It’s not a fine line: signing up for a Lyft account requires explicitly agreeing to a ToS, which is a legally-binding contract.
I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS. But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding. And most of us didn't have an ethics course in university. So when we're being asked by an employer to do X, and X is something that we do as consumers, then at what point are we supposed to think "Nope, this is wrong"?
The point is, treating these issues like they're incredibly obvious helps no one. It takes more effort to debate it in good faith than to simply assert "It's obvious," but it doesn't change anybody's mind.
It's very likely that you might just go along with something in the moment, unless you've thought about it in advance and are able to recognize it.
When I was in grad school I knew a student who was almost completely amoral - not that has was evil, but it seemed like right and wrong never even entered into his decision process. For example, he decided that it might be profitable to write splog-creation software. He even brought in different outputs and did user testing in the lab, asking fellow students if they preferred output A or B, which had more believable testimonials, and if they were suffering from acne, which would they be more likely to buy from, etc.
It seemed scummy to me, but it took a long time for me to put my finger on exactly why. Wasn't it just another kind of advertising? It helped sell the acne medicine, which was a benefit to those that bought and sold it, right?
Your answers might be different, which is why it's good to think these things through for yourself. For me, what I came to was that the Google search engine is good, and it provides a lot of value by making it possible to find what you're actually looking for. The splogs where siphoning off some of that value, and giving it to that student.
They provided value to the student, but they made the internet worse for everyone else because it would be harder to find what actually worked well or was organically best. Basically a tragedy of the commons, and the result was a net negative - he destroyed a lot more value than he was able to capture, even though it was only a papercut from each person. It's much better to create more value than you capture, so the world is a better place for having you in it.
I think that kind of approach might be applicable here. Is Uber competing in a way that is beneficial to their customers, and therefore net positive? If they compete by trying to hobble or destroy Lyft that kind of sucks, but if they win by having a better product or a better approach to business, that seems more fair and results in a better outcome, a better world. Run faster, don't kick the other racer's ankles.
That sounds like a good rule of thumb for trying to apply to questions of business morality. "Are we trying to run faster than them? Or are we trying to kick them in the ankles?"
I mean, lots of people are young and just starting out and haven't had the time to think a lot of things through. Or they are busy developing expertise in things other than law and morality, but still need some kind of guiding principle. I think this is a good, simple rubric.
An example:
In American football, it's perfectly fine to take down the other guys hard if you cannot catch up.
That said, rules such as "don't kick other racer's ankles" are generally for the overall good -- we don't want a wild west approach and end up with wounded and hurt players all over the place and hence, the game gets less fun. Notice: there is a balance here between absolute ruthlessness and let's have some rules so we don't all end up with no functioning legs.
However, at the goal line, if touchdown is about to take place, I can guarantee you a player will go for other guy's ankle hard even if it would mean suspension, penalty, etc. Why? Because in that moment, the primary overriding priority is to prevent the touch down. That said, it is possible to cross the line in "kicking the other guy's ankle".
Generally speaking, you should endeavor to create rules that you can agree with regardless of which side of the fence you happen to currently be on. If the roles were reversed and your reaction is now "Hey, wait a minute, that's not fair!" then you should reconsider your current position.
The simple question 'would I be pissed off if I were on the other side of this situation?' will get you halfway home in almost every case. It is your responsibility as a sentient being to make moral decisions, otherwise you're just half alive.
Now, I'd like to be ethical. I want to choose to be. And I'd like us all to be ethical to each other. But you should make the case that it's beneficial for people to be ethical to each other because XYZ, not because they have a "responsibility" to do so, or that they're "half-alive" if they don't. And to say that ethics -- a massive topic that has flummoxed philosophers for thousands of years -- is easy, is just wishful thinking.
Well, you just implicitly made your own case for ethics, one of the strongest ones, IMO: any situation where there is a tradeoff between individual gain and communal loss, ethical thinking is required. If that tradeoff doesn't exist, like the win-win situations that can be encountered in many economic situations, ethics aren't required.
Therefore it's never "beneficial" to you as an individual to be ethical in any individual situation. It's only as the ethical decisions begin to pile up across society that we see clearly it is more beneficial in the aggregate if everyone co-operates than if everyone defects.
anigbrowl is just noting some common heuristics that generate similar ethical outcomes but using simpler logic.
Anyway, I think the reason people are going beyond legality to morality here is that Uber has established a pattern of behavior over time as an actor that doesn't follow the rules and does whatever it wants. It isn't accidental; they've exhausted their reserves of good faith.
I've seen other posters ask this question, but I don't think this line of argument applies in this situation.
You're comparing a large ($70B Valuation!), multinational corporation, with the average personal consumer. The former is sophisticated, with an entire dedicated legal department of highly trained, expensive, and experienced lawyers dedicated to scrutinizing legal agreements the company enters and hedging against any legal liabilities. Not to mention the teams of engineers - which collectively have decades of real-world experience building and competing in tech.
Yes, the average personal consumer likely has violated TOS agreements, but violating TOS agreements is far from a real concern for most people. The average consumer barely knows how to read - it makes little sense to equivocate Uber's behavior and intentions with that of the average Joe Schmoe.
> I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS
Exactly.
> But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding.
This is why corporations have legal departments and other dedicated departments to handle a host of other issues that the average consumer would find difficult: HR, accounting, etc.
The level of sophistication, and thus the "mentality" of a corporation, especially one as large as Uber, cannot be compared to the average consumer.
> And most of us didn't have an ethics course in university.
Most of us also don't have a dedicated team of lawyers. It's also worth mentioning that new works and veterans alike are often required to go through various ethics courses and workshops as part of their corporate training. Even if this was not the case, the more senior engineers at Uber have most definitely experienced comparable situations. The fact that upper management endorsed these practices is telling and indicative of the overall culture at Uber.
Not all companies behave like this - some large MNCs behave in the exact opposite: extremely conservative when it comes to toeing the line with zero-tolerance policies in place that exact immediate, and harsh, punishment to any employee or manager that violate company policies / guidelines.
> The point is, treating these issues like they're incredibly obvious helps no one. It takes more effort to debate it in good faith than to simply assert "It's obvious," but it doesn't change anybody's mind.
I agree that hindsight is always 20/20 and what appears obvious today might not have been in the "heat of the moment" so to speak. But you have to wonder if at some point over the past few years, someone at Uber spoke up about their practices?
What seems obvious to me is that those involved knew they were breaking Lyft's TOS and that their actions were borderline unethical, definitely in the grey at the very least. That's why they took great pains to hide their behavior and obfuscate their actions. How do you explain the geofence they placed on Apple HQ? That was designed explicitly to hide their violations of Apple's TOS.
Uber is not a naive actor here. Any argument that advances this view is highly disingenuous, especially here on HN. Let's not kid ourselves, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck....
Read literally, many terms of service would block any access whatsoever, as phraseology blocking "any automated or manual access" is popular. [0] Isn't all access either automated or manual?
The question is not if you're going to violate the ToS, since in most cases, just using the service invariably does so. Rather, the question is whether your misuse is going to make the company upset enough to sue you. And if it does, it doesn't necessarily mean anything unethical or unfair occurred; it just means something that upset that company occurred.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22automated+or+manual%22+%2... ; 131,000 results