Uber Plans to Advertise to You at Every Stage of Your Ride, Using Your Own Data | Hacker News Reader

Uber Plans to Advertise to You at Every Stage of Your Ride, Using Your Own Data

gizmodo.com

32 pointsLopRabbit12 comments

When will our AR contact lenses come with uBlock origin for live video ad blocking? ;)

You remind me of that Black Mirror episode where they could mute & blur/obfuscate live people...

Lyft leads the way: last Lyft ride we took two weeks ago, the passenger seat headrest had some Androidy tablet advertising games (which I have strong reasons to believe was abstracted gambling), and an ad came up at least once. There was an "off" button, but that just dimmed the screen with a "touch to play" message. I have no idea if it was a "Lyft thing", or something the driver added; I suspect the latter.

Did it look like this? https://media.lyft.com/lyft-tablets

Oh, good heavens, no. The one in your link looks like it might actually offer useful features for the benefit of the passenger. The one I'm talking about appeared to have one purpose: advertising and monetary extraction.

That annoying company is unrelated to Lyft. I've had them randomly in all different kinds of ride services. I assume they are advertised on forums for new ride share drivers who are going all in before they realize they'll never recoup their investment.

Too late to edit original post, but thanks for the correction. It had the stink of an exploitive company behind it, and not Lyft, but I just wasn't sure and kind of assumed that Lyft wouldn't allow it (and perhaps they don't, but no one reports it).

https://playoctopus.com/drivers/

The ones I've seen have stupid little games with ads every minute or something. