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Trump-Style Tactics Finally Stopped Working For Uber (buzzfeed.com)
BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith describes a three-year-old meeting that Uber held -- which saw several influencers including actor Ed Norton among attendees -- as the beginning of the ride-hailing company's long slow meltdown. Later today, the company is expected to announce that its CEO Travis Kalanick would be temporarily stepping away, and his closest lieutenant is all set to hand his resignation. On Sunday, the company held a board meeting, which according to several journalists, lasted for nearly seven hours. The meeting capped a difficult stretch for the ride-hailing company, which is trying to weather an investigation into its workplace culture, a lawsuit by Google parent Alphabet over the alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets, a federal probe into its business practices, and the recent departures of top executives. Back to Ben: At the dinner (which took place three years ago), Emil Michael, the right hand of CEO Travis Kalanick, heatedly complained to me about the press. The company, he told me, could hire a team of opposition researchers to fight fire with fire and attack the media -- specifically to smear a female journalist who has criticized the company. I suggested to him that this plan wouldn't really work because the story would immediately become a story about Uber behaving like maniacs. "Nobody would know it was us," Michael responded. "But you just told me!," I replied. [...] Instead of making any meaningful changes, Uber simply pressed on for years. It found both continued growth and accumulating scandals. Many of its crises, like those remarks to me, were tinged with misogyny, whether sexual harassment of its engineers or pulling a rape victim's medical files. After one of those engineers, Susan Fowler, stepped forward with a blog post detailing systemic sexual harassment and discrimination -- a post that was followed up by a series of devastating stories by The New York Times, Recode, and others -- the company invited former Attorney General Eric Holder to lead an internal investigation. Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael is set to resign, and Reuters reported Kalanick will take a leave of absence ahead of what's expected to be a deeply damning Holder report. (Kalanick is also coping with a family tragedy.) They will leave having built the most valuable private company in the world. But it is a company whose cultural darkness is inseparable from its place as the icon of the tech boom. Uber -- and the boom -- have been defined both by massive new conveniences and by a corporate culture that is aggressive, paranoid, and dismissive of, in particular, complaints from women; a culture of enemies lists and cavalier approaches to the law. Emil Michael told Uber employees Monday that he has left the company.
Slashdot editors, I don't get the focused vendetta against Uber here. You really, really seem overwhelmed with butthurt on this topic. "Trump-style tactics?" Seriously?? I've never even used Uber, have no real dog in the race, but somebody clearly needs an intervention.
To be like Trump, they'd have to have their HQ redone, then refuse to pay for the work under the justification that any lawsuit against them would be so expensive that they'd win by default.
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Finally, weapon has been found that shall sink the Battleship Uber. Legislation couldn't do it, Taxi's couldn't do it, running story after story about how evil they are on Slashdot couldn't do it.
Time to call in the feminists.
Fucking sorted.
Someone please remind me why BuzzFeed is being treated like a legitimate news agency? Their click-bait posts were sometimes funny, but their news is almost always biased and poorly done. This headline and story is a great example. I assume when they launched their "news" agency they just borrowed content writers from their existing pool of people and called them journalists. "Trump-style"? Really? It's about Uber and they take shot after shot at Trump. Then have the nerve to basically call Fox News all liars. The article writer, Ben Smith, is the "editor-in-chief" and to have this incoherent drivel coming from the guy at the top says all that needs to be said about BuzzFeed "News".
these are Nixon-style tactics!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
30 years ago today Raegan was trying to tear down walls. Trump is still trying to build new ones.
There may be good reporting in here but the Trump bashing shows how petty they are. I want neutral reporting.
>> fight fire with fire and attack the media -- specifically to smear a female journalist who has criticized the company
Hmmm...that's been the Clinton couple's bread-and-butter for decades. (Why do you think she was the only "major" candidate for the Democratic nod last time?) Trump's a fast learner, but he's got a ways to go to catch up.
Never seen that on a seesaw.
But, you know.....the people getting those nice, convenient rides at reasonable prices, couldn't care less about all this.
