Uber has a law firm investigating me – Susan Fowler
twitter.com
twitter.com
The full tweet is: "Uber names/blames me for account deletes, and has a different law firm -not Holders - investigating me. I have hired"
"Uber names/blames me for account deletes" is a pretty bold claim, and doesn't feel like a routine investigation.
Why else would she hire a lawyer? I see no other reason why she would hire a lawyer except to respond to a scary letter on scary letterhead that was probably personally served to her doorstep. (Which alone is a horrible experience one wishes on no one.)
Everyone, buy that Microservices book! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491965975/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
(I grabbed the link directly from Fowler's blog in case it includes any affiliate juice for her.)
https://twitter.com/FamousCeleb/status/834567373214539776/ph...
This happened to me (I never used Uber.. signed up and forgot about it) and in my research I found out they know about the hacks and their PR message is its the user's fault for using a lame password.
What a horrible company.. run by the worst vile, corrupt, arrogant sociopaths ever!
It's an internet service .. I don't need to send an email to Facebook, twitter, etc to have my account canceled. Uber should be no different unless there's a pending charge then tell the user you can cancel after payment has cleared ...not wait until we feel like emailing you to handle your request because WE WANT TO LOCK YOU IN! I was and am still furious that I was unable to cancel my phantom Uber account immediately after my bank account got hacked.
Any web service following this scheme is not doing it for their users but for themselves!!!
Why are ppl defending this tactic because you use it at your startup and try to justify it as right when it's SO WRONG and hostile to your users.
Good point. That's bad. We removed the quotes above.
I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there, but it sure is effective at getting people to see past the most obvious examples of straight up awfulness. Explains a lot about what happened to Susan.
They don't want to believe that an entity they identify with is a bad (ethical, political) actor. They see themselves as good (and maybe they are), and so this thing that they base their identity on must also be good (and in some ways, maybe even most, it could be). Criticism of the entity becomes criticism against the self, which they cannot help but deny because it destroys their own self-image.
This is still unclear but I certainly agree that it is very worrying. You can bet that we'll be asking tough questions about it on Tuesday.
As an aside, I believe you simply meant "cult" - "cargo cult" is specifically to do with performing actions superficially resembling things that work elsewhere without understanding (or replicating) the why of it. Your accusation, of persisting in believing bizarre things in the face of evidence, is more general.
I used cargo cult because I expect that a lot of the willingness to dismiss this behavior is out of expectation of a maybe-never-to-be-delivered gift from the "IPO Gods."
Just to be clear, I'm not ascribing this to you, but I've had other conversations with Uber employees who were explicitly cynical in their stance, after this fashion.
That evokes the image of Jim Jones People's Temple Jonestown mass murder-suicide, using poisoned Flavor Aid beverage mix. In a corporate context, "drinking the Kool-Aid" means to uncritically embrace the corporate culture, even if it is actually toxic.
Anecdotally, companies that try to impress a culture upon their employees always do it to obscure the otherwise obvious shortcomings in the business itself. Without fail, it is continuously reinforced propaganda, designed to create an irrational emotional attachment to the workplace. Subtler versions use "we" or "us" to refer to the employee labor, rather than the owners and managers.
Everyone does it to some extent, and once you can see the fnords, you can't stop seeing them.
The literal cargo cultists were south Pacific islanders that saw temporary military airfields constructed in World War 2, and planes filled with valuable cargo landing on them or making airdrops, correlated the two, and then built their own mock airfields so that the goods would once again rain down from the sky. The business of running a working airfield was transformed into a religious ritual to call down manna from heaven. In a modern figurative sense, "cargo culting" is something like instituting a daily stand-up meeting when your development process is not actually Agile Manifesto compatible.
While "cult" is in a literal sense nothing more than a group with a common religion, the word has acquired a derogatory shading that implies practices hostile and predatory to the membership, secrecy, and insularity. If your religion severely punishes heterodoxy or apostasy, attempts to supplant or replace your supportive institutions such as family, friends, and government, and encourages you to liquidate your own wealth and transfer it to the religious leadership, it will probably be referred to by non-members and the news media as a cult. Some businesses employ cult-like practices, and often replace the direct tithing with less obvious schemes, such as multilevel marketing or sweatshop labor.
Cargo cultism has nothing to do with getting people to see past "straight up awfulness."
Is Uber practicing sympathetic magic in hopes that they'll receive what they're after? And if so, after what more-technicially-advanced society are they patterning their behavior?
