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Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#41

Post by elliekelly »

mvzvm wrote: post #20
bhupy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite the unethical and immoral behavior of Uber executive leadership, from the outside Interestingly, literally every C-level exec at Uber from the Travis Kalanick era has been replaced. Uber is the "Ship of Theseus" of companies.

This is actually a good thing. Companies that can execute while rotating leadership are companies of rules, principles, etc, not companies of people. This is a very good thing.

What if the company’s rules, principles, etc. are immoral, unethical, or otherwise bad for the company’s long-term viability?

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#42

Post by lhorie »

mikepurvis wrote: post #19
bhupy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite the unethical and immoral behavior of Uber executive leadership, from the outside Interestingly, literally every C-level exec at Uber from the Travis Kalanick era has been replaced. Uber is the "Ship of Theseus" of companies.

And yet— still the same ship, right? It would be fascinating to have some insider stories about whether overhauling the upper management has actually changed the culture of the company, or if it's largely the same attitudes and behaviours at play.

I joined Uber a few months before Travis left. I can share a few things that come to mind:

- shortly after Dara joined, he sent a company-wide email to the effect of "all corporate espionage projects must be halted effectively now"

- he introduced a new guiding motto: "We do the right thing. Period." and repeatedly refers back to it

- he found out about a previously undisclosed data leak and went ahead and made a proper public disclosure. The CSO had to leave the company and eventually got charged as a result[0]

- on an all-hands meeting centrally themed on making things better after the Fowler scandal fallout, a board member made a cringey sexist joke. He had to resign from the board that afternoon. This incident spoke volumes about how discrimination culture was no longer going to be tolerated.

- around the same time, as part of the HR revamp, a number of policies were introduced (training courses, anon hotline)

- there was a huge internal project called 180 days of change in response to the wave of scandals. This encompasses the safety features, along with improvements to the driver UX to make it easier to understand their income, among other things (which I hear were very well received by users).

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/uber-joseph-sullivan-ch...

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#43

Post by imgabe »

elliekelly wrote: post #41
mvzvm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a good thing. Companies that can execute while rotating leadership are companies of rules, principles, etc, not companies of people. This is a very good thing.

What if the company’s rules, principles, etc. are immoral, unethical, or otherwise bad for the company’s long-term viability?

Then it stops existing at some point in the short to medium term.

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#44

Post by rootsudo »

nullc wrote: post #36
drstewart wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What safeguards are there so that a grouchy driver or engineer can't use it to mess with their ex? For instance. Not gonna say it's perfect, but as an engineer at one of these companies I'll say production access is generally very locked down and audited to the point of often being quite an encumbrance to even be able to debug production issues. Very unlikely anyone will be willy-nilly blacklisting drivers over pers…

The conspiracy theories never end. Next they're going to say there is some 'god view' built into the uber code allowing executives to track and retaliate against journalists that annoy them!

Which...was..proven true:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view...

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#45

Post by joering2 »

lhorie wrote: post #42
mikepurvis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet— still the same ship, right? It would be fascinating to have some insider stories about whether overhauling the upper management has actually changed the culture of the company, or if it's largely the same attitudes and behaviours at play.

I joined Uber a few months before Travis left. I can share a few things that come to mind: - shortly after Dara joined, he sent a company-wide email to the effect of "all corporate espionage projects must be halted effectively now" - he introduced a new guiding motto: "We do the right thing. Period." and repeatedly refers back to it - he found out about a previously undisclosed data leak and went ahead and made a pro…

Apparently he is CSO at Cloudflare now [0]

Speaking that crime doesn't pay...

https://twitter.com/joesu11ivan

edit: this and some other questionable hires and moves by Cloudflare made me do everything I can to avoid using CF services. I have many of CF hosts in my blacklist now.

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#46

Post by freeone3000 »

Honestly, I don't think this goes far enough. If you're misbehaving enough to get banned from Uber, you probably shouldn't be holding any other gig work poisition either! This should protect customer safety, by ensuring that once someone is proven problematic, they can simply be removed as a gig laborer, no matter how that looks. Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. This should protect companies from bad employee behavior permanently, and improve society thereby.

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#47

Post by pishpash »

freeone3000 wrote: post #46

Honestly, I don't think this goes far enough. If you're misbehaving enough to get banned from Uber, you probably shouldn't be holding any other gig work poisition either! This should protect customer safety, by ensuring that once someone is proven problematic, they can simply be removed as a gig laborer, no matter how that looks. Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. This should protect c…

So social credit scores?

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#48

Post by mikeodds »

jasode wrote: post #18

Examples of competitors sharing data about bad customers across several industries: - competitor banks share information about people who bounce checks - competitor insurance companies share data about customers with fraudulent claims - competitor casinos share photos of card counters Probably many others I can't think of. EDIT to reply: thanks for the customers' returns example. I found a story explaining the shared…

A good example of banks doing this in the UK is CIFAS, member companies of CIFAS can submit a black mark against an individual, which may in turn cause their other bank accounts to be closed, even if the black mark was in error.

If you’ve ever had an account closed, you’ll discover the bank will refuse to tell you why. So if you aren’t aware of CIFAS, things can be pretty confusing.

Near zero repercussions for the bank that wrongly adds anyone to the database (potentially a 3 figure sum awarded by the financial ombudsman, again if the person is aware of the financial ombudsman).

I’m frankly surprised they’ve been able to continue to exist. Only with GDPR coming in have they given you the option to check if you are on the list without having to write a physical letter.

Examples of them screwing up:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/oct/31/mortgage-fraud...

https://www.msbsolicitors.co.uk/cifas-fraud-markers-the-prob...

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#49

Post by standardUser »

pishpash wrote: post #47
freeone3000 wrote: post #46

Honestly, I don't think this goes far enough. If you're misbehaving enough to get banned from Uber, you probably shouldn't be holding any other gig work poisition either! This should protect customer safety, by ensuring that once someone is proven problematic, they can simply be removed as a gig laborer, no matter how that looks. Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. This should protect c…

So social credit scores?

We basically have these already, as described by some of the interesting comments on here. It's just a fragmented system instead of being centralized.

Re: Uber and Lyft to swap data on banned drivers

#50

Post by smnrchrds »

Do you remember the time Wells Fargo set such high sales targets for its employees that unless they committed fraud, they could not meet it; and then fired those who did not commit fraud and thus fell short of sales targets; and then many of those fired employees found out that they have been essentially blacklisted throughout the entire banking industry, because Wells Fargo had added negative remarks about them to their U5 to justify the firing instead of telling the truth that they were fired because they refused to commit fraud? I sure remember.

The problem with these sorts of backchannel data sharing is that unlike things like credit reports, individuals have little to no access to see what is in their file and dispute it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-f...

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