Live data from Hacker News

Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

dexerto.com

161–170 of 277 posts

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is presenting themselves to you in person for entry into your bar, you have far more information to make a judgement on than the color of their skin... so it is not the same. In the case of a woman coming into contact with some driver and volunteering location information like her home address, she has little to no information to make that judgement. Providing her just that bit of information, and allowing…

>If someone is presenting themselves to you in person for entry into your bar, you have far more information to make a judgement on than the color of their skin... so it is not the same. So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon? Logically then uber could add a "white only" option, "no queer" and "no leftist". (of course t…

> So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon?

That's a straw-man argument.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allowing women to make a selection based on this likelihood means that female customers that are alone can make choices to still use the service while reducing the overall risk. I'm failing to see how anything you say could be used as a guideline to pick between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination. The major distinction you draw between "Type II" and "Type I" is the fact that one is fueled by "arbitrary…

If someone is presenting themselves to you in person for entry into your bar, you have far more information to make a judgement on than the color of their skin... so it is not the same. In the case of a woman coming into contact with some driver and volunteering location information like her home address, she has little to no information to make that judgement. Providing her just that bit of information, and allowing…

When you employ someone as a driver, you also have far more information, even more than when you determine whether to let someone in a bar.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact that skin color can be a proxy for socioeconomic factors does not change the statistics. Do you investigate why a rapist has raped someone and then ignore it if the reason is socioeconomic factors? If applying your logic on skin color leads to discrimination then maybe it's discrimination even when the discriminated party is males.

It doesn't but it contextualises them. An inability to recognise that is a signal. Have you seen any correlation between socioeconomic factors and perpetrators of sexual assaults? Recognising that one group commits the majority of certain crimes isn't the issue, as you said it's just stats. The issue is entirely in ignoring other factors.

[flagged]

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#164

Absolutely wild that none of the dissenting comments suggest a means of lowering or eliminating sexual harassment of women passengers. Why not start there? Get creative.

The most effective way of combating this for Uber would be to start doing deeper background checks, live interviews, in-depth assessments, customized testing on their drivers. Mandate video and audio recordings in the car that's streamed to them. Impose harsh penalties on harassment, including immediate dismissal and mandatory police reporting. You know, act like a real employer.

Right now they have all the reasons in the world to be as hands-off on their checks as they can be. They don't behave like a business with employees. It costs nothing to accept almost anyone and then just weed out the worst of the worst to avoid brand damage.

But making these changes would cut into the bottom line too much. They want all the unemployable and dangerous people to work for them because they're so desperate that they'll accept the meager pay. So instead of making any deep, difficult structural changes, they ask the software team to add a checkbox to the app. The checkbox itself is fine by me, but it's just them taping over an issue that stems from the way they do business.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#165

Sex is a protected class under Title VII of the civil rights act. And the supreme court recently said that even majority classes (men) are protected by this. Since Uber involved in the decision to send more business to female drivers than male drivers, this would seem to me to run afoul of employment discrimination (sorry we don't need as many men workers today, too many of you competing so market forces mean we're g…

Are Uber drivers employed by Uber?

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#166
post #9

We are reinventing, from first principles, the discrimination we fought so hard against in the 20th century.

If there wasn't a need for this then I might agree with you, but there is a need and that's the much bigger problem here.

There was a need to be perceived as well for women not needing to live in hostile prisons and that ended with women effectively not being allowed their own bank accounts.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#167
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 80%. https://www.uber.com/us/en/newsroom/gamechangers/

That's skewed as it is, but I bet it'll be worse if they count miles or hours driven rather than accounts registered.

It's also going to vary heavily by geographic area.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If someone is presenting themselves to you in person for entry into your bar, you have far more information to make a judgement on than the color of their skin... so it is not the same. So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon? Logically then uber could add a "white only" option, "no queer" and "no leftist". (of course t…

> So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon? That's a straw-man argument.

No, that's a question. I imagine it's not that since the rest of my comment is dedicated to pointing out how that'd be racist. I was trying to make you explain what exactly the difference is since you didn't clearly define it in your reply.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is presenting themselves to you in person for entry into your bar, you have far more information to make a judgement on than the color of their skin... so it is not the same. In the case of a woman coming into contact with some driver and volunteering location information like her home address, she has little to no information to make that judgement. Providing her just that bit of information, and allowing…

When you employ someone as a driver, you also have far more information, even more than when you determine whether to let someone in a bar.

Uber could ask for it but the customer does not have more information

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#170
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When faced with the choice of trusting a stranger, you turned it down, then made the decision about the lack of trust in the world? Trust in strangers has never been easy in the US. If something is to change, it has to start individually.

This falls into the domain of the ethics of care. Sure change needs to start some place, but it doesn't need to be done recklessly. Nobody does anybody any favours by putting themselves in dangerous situations. To care for other people, to give them the attention they need you need to prepare yourself for it first.

Just making the point it’s a bit like someone in traffic complaining about all the other ppl on the road! :)
Post reply on HN