Uber employees 'spied on ex-partners, politicians and Beyoncé' (2016)

In the wake of fake news, I'm asking for links, and not to other news sources. How do we know all this dirt isn't coming from Lyft? They're certainly going to benefit from this.

I read through the documentcloud link, Uber collects a lot of data, is honestly all I can see. I feel like I've missed something important, but I'm reading on my phone so I couldn't really search or read properly.

Could you help me understand?

(For the record, I don't use Uber or any ride-sharing platform and I don't have any stocks/shares. I have no incentive to watch them succeed or fail.)

Too many people here directly or indirectly dependent on the ecosystem.

>"Who cares? I'm using Uber because it's convenient and has more coverage than Lyft."

> Yes, but what about all of the shady things that Uber has been doing?

>"What things? If they've done things, I haven't heard of them nor does it seem like it affects me in anyway."

> You don't care that a company is being shady, sexually harasses its employees, tracks it users... ad nausem?

>"No, it's not something that's important to me."

I've seen the same types of questions posted multiple times regarding Uber. Uber the victim, picked on; everybody does these things. I even saw someone say that the long list of executives that left Uber was normal. It's a cynical, and false, view of humanity and the business community.

How does the first question affect the second? Assuming the stories are true, Uber really is just that bad. Whether other companies are too shouldn't be relevant in this context, or at least it shouldn't affect how bad all this is.

An argument could be made that cultural is at least a significant factor. Take Susan J. Fowler's allegations, for example: if true (and I have no reason to believe they aren't), how many HR departments do you know that would not only tolerate but even assist in covering up repeated sexual harassment by an employee, with documented evidence no less?

Sounds like it is. Uber's not exactly the first tech company to be in the spotlight, and yet they seem to be a uniquely anarchic organization.

For instance, Google's been in this kind of hot water before - namely regarding the stored wifi traffic captured by street view vehicles. That said, what Uber's accused of here is an even more massive breach of public trust IMO.

I would say it's mostly as bad as they portray it - in both cases.

It doesn't matter that Uber did this. Microsoft, Sun, and countless other companies have gotten into trouble for this sort of behaviour in the past. This story is not about Uber.

This story is about how poorly the tech industry regards the legislative machinery that gives us all the right to have free access to computers, to do what we like with them, without restriction - and the liabilities of that freedom, when played in a market full of unscrupulous individuals with far, far too much power.

As for why so many articles just now? My guess is that Susan Fowler's story crossed the outrage threshold in general public, and now news platforms are simply milking the cash cow.

Travis Kalanick for CIA director.

He just needs a place where his Machiavellian side can roam free, and private industry isn't it.

Contrary to popular opinion, companies can behave ethically, sometimes above and beyond what is required by law. I'd say the reasons are, in descending order of importance:

- Companies are people, who have a strong sense of right and wrong, and are usually quite eager to stay on the right side of the line dividing the two.

- "Company culture" which, just like a society's culture, actually sets the standards for what individuals consider right and wrong. This is what apparently broke down at Uber, because it's established quite early in an organisation's life. (I like to think that you can still see Steve Wozniak's playfulness in Apple's culture today, and that he may have stunted the worst of his co-founder's instincts from taking Apple down a similar path).

- Evolution: It's impossible for any company of significant size to keep secrets. If Google, Apple etc. were doing stuff like this on the same scale, they would no longer exist.

- The law, which is the codification of whatever society came up as in terms of morality

- "Corporate Governance", which is the codification of the symbiosis of law and company culture, plus mechanisms to enforce it.

But even if every company were as bad, I'd have to cite my Grandfather: "When did we start comparing ourselves to others?". Uber was up to a lot of stuff that shouldn't happen, and it shouldn't be excused. If you're asked to participate in such things, don't. If you fear you could be asked, or if you believe your company is forced to behave this way b/c competitors do, lobby for mechanisms to prevent it. Laws/Regulations/Industry guidelines on ethics fundamentally benefit everyone, because they prevent a Prisoner Dilemma's race to the bottom.

There was also a case in the UK where contract killers did this and found out the location of some ones parents via phone records and killed them.

- The single sexual harassment claim I can recall was a huge deal that caused soul-searching about how that person was hired. (Don't know that that was the best reaction, but it was indicative of the concern.)

- When things that pushed ethical lines were mooted, that was talked about a lot, and, at least to my sense of morals, we rarely crossed them.

Bottom line - being a startup doesn't mean you're an Uber. Being an Uber means you're an Uber.

I believe when we can make a reasonable guess about a org's software being on a randomly selected person's personal hardware, they're probably no longer a start up.

Just because someone or a team of people carry that "hustle" ethos, doesn't make them a start up, it makes them hustlers.

The linked blog post literally tracks employees of individual companies and sees where they live.