Someone @Lyft PR needs to be on this stat. I've hardly seen Lyft take any advantage of fuckups like these by Uber.
If your competition is doing something really stupid, all you have to do is get out of the way...
Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
121–130 of 373 posts
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Where does the article say anything about children?
"Over dinner, he outlined the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine."
"your families" = "your children"
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#123I am surprised not to see the word misogynist on this page. Here, a SVP is not only threatening a reporter and her family (which is truly repugnant) and reporters generally, he's also discussing sexual assault in such a trivializing way: "He said that he thought Lacy should be held “personally responsible” for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted." The top comment on this p…
It's possible he's pissed of at Sarah Lacy for reasons other than that she's a woman.
Well, he's pissed at a woman journalist accusing his company of sexism and misogyny. He said so. This is already a gendered incident.
So sure, it's possible that he'd also talk about destroying a male journalist for the same thing. Heck, it's possible that he has the bodies of a dozen journalists, all male, buried in his back yard. But given that this was already about sexism and misogyny, given Uber's notoriously douchebro culture, and given that prominent women on the Internet are regularly attacked in ways that men aren't, interpreting this as a continuing pattern of misogynistic behavior seems reasonable.
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That kind of labelling is never going to happen. But really it has always been the wrong way round. For example, you shouldn't really need to have "dolphin friendly tuna" anymore than "kitten friendly chocolate". If a company spends millions on marketing but does horrible things it is incredibly disineguous. Having unethical practices and not telling customers is like selling vegetarian food which contains animal pro…
I wouldn't count on that. In the financial market, its already happening. You can buy information from a ratings agency that assesses a companies ethical behavior. If they don't meet the investor's targets, they won't invest in that stock. I could see that happening on a consumer level as well, all you need is that data and a smartphone.
It could just as easily be banned on a consumer level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#125I think its abundantly clear at this point that Uber is an immoral company with a greed driven management team that has no ability whatever to properly think about the social consequences of their actions. Or worse still, perhaps they deliberately pursue malfeasance, as was suggested by the executive who made the comments discussed in this article.
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#126Attempting 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…
Are you reading a different article? None of those threats were mentioned in the one I'm reading...
Emil Michael suggested that Uber should hire opposition researchers to investigate the personal and family lives of journalists, including but not limited to, harassment of their spouses and children.
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#127Misleading headline, from article it wasn't in any way a serious suggestion.
It now reads, "Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists " which is exactly what he did. (Actually, he even went further and said it would be acceptable do so)
He 'suggested considering' this at a dinner party, and 'Michael at no point suggested that Uber has actually hired opposition researchers, or that it plans to.' according to Buzzfeed - they're trying to imply it was a serious suggestion while actually sticking to the facts, which imply it very much wasn't. It's fascinating.
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#128Attempting 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…
Are you reading a different article? None of those threats were mentioned in the one I'm reading...
Uber explicitly talked about going after reporters' families.
The primary reporter that Uber was talking about at that dinner is Sarah Lacey at PandoDaily. Sarah has been very critical of Uber in the past. She also has two very young children and has written a lot about what it's like to start a company and pitch investors while being pregnant and/or having young kids at home.
The obvious implication is that they were going after her kids.
Here's her response, in PandoDaily: http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa...
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should probably fire Emil Michael or similar. The "spending 'a million dollars' to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. .... they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine" proposal is a bit out of order. The money to throw $1m around that kind of way comes from Google and like investors and they could object that they don't want to be…
To be fair, there's a big gap between saying how you could spend a million dollars and spending a million dollars. But if someone who worked for me started talking about exacting revenge on enemies -- in a public forum or not -- I would definitely have a problem with that.
I get the feeling that there's a side that Buzzfeed and Pando aren't mentioning.
The executive mentioned 'they'd be justified' in digging up dirt on Sarah Lacy. I wonder on what basis that one would justify that - the article mentions Lacy's criticism for a dumb ad campaign in France, but that doesn't seem like something that would provoke a response saying 'we'd be justified on digging up dirt about you'.
Does anyone know if Sarah Lacy has dug up dirt on Uber staff and their families?
Re: Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
#130Just deleted uber from my phone and installed lyft. This kind of behavior is unacceptable.