Hey, it keeps me from drinking and driving, I love the service and use it constantly. What they do at corporate is their problem, I really don't care and I'd dare say most of their customers don't either...if they even know about it at all.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Anti-Uber article number 101 and seasoned with anti-Trump salt We get it, you're being paid to manipulate the news.
I have mod points. But looks like there is no way to mark the story as flame bait/troll. The UI only lets me mark comments as troll/flame bait. But not the story. May be someone who is more familiar can clue me in how to do this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yep, who cares if their vehicles are powered by a forsaken child, out of sight, out of mind!
That's why sweatshops in Asia, Mexico, and Africa exist, because you don't have to see it. Heck, you don't care that much about polluted water in Michigan. Or prescription drug overdoses in West Virginia.
How did flamebait from buzzfeed ever get posted to the front page of Slashdot?
Trump is human garbage, don't see what he has to do with Uber though
*their
-===% Beau %===-
(senior editor
I've never used Uber specifically because of its corporate culture and its complete disregard for the law.
Articles with titles like these are the reason I hadnt been to slashdot in over 5 months. I stop back and right away more trashing.
perhaps they meant "saw" as a verb. like what you do with a chain-saw.
Darwin at work.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Uber will eventually die on its own, because it is unsustainable.
As soon as everyone realizes that fact that most Uber drivers actually LOSE MONEY when you figure in the low rates they pay people combined with the total cost of driving for them (insurance, gas, auto maintenance, etc) most honest figures come up with either less than minimum wages or you are actually losing money on the deal.
Uber is a scam.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
There, there!
Which means it's bullshit
But, you know.....the people getting those nice, convenient rides at reasonable prices, couldn't care less about all this.
An awful lot do. As you say, many (perhaps most) aren't even really aware of how disastrously awful the company is, but plenty of them, once they find out, stop using Uber.
ahhh yes, another leftard that has to make everything - including a story about Uber - into an indictment of Trump. Pathetic.
Actually they do, so do their investors. So fuck off.
Yep, who cares if their vehicles are powered by a forsaken child
Rusty Venture runs Uber???
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me me!!!!
If you mean drugs kill people then you might "say Herbert Spencer (survival of the fittest) at work". Darwin was about survival of the most well adapted.
Similar pattern to most IT fads: the fanboys harp on a few key issues and convince suckers and PHB's that those few factors are the bee's knees. Over time they find out the hard way that every factor is important, not just the ones the fanboys highlight and exaggerate.
Just because factors like insurance, lawsuits, cleaning up puke, and mechanical maintenance don't show up in the first Uber paycheck doesn't mean they don't matter in the longer run.
It makes me sound like a fuddy-duddy at work, but I'm usually right because I've seen the same pattern for decades. People are suckers. The inexperienced just don't know how to look at a wide array of factors when evaluating something, and their egos and/or shiny UI objects prevent them from listening to those who can. (On the plus side, reinventing the wheel is great job security, although you start to feel like Sisyphus.)
Uber might survive, but their halcyon days are probably behind them as reality winds its way into their market.
Table-ized A.I.
C's were more subtle and behind-the-scenes about it (in the style of typical politicians). T browbeats the press publicly and privately. T doesn't "do" subtle.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah, same for child and slave labor. What do we care where our stuff comes from, just gimme my shit.
Uber's problem is they circumvent all the legal protections (mandatory insurance for driver,car & unemployment, minimum wage laws, health care,etc, etc) by illegally declaring their employees contractors. When cities fought back by investigating Uber they obstructed justice by dodging police with a complex algorithm.
Uber breaks social and legal contracts left and right. They're competitive edge is that they got away with it when everyone else doing it got shut down.
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If that were the case, then people in the US would stop buying products from China, India and 3rd world countries due to their workforce tx.....
No matter what happens on the "uncomfortable workplace conditions"....I'll still ride uber.
The product is what matters to me...not their interoffice politics....they can handle that themselves and with their lawyers.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Perfect. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. A tech site is no place for primitive caveman Trumnp supporters anyway.
Once all trumpist filth like you are gone, only intelligent, educated evolved people will remain. That will make Slashdot great again.
Where's the tie-in to the headline?
