Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
*their
-===% Beau %===-
(senior editor
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!
I noticed this today. Like 5 in a row were anti-trump blah blah blah.
/. out of my RSS feeds.
If this SJW crap does not stop I am deleting
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
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.
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???
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.
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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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!"
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)
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/