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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Quoting from a 2014 Bloomberg column:

Stories about the leadership’s dubious ethics -- or the ones about subprime autoloans or deceiving the press or sharing private user data for fun and games at a party --haven't really hurt Uber at all. Even reports of incidents that might make one think twice about using the service -- sexual assaults, a hammer attack -- haven’t gained much attention outside the close world of tech blogs. There’s only a slim chance that most consumers will ever know about this stuff and decide that they’d rather use, say, Lyft, an almost-identical service. So long as people continue to download the app there’s an even slimmer chance that the stories will hurt the company’s ability to raise money.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-11-18/ubers-dir...

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I think those specific incidents were carried out by the drivers (independent contractors) and they weren't formal employees. Not that I'm excusing uber of liability/responsibility.

Ahh basically yes you are. They built their entire business on destroying the employee-employer relationship so that they could avoid responsibility for employee behavior. That is their true business model - not ride sharing.

Responsibility Arbitrage. Carl Icahn would be so proud.

It's not excusing, it's providing context in a conversation about policy in the corporate, white collar, workplace. Bringing unrelated incidents into the conversation distracts from that.

Especially when the article implies that consumers might avoid these things by switching to Lyft. Software devs might avoid a malicious HR department by choosing Lyft over Uber, but there's no real reason to think that consumers are going to face different risks with different companies.

Well the corporate culture at Uber is likely the reason why Uber makes claims of background checks, which seem to miss things like felony convictions, and better safety and security than regular taxis, even though when unsafe conditions happen Uber blames the customer rather than trying to accept or fix things.

In other words, Left might be better and safer than Uber not because Lyft has better employees, but because Lyft isn't (necessarily) cutting every possible corner and ignoring everyone's safety and security the way Uber is doing (and always has done).

I think Lyft vets their drivers whereas Uber does not, so there's some chance people would choose it over Uber knowing that.

I think the average person also understands that one bad apple doesn't spoil the bunch.

For the record one bad apple does in fact spoil the bunch.

The idiom you are quoting is "one bad apple spoils the barrel/bunch", which means literally the opposite of what you think it means.

I guess I've always used it wrong, however...

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136017612/bad-apple-proverbs-t...

>Back then, nobody ever talked about "just a few bad apples" or "only a few rotten apples" — the whole point was that even one was enough to taint the group. These days, those are the phrases people use to imply that some misdeeds were an isolated incident — a couple of rogue cops, a handful of unprincipled loan officers, two or three sociopathic soldiers. Then there's the version that goes, "There are always going to be a few bad apples." That's a counsel of moral realism: as in, there's evil in the world; get over it. It's not a sentiment you would have heard in a 19th century sermon, much less from a grocer you were complaining to about the wormy fruit he'd sold you the week before. "Well, Mrs. Gold, we all have to expect find a few rotten apples, don't we?"

In other scenarios the apple would get some recompense after being spoiled other than "sorry we sent a bad apple to your bunch, that sucks".

An idiotic response given that "subprime autoloans or deceiving the press or sharing private user data for fun and games at a party" cannot be due to drivers.

I mean... "giving loans to people who request them" and "assaulting someone with a hammer" are pretty different behaviors. It's worth clarifying the difference - someone taking a programming job with Uber might want to prepare for discrimination, but not hammer assault.

I don't think people ignored it so much as felt like Uber Drivers were still a lot safer than Taxi Drivers. e.g. Who hasn't looked at the taxi's license and realized that the sketchy-looking driver isn't the same person?

That is until now - when we collectively realize that Uber is just plain a bad and probably lying about background checks to...

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