Maybe you meant something like that (e.g., [tech figure/company] is predatory, they were successful, therefore being predatory might bring success–could go the argument), but I have no idea from your comment whether that's the case.
For anyone who isn't familiar with cargo cults, they're pretty interesting, yet for some reason the word "cargo" has become this word we prepend to "cult" when we want to make a cult sound more scary, but it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with what can happen when certain societies make contact with ones that are more technologically advanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
You add the word "cargo" because you see other people do it and receive praise for their insight. It's almost like a superfluous landing strip...
I don't think you understand the level of support Susan has at Uber. And the level of anger that her blog post erupted within Uber towards management. She has every employees' support. And thanks to her, massive changes in culture and management are going to happen. She singlehandedly changed Uber more than anyone in management would or could.
So if Uber were investigating Susan, there would be massive revolt against management, guaranteed. It would be immediate.
https://twitter.com/physicsNcoffee/status/834566962998960128
Here is the official statement from Uber:
"The law firm Perkins Coie is looking into the specific allegations raised by Susan. They will report into Eric Holder, who is responsible for the overall investigation into Uber's workplace practices. To be clear: they are investigating Susan's claims, not Susan personally."
In an email from one of our lawyers, she specifically mentions that Uber has been in constant contact with Susan's lawyers so this was a surprise. And that Uber of course doesn't hold Susan to blame for anything.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/15/12201134/uber-ergo-admit-l...
Sadly, no one is willing to state the facts on the other side because they will be labeled as, cargo cult victim, if not worse. And we might lose our critical thinking skills along the way.
The media environment is partly to blame. They are chasing shiny objects that generate clicks, while leaving fact-based reporting in the backseat. There was an actual harassment case against Tesla filed in court last week by a current employee. How many stories have we seen on that?
IOW, I'm not going to run in circles over a seven word tweet that could mean about anything.
It's not necessarily a savory practice, nor is it universal, but it is definitely common.
I think it's unfortunate that Fowler has to go through this indignity as well as what she dealt with when she was actually working for Uber. But I'd frankly be surprised if Uber's lawyers weren't investigating her, just in case.
Part of the actual tweet is: "Uber names/blames me for account deletes" That's a much more aggressive approach than the defensive reasoning you're conjuring out of thin air.
Similarily it would be fine to say that I blame the cop for losing my job because he pulled me over drunk and now I cannot drive to my work with suspended DL.
Then it shouldn't have been in quotes (I see that it's since been changed).
It's not a 7 word tweet. Full text of linked tweet:
"Uber names/blames me for account deletes, and has a different law firm -not Holders - investigating me. I have hired"
The "names/blames for account deletes" is kinda weird. In either case, the title of this submission is a strict paraphrasing (despite being in quotes) of an already short tweet, which is pretty meh.
Her goal wasn't to protect herself from an Evil Corp, but to shed light to Evil Corp's actions. She achieved that probably better than she ever expected.
Her blog post also was one of the most "rantless" posts I've ever read about events of that nature. Compare, for example, to Leah Rowe's public posts about the GNU foundation. It wasn't written because her feelings got in the way.
This situation would require immense courage from anyone, and she's been handling it perfectly. I don't think she needs a pro-tip !
smdh.
Many people hate Uber and what they do. There is a strong incentive to smear the company. Smearing Uber has been done in the past when the whole #deleteUber was started becaude Uber drivers were not force to participate in the airport boycotts.
We as individuals can take a look at all of the evidence available about the illegal things that Uber does, and decide for ourselves if the allegations are credible.
This is not about 1 story by one woman who was harassed. This is a story about a dozen women who are already coming forward, and a toxic culture that anyone at Uber can confirm exists.
If Uber wants people to give them the benefit of the doubt, then maybe they should stop doing so many terrible things.
Similarly, if I had 10 separate female friends that I trust tell me about how this one guy had harassed them in different situations, I wouldn't bother going to each of them and demand that they give me video evidence. I would just stop talking to the guy, and warn my other friends about him. Doubly so if the guy just responded by saying, "I will not confirm or deny any allegations, but I would like to point out that nobody has any proof!".
If you are reduced to saying "No proof has been shown yet!", as opposed to actually making an argument, putting your reputation on the line, then you have already lost.
Or in otherwords, in order for me to give ANY weight to the "There are 2 sides to any story", then Uber needs to come out and claim that there are 2 side. Silence doesn't count. Silence in this case is admitting that they are in the wrong.
