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Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists
Nerval's Lobster writes A senior executive at Uber reportedly told a Buzzfeed writer 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." As detailed by the executive, Uber would spend a million dollars on the effort, which would involve "four top opposition researchers and four journalists," and dig into personal lives and families. Uber has pushed back against the report, insisting that it's never done opposition research, but the idea of any company engaging in such practices seems more like something Nixon would have dreamed up at his worst than a strategy by a "disruptive" startup.
Female journalist accuses company of misogyny. Exec responds in misogynistic manner. Not much of a refutation, is it?
I don't use Uber, never have, never will so I have no skin in this game. But... it may not be such a far fetched idea.
Look at what happened recently with Gruber and the Obamacare fiasco. The MIT professor Gruber was being paid (and paid handsomely) by HHS... He wrote Op Eds in newspapers which were then picked up by the Obamacare supporters as independent confirmation that it was a good thing. Here was an independent MIT professor saying this was good. No where did anything cite that he was a major player in forming it nor did they say he was being paid by the administration. It was a full blown circle jerk to fool the people.
Bring it full circle back to this article --> An article comes out against Uber and slamming the company. Well a little money and research into that "independent journalist" might just find that they're getting paid by X lobby, or Y company. Maybe their best friend is in charge of the Cabbie Union (I would imagine there is such a thing).
So go after the journalists family and children? That sounds like F.U.D. to me. But maybe check in to be sure the journalist is legit and not some shill like Gruber? Yeah... Might be time we start doing that before we all get fooled again.
#gamergate anyone?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
See, my problem with this statement is that on the surface Uber is the source of their own bad PR.
I've seen some of the news coverage about them trying to move into a couple of cities. The cities are saying "OK, you need a license, the proper insurance, and you must do these things".
Uber says "Yarg, we're not a taxi company, we're teh interweb company, we won't play by the rules".
At which point you think, "wow, so these guys figure they're exempt from regulations". And then you don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
If you blatantly say that you don't believe the law applies to you, you deserve all the bad PR you get. Your magic interweb business model doesn't exempt you from that.
See, I think this "whole smear the source, screw the facts" mentality is complete and utter crap.
It's just public muck raking to obfuscate the issue. In some cases, they simply refuse to acknowledge the basis for the criticism and pretend like their magical unicorns exempt them from reality.
So, I'm of the opinion anyone who engages in "opposition research" is probably a lying, evil, twisted sack of shit of a PR guy, who engages in a "win at any cost" level of bullshit.
It has nothing to do with facts, just digging up dirt to discredit them and distract people from the fact that, yes, you do actually eat babies.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You know, I've never seen a attack ad/article like what you came up with? It's weak.
Sorry for not actually creating a template, but it'd be more along the lines of attacking somebody for having a liberal arts degree - not a science or engineering degree to indicate that you've been trained in how to assess the dangers of mining/drilling in an area. Revealing that they're getting money, or at least have ties with, people that the target audience don't like and don't think should have a say in their business. Example would be Bloomberg's 'donations' to help spread gun control in the USA. It's often counterproductive because, well, the gunnies* hate him so bad. The Koch brothers would be the ones from the opposite side of the fence. They seem to like donating to 'any' conservative republican running against a liberal democrat in a competitive campaign. They don't really care where.
Depending on how bad they are, you could also accuse them of simply being NIMBY or BANANA - Not In My Back Yard, or Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody. Fact is, we need resources to power our economy, and if you give the impression that you oppose EVERYTHING(and there are people who do), or your plan amounts to powering the economy on fairy farts, perhaps your efforts to constrict expansion should be restricted.
I say all of this as an anti-coal, pro-nuclear type. I think that the republicans have a point about the EPA - every regulation needs to be examined thoroughly, but consider diesel vehicles. Do you realize that because of the latest round of emission requirements, mileage in new diesels has dropped 20-30%**? We're talking about stuff like new hybrid buses getting worse gas mileage than their older non-hybrid cousins. The city can't afford to run the new buses in long routes because they don't save fuel. They WERE saving fuel until a new EPA approved engine was put in...
Anyways, to get back to the point - a single person 'rolling coal' with a deliberately modified truck in protest of the EPA's rules negates the benefits of the systems they mandated on about a thousand other trucks(and yes, those that do so are assholes). Personally, I think that the EPA needs to place stronger emphasis on retaining gas mileage, because we need to conserve oil. At this point the EPA is increasing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions for reducing other emissions - and I don't think that it's worth it.
*Given his staunch support for gun control and the fact that while Mayor of NYC he attempted to increase gun control on a GLOBAL scale, often donating money to gun control initiatives in individual states across the country I can see why.
**At least until you rip out the extra EPA stuff or reprogram the chip. Then you get the gas mileage back Details on modifications necessary depend on vehicle and emission system.
I don't read AC A human right
With all due disrespect to Uber's extant valuation projections, you've used airlines as an example. Besides the fact that people travel on the ground more than they travel through the air, airlines are notorious for having razor-thin margins, spotty track records of profitability and a tendency to go broke on short notice. Their capital stock is a double-edged sword. You may have heard a joke: "How do you become a millionaire in the airline industry? Well, you start out as a billionaire..."
The real questions about Uber are how big the new market they want to build actually is, and why some competitor won't grab substantial portions of that market from them.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.