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?