' worst fears by threatening to reveal details of the location of their children? Openly rifling through the location metadata of another female journalist, a customer of theirs, without her consent? Implicitly saying they'll leak customer data of Uber customers who are journalists, the kind of thing that can potentia…

The threat against the children was vile and terrifying. The investors of Uber should be ashamed of themselves. Needless to say, a lot of Uber users are parents, and this news will definitely spread.

The language you use makes it seem like this guy threatened to physically hurt people's children. That's quite manipulative, especially your choice of emotional words such as "vile" and "terrifying".

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#183

Post by microcolonel »

> A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.

Is it at all relevant that the journalist is female?

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#184

Post by microcolonel »

> A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.

Is it at all relevant that the journalist is female?

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#185

Post by potatolicious »

aetherson wrote: post #179
none_for_me_thx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't clear what "accessed the profile" meant. I guess it's talking about the travel logs from 2 paragraphs above?

I suspect that the information pulled form the journalist's profile was pretty innocuous, or else they would have made more of a big deal about it. But at the same time, the point isn't that "the Uber GM found some hideously private information about the journalist," the point is that regardless of what their "information policy" is, the GM could access the account of the journalist, and was apparently comfortable do…

Agree. In contrast, when I worked at Amazon, customer privacy was pretty religiously protected.

To access detailed customer information required getting a one-time-use key, which is generated from a request that references other documentation (bug reports, customer support requests, etc) as well as a justification.

This key would only work against a single customer, and expires after some time.

The requests themselves are regularly audited internally to prevent abuse.

This is the level of internal privacy guarantees a company like Uber needs. No employee should have unmonitored, carte blanche access to customer data.

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#186

Post by thinkling »

teacup50 wrote: post #157
ghshephard wrote: post #95

I would love to know if http://blog.uber.com/applepay means that Uber won't be able to track who they are taking to various locations. That alone would be a big win for Apple Pay.

That's not how Apple Pay works; other than using a proxy CC# and hiding your info from the actual sales clerk, Apple Pay isn't more private than magstripe cards — merchants can still identify you, and it actually adds another party to the transaction: Apple.

Apple claim that they get no data about individual transactions, at least not in a way that can be tied to specific customers.

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#187

Post by felixgallo »

Asparagirl wrote: post #181
DontBeADick wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the fact that Asparagirl has intentionally interpreted his comments in the most sensational way possible, even going so far as to fabricate threats. "Look into your personal lives, your families" somehow magically became: > threatening to reveal details of the location of their children There's clearly a great deal of stupidity on both sides here.

In the same story that they talk about digging up dirt on reporters' families, Uber revealed details of a different reporter's movements to her, without her consent, and supposedly an impossible thing to do. Is it such a stretch to think that revealing details about your family + revealing details about your movements and location could also = revealing details about the movements and location of your family? Again,…

It's not fair to make up a very specific statement, attribute it to someone, and then say it was in accordance with how you think their views run. You are right about uber being slime but don't pull a mark fuhrman.

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#188

Post by ripb »

microcolonel wrote: post #183

> A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company. Is it at all relevant that the journalist is female?

It's totally irrelevant to what happened but totally relevant to the current mainstream narrative of women versus men.

It allows them to take something non-gendered and create an absolute shitstorm from it.

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#189

Post by Eric_WVGG »

justinv wrote: post #2

Personally, I've stopped using Uber because of the lack of the company/management's lack of ethics. Lyft comes off as a much friendly, consumer-focused company & frankly, my experiences have been better in a Lyft than an UberX. Also - I'm not one to usually browse Buzzfeed, but this was their story to break, so props to them for getting it out there.

The thing that’s crazy is that Uber’s service is terrific. They can succeed quite handily in the market without resorting to this sort of bullshit (like that crazy caper where they asked drivers to make phony ride reservations on competing services).

I think Yglesias has the right take — the very qualities necessary to make an legally-grey service successful are going to become antithetical to them succeeding as a normal, law-abiding, “legally white” service. http://www.vox.com/2014/11/18/7240295/uber-privacy

Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists

#190

Post by nhangen »

Asparagirl wrote: post #3

Attempting to blackmail the press if they challenge your company's PR? Specifically targeting parents' worst fears by threatening to reveal details of the location of their children? Openly rifling through the location metadata of another female journalist, a customer of theirs, without her consent? Implicitly saying they'll leak customer data of Uber customers who are journalists, the kind of thing that can potentia…

In all fairness, Paul and Sara have been on an absolute witch hunt, seemingly angry because of Travis' capitalist ideals. I'm not going to defend the guy that made these comments, but I've heard enough from Sara and Paul to know that Pando has waged war on Uber, and should not be surprised that they've ruffled some feathers.

Pando also shares a common investor with Lyft, so there's that...

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