Just look at how he behaves in that video in the back of an Uber - rather than empathizing with his driver and saying nothing substantial, he actually discusses the business reasons for creating UberX. He treated his driver a a rational human being like himself rather than an emotional being to be placated.
See also this blog post by Jeff Atwood, where he advocates for pointless theatrics and emotional manipulation. It's quite insightful, and Kalanick's refusal to do such things is probably hurting him: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-hugging-will-continue-unti...
I've noticed a phenomenon where people seem to substitute PR/optics for their own morality. That is, people will criticize a public person not for what they've done or said, but for how it looks or how it is likely to be perceived by others.
One of the greatest fears of the modern world is that the higher quality people might one day exit. We demonize companies for outsourcing, rich people for living in gated communities and sending children to private schools, tech bros for using Uber/google bus/etc rather than riding the broken SF public transit.
A person like Kalanick (or Thiel, to name a similarly disliked figure) who refuses to engage in this kind of PR is scary; it's a reminder that they don't need us.
As for "the burden of proving" what, exactly, do you expect? Screenshots of the harassment?
The "hard proof" is for a court, if it comes to that, and not you, the general public.
Whether we are in a court of law or not, the burden of proof must remain on the accuser. So far, Susan Fowler has provided no proof. There is no tape, no email, no corroboration by other witnesses. Are we just supposed to take her word for it and sharpen our pitchforks?
But basically, nothing which Fowler has said seems suspicious or in any way promoting a malicious agenda.
Her blog post was straightforward and referred to events, people and communications which, I expect, can be referenced by the UBER HR department and I hope that she has retained the evidence if she needs it to protect herself. That seems perfectly reasonable.
> nothing which Fowler has said seems suspicious or in any way promoting a malicious agenda.
It is suspicious that considering the number of people involved in this alleged systematic abuse, no one has stepped forward to corroborate her claims. The leather jackets story also strikes me as very far-fetched and a little incredible to believe (a company like Uber wouldn't care about the cost of 6 extra jackets and wouldn't take the PR risk of pulling shit like that).
> "Pitchforks" is a bit melodramatic.
Hashtag #DeleteUber is exactly what the proverbial pitchforks look like in 2017.
I don't see why we should assume that the Uber bureaucracy is wise and level-headed in decisions big and small, and that Susan Fowler would risk making up such a stupid and easily disprovable detail after alleging far more serious claims.
The odds of a lawsuit from one side or the other seems high, at least right now. Why air that all publicly? Doing so can and has undermined cases for both sides in the past.
Besides that, does our justice system now use Twitter to try and convict? Are trials by public opinion what matter now? When did that change?
What exactly is stopping Uber from defending themselves? They have a lot of money, top-notch PR folks, and I suspect top-notch legal representation. If they could easily disprove this, would they not have done so already?
Is the owner going to see a specific stat about this action?
Also they can see the usage metrics drop for existing consumers, who have not deleted their accounts but have simply deleted the app.
Edit:typo
What you want to do is delete your account after logging into the UBER website. That is permanent, but it does allow you enter a reason why you are deleting the account. In this case, I suppose thousands of people entered "Susan Fowler" as the reason.
It sends a message. Whether the company is destined to become a shadow of itself before it understands the message is another question.
It's your job to decide how much risk you are willing to take to speak out. Some fights are worth fighting.
Do you mean that is caught doing a lot of nasty stuff? The company has problems, it pushes against workers rights, it leaves towns that don't bow to their business tactics, it is sexist, etc. The "bad PR" is the symptom not the problem. Their actions are the problem.
However, in this case, it is already largely public and making Uber look the villain is a viable strategy given that Uber likely is the villain.
Even if you suppose she's the one to blame, if what she claimed is true then wouldn't their point be moot?
They are probably thinking they can go that route.
Is there a way to support Fowler in some way, like contributing to a legal fund?
While it seems pretty cut and dried to me that Uber is in the wrong, don't they have the responsibility and the right to investigate for themselves?
A 2nd firm looking at Fowler specifically would imply a different (addl) strategy--like litigation against her personally, or a PR campaign to smear her.
Susan runs a book club [1][2] and is a published author[3]. Her quick fame rising from the recent press and a 24k+ follower and the amount of product placements on her tweet feed has reminded that old saying: All Press is Good Press.
[1]: https://twitter.com/susansbookclub
The number of deletes rarely surpassed the number of signups during any given "PR crisis" or #delete campaign. Fowler wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.
Not on her twitter feed. It's on the feed of her product susansbookclub, which is where it should be. What's wrong with that?