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Comment by skinnymuch | Hacker News Reader

I'm not buying that most people use Lyft in your area - passengers or drivers. I believe you think that and your circle of people may also be doing the same, but beyond that, I'm guessing there's a lot of bias. Especially if you're saying everywhere you go Lyft seems to be more popular among riders. It's just not true at all.

For my own anecdote, I'd bet 75% of my FB friends with smartphones within my age range, 21-40, have Uber on their phone or have only ridden Uber. And a fraction of them will have Lyft. Among people I actually know, this is roughly the case, with Lyft being a bit more popular, but that's because of who I am/surround myself with.

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While anecdotes are clearly anecdotal - the entirety of my company has started switching. The constant bad press, and quite frankly the CEO being such a jerk has been enough to get my colleagues to almost universally switch. The cost difference is about 3rd on the list of priorities for most business users.

Just thought I'd point out that, in addition to name calling not being very nice in general, it's particularly in poor taste right now given that the person in question is grieving a family death that happened just this weekend[1]

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/27/technology/uber-travis-kalan...

I didn't know about this, and while it's sad, it doesn't excuse his past actions and in the context of this post it doesn't matter. If the post was about his mother passing, and someone mentioned how much of a jerk he is, that's in much worse taste. Saying it in a comment thread on a post about Uber's loss is not in bad taste.

> Saying it in a comment thread on a post about Uber's loss is not in bad taste.

I dunno. The comment doesn't seem very relevant, being basically one random guy's opinion of what he read on the 'tubes about another guy he probably never met, and extrapolating that to be some sort of argument about the profitability of a company. To me, it just kinda feels like thinly disguised bandwagoning to get internet points.

I recall people making similarly tone deaf comments about Steve Jobs around the time he took time off due to cancer, or Bill Gates in his early philanthropic days. Perhaps this particular case bothers me more than the average person because I've been through the same loss, but I guess as long as one get internet points, poor taste is forgiven?

I wouldn't assume that everyone knows about the death of his mother. I didn't until you posted the article. In this case, the comment was relevant to its parent because the parent was adding an anecdote about the number of people they know who had ridden Uber versus Lyft, and the comment was adding its own anecdote about their workplace/coworkers switching to Lyft.

Like I said, I think it depends on context. In this case, I wouldn't say it's tone deaf to mention the CEO of Uber being one of the main reasons you don't use Uber anymore, unless the article is directly talking about something bad happening to him. For example, if the article about his mom's death got to the front page, and people made comments about how bad of a CEO he is or he's the main reason they don't use Uber, that's not ok.

Fair point. I agree

I'm completely ignorant of all of this but if the CEOs behaviour is part of his reason for changing loyalties as a customer then it seems highly relevant to me. Even if the CEO is a perfect saint, stating their reasoning is valid IMO. If people stop using a company because of the behaviour of a CEO, be the real or merely perceived, that must impact profit and is likely to increasingly do so, no?

Well, the parent commenter is entitled to monetarily support or not support whatever company he wants for whatever reason he wants.

At least from my own perception, the character of the CEO usually doesn't come up as relevant for the people using the platform. On the rider side, it's usually been a matter of how convenient/frustrating their experience with any given platform is, and on the driver side, there's generally no concept of loyalty whatsoever; they just try to be on as many platforms as possible to maximize income.

As long as we're sharing anecdotes, most of the people I know, parents and young kids included, have made the switch to Lyft starting about 8 months ago. They seem to be the less evil company, so people enjoy working for and using them.

Come to think of it, the question of "evil" seems almost irrelevant in the big picture. Even if say Lyft is marginally more ethical than Uber, the end long-term result will still be a fleet of drivers competing against each other in Taylorism mode to be paid a pittance, only to be eventually replaced by automated vehicles.

Anecdotally, my aged father (72) uses Uber. Uber has spread pretty well to 3rd world countries and is popular in all the vacation spots.

Some people I know tried to switch to Lyft when all the bad PR on Uber hit, but the prices were higher so either they switched back to Uber or the more passionate ones are now riding the metro again.

I don't know about other cities but in teh Bay Area prices are pretty evenly matched.

Most of my family and friends exclusively use Uber because of Travis and his values.

What values?

Libertarian

So money, gotcha.

I wouldn't doubt it, Uber comes preinstalled on most android phones.

Both Uber and Lyft are integrated into Google Maps on Android.

And most likely more ride-sharing companies should be supported (included whatever Waze ends up becoming).

Came pre-installed on my Lumia phone too.

And was the second app, which I deleted. Right after Facebook.

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