341–350 of 805 posts
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Did you just make the argument that the government enforcing the laws is immoral?
The government enforcing laws is immoral at times. It is the law in Saudi Arabia to stone homosexuals to death.
Enforcing those "laws" was totally immoral.
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That struck me too. A normal company might do this, but they'd at least pretend it was meant to deter criminals or catch abusers or whatever. Instead their statement says: "This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’…
Both things can be correct if you believe the law in question is bad. The Jefferson quote comes to mind: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
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I agree. It's genius in a Lex Luthor kind of way. If I understood the full scope of the application, I like to think i'd decline to work on that. It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement. There's a big difference between keeping secrets for market advantage and to evade the law. In the first case, I want…
It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement. I would volunteer to work on that project because its whole point is to evade law enforcement. A lot of us (hackers/technologists) take a pretty dim view of arbitrary State regulations and "laws" and are quite happy to work to evade them. Most people who fit the t…
It took me about 8 paragraphs in to figure out what Greyball is, so to save you the time: Uber used various data sources to identify which people are likely government officials who are trying to collect incriminating data on them, and then blocks them from the service so they can't be caught in sting operations. But there's a lot in the article that doesn't make sense: >Other techniques included looking at the user’…
At least I think in my case, and it's part of the reason why I don't use Uber today: I had an Uber account for a couple months prior to this incident but never used it. One night, it was about 3a.m. and I had a bit to drink. A friend gave me a promo code to use, so I could get a discount on my ride home. I put in the code a couple times, but it kept getting rejected. I think I tried this about 3 times, and finally got a message saying my account was blocked or disabled. I gave up and called a cab. I tried to get my account re-instated the next morning, by sending an email from the address I used to create the account in the first place, but got a response from an Uber rep. asking for a copy of my ID! I didn't feel comfortable sending over my ID, especially since it was not required to create the account in the first place and informed the rep as such. The response was: "I completely understand why you are concerned about providing this information. To reactivate your account I do need to verify your identity. If you can cover all but your name, the last four digits and expiration date on your new card, as well as any sensitive information on your ID, that should minimize any security issues".
I'm not sure why it was such a big deal to have that information, but I'm guessing that they wanted to ascertain if I was a hostile or not, but I had a car and wasn't dependent on Uber for survival so... no thanks.
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You can choose not to use Uber and effectively ignore them but that does not stop them from having an influence on you, your community, and your country. It is true that being part of a government system is not a choice but without that community you would be dead or at least not an educated human with internet access. You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to…
> You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to abolish the systems that made those things possible just because you cannot speed and murder people. What systems are those, exactly? Protectionist laws for taxi drivers?
So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail? We've seen: * Systematic flouting of laws in public * Even further hidden avoiding of laws * Sexism complaints across the board * What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO'…
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I don't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils. If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway. The state is a huge…
>If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. Even ignoring the fact that Uber might become a monopoly, this ignores extrenalities caused by corporations. You don't have to purchase chemicals from a chemical factory to be impacted by them dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply because it is cheaper.
But who holds the State accountable when they do the same thing?
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Ever heard of a Stingray? https://www.aclu.org/map/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-...
Of course, but it's inaccurate to attribute identical behavior to all local governments as if they were part of a single hierarchy.
"Uber used these methods to evade the authorities in cities such as Boston, Paris and Las Vegas"
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Alternative view: The government has lost the consent of the governed, but people are so engrossed in other stuff that they don't do anything about it due to how painful the upheaval would be. In other words, it's tolerated rather than accepted. Roman poets would call this "bread and circuses".
Every revolution in history is proof that this doesn't really work. If the government really looses the approval of the governed and not just of a small minority revolution will follow.
I'd wager (but don't have the chops to prove) that if you could plot displeasure with government on a graph, and and draw a line where overthrow historically results, the height of that line would roughly correlate with the increase in leisure time, access to entertainment, and decrease in GDP per worker.
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I agree. It's genius in a Lex Luthor kind of way. If I understood the full scope of the application, I like to think i'd decline to work on that. It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement. There's a big difference between keeping secrets for market advantage and to evade the law. In the first case, I want…
It's definitely highly intelligent but just as definitely something that implies a sort of double-or-nothing attitude. IE, Anything is on the table here, it seems (an attitude that can foster creativity certainly). For example, in the end game would Uber's enemies fair badly if they caught a ride in Uber's automatic cars? Indeed, the cars might even be seeking out people for "accidents". There's reason even the most…
If I am a prostitute working the streets, and a police officer approaches me to offer me money for sex. But I notice he has police officer boots on, and suspect he is a cop. I then tell him I am not looking to offer any services for money. Is that obstruction of justice?
Perhaps the credit card lookups (or other methods) violated privacy laws, but I don't see how refusing service should count as obstruction of justice.