There is a difference in "bad things happen to workers in foreign countries" and "bad things happen to workers here, in the enlightened, forward thinking first world nation that I live in!"
Trump-tactics? If only.
Uber is *way* worse. They are in a different league with the likes of Walmart, Shell Oil, and Goldman-Sachs.
Even in simple business tactics, they are on par with the illegal operations of Intel, Qualcomm, and Microsoft...
Even for sexism, horrible situations like Fox News, Sterling Jewelry, UploadVR, TVF...
For union busting, there's Walmart, Boeing, Starbucks, and Whole Foods...
Don't let your hate for the Donald white-wash the evil that is Uber...
The Donald's two-bit-penny-ante organizations aren't even in the big-leagues when it comes to evil businesses.
My own Uber experience (yea yea, not a valid sample, but I took a few ubers a week over 6 months ) here in DC has seen service degrade to point of my asking to get out of the car, the drivers were so unsafe.
I've switched to lyft and the drivers are happier and more competent.
Can't help but to correlate chaos at the top with execution by employees driving.
(would love to see some sort of 538 - ish quality rider survey)
Bad Form Slashdot Bad Form
My uber usage dropped 80% in the last year.
I pay with a few extra minutes of wait time (5-10 instead of 3-8), and a 20% tip.
At weird hours, the wait for a lyft goes up dramatically, and I still use Uber, but I can't be the only person that has reduced their usage of Uber, and I suspect at the very least, that's apparent in Lyft's usage (smaller number to start with, so easier to spot the signal through the noise).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Next you'll tell me that the CEO of a tobacco company only cares that his customers live long enough to buy more smokes.
Or maybe that the CEO of a Audi doesn't care about co2 emissions so long as ther engines sound powerful enough to sell cars.
Or that the CEO of a coal company doesn't care about the environment since his employees will die of lung disease before they are can file law suits and he lives in a neighborhood with wide spread mansions and low population density on the west side of town.
If you choose to work at a company like Uber, you can't really complain when you find it's run by an opportunist prick. Instead, you leave quietly and be grateful that the knuckle draggers will stay behind while you move on.
And now suddenly you "care" about something you just learned about. I smell a faux.
Trump-style tactics? This is the most cringeworthy attempt at spin that I've seen on slashdot since Jon Katz wrote that fake crap about Junis in Afghanistan digging up a Commodore 64 to download porn and movies.
I don't check in here very often anymore...this is a great example of why.
There are indeed too many people quick to try and cite Darwinism without actually knowing what Darwinism is. Probably a lot of "we support science!" types also who get it wrong.
If consumers truly didn't care about how things are run at a company, then companies would stop trying to hide their dirty laundry.
But, you know.....the people getting those nice, convenient rides at reasonable prices, couldn't care less about all this.
Hey, it keeps me from drinking and driving, I love the service and use it constantly. What they do at corporate is their problem, I really don't care and I'd dare say most of their customers don't either...if they even know about it at all.
Hey, I've never had a problem with the Uber drivers, the cars, or the ride experience. Everything else about the company is scum, though, and I would question why I would support a company that does those things when there are available alternatives. My company severed its connections with Uber and contracted with Lyft for the last company event where they offered shuttles home. At least for most areas, it's not like Uber is the only game in town -- you're certainly free to choose other options.
The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell, Jun. 11, 1807 (he got his successor elected the following year)
“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense,” Baldwin said. “They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context...What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”
Stanley Baldwin, three-time Prime Minister of the UK - 1931 (just before a general election he won)
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This is why.
As Machiavelli said, however deceived in generalities, men are not deceived in particulars.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Uber stood up and fought aggressively about its position that people driving for them were contractors and not employees. That's a debate that MANY businesses have with the IRS at some point. It's nothing new, by any means.
The thing with Uber is, they put together a service that made the debate much more high profile than it usually is, and the general public interested in the service was drawn into the fight. Many people looked at the whole situation and concluded for themselves that, "Heck yeah! If I decide to drive for this company using an app that I can turn on and off whenever I feel like it, with no mandatory minimum number of hours I must work per week? I'm sure not an EMPLOYEE. I'm just someone wanting to make extra cash as a contractor for them!"
All of this was a triumph of the free market over excessive government control and regulation, IMO. That's the GOOD part about Uber! The bad is the way they've handled things on the corporate level, internally in the business.
Well.... the next question you have to ask is why these things are "out of sight, out of mind"? I mean, why are the sweatshops something I don't see anymore as an American -- even though they're all over the place in Asia or Africa?
ProTip: Government is the core answer
If your nation is run with a central government that doesn't care at all about the citizenry, then human rights violations will happen. And regardless of whether or not I buy a product that's made by people in that unfortunate situation? It's still going to happen, until those people collectively rise up and overthrow their corrupt government.
At some point, I have to resign myself to understanding that I've got enough to be concerned with just looking out for myself and my own family. To a lesser extent, I'm going to expend some more energy looking out for my friends or relatives, or even the rest of the people in my own community (attending city hall meetings when something needs to be said or voted on, etc.). I might even have a bit of time and energy left to go to the polls and cast a vote for someone claiming to represent me at the state level, or vote for a president once every 4 years. But I'll be damned if I'm going to make my life more difficult and complicated trying to better things for someone living in a totalitarian dictatorship half way around the globe, when any impact my choices would have is almost immeasurably tiny.
And Fuck the so called journalists who keep bringing up that he had a family tragedy, that's no fucking reason to cut this asshole any slack, dumbshits!
Or prescription drug overdoses in West Virginia.
Or McDonald's consumption in Oklahoma.
...but plenty of them, once they find out, stop using Uber.
And surely stating it makes it so.
Or not...
Could we have at least a single day without you inserting your political bias every single post? The credibility of this site is starting to get a bit shady over the years. I understand liberal regressives are having a hard time living under this brutal dictatorship where democracy gets in the way of your agendas, but some of us come here for the technology rather than the political indoctrination. Politics is a disease.
It takes a two-bit hack like JournoLister Ben Smith of Buzzfeed to turn Uber's actions into an anti-Trump screed.
Then it takes a so-far-past-scraping-bottom-they're-fracking-in-their-basement Slashdot "editors" to repost it.
I think the shark Slashdot jumped just washed up on the beach.
Looking forward to when Trump-Style tactics finally stop working for Trump.
It's the law. It's not opinion. There are laws that define what a contractor is and isn't. Uber is breaking them. They then bought off national politicians to look the other way and used complex tricks to hide from state authorities. This is all ridiculously well documented. You're either outright lying or willfully ignorant. Neither is good.
If Uber wants they can campaign to change the law. They can also actively break the law and deal with the consequences (e.g. civil disobedience). They did none of that. Instead they've weaseled their way out of complying with the law (and the established social contracts between employee & employer) all the while claiming they did nothing wrong.
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employers want to be able to push the gig economy and avoid paying taxes, benefits and insurance. Employees for their part lack solidarity with their fellows and blame them for their poor lot in life while secretly hoping they'll get to exploit their poor lot too. It's a rotten situation all the way through.
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Darwin was about survival of the most well adapted.
It's more accurate to say those who can procreate the most before they die win.
It's rather depressing when you consider that someone like Nicola Tesla died alone, while someone like Jim Duggan is famous for how many kids he's sired.
If your nation is run with a central government that doesn't care at all about the citizenry, then human rights violations will happen. And regardless of whether or not I buy a product that's made by people in that unfortunate situation? It's still going to happen, until those people collectively rise up and overthrow their corrupt government.
It's not quite that simple. That product made by people without basic human rights is going to be cheaper *because* they can exploit the workers. If you then choose that product because it's cheaper than something made in a country that does uphold basic rights, you create strong financial incentives to continue the exploiration. First, you create an incentive for other businesses in that market to shift to countries with fewer worker's rights, and second, you create an incentive for exploitative countries to remain as such, lest they lose jobs when the businesses move elsewhere if rights are ever restored.
Sadly, we've even seen a microcosm of the latter within the US itself when cities raised the minimum wage, causing business owners to threaten moving elsewhere.
Can we have msmash's resignation before they cause half the remaining readers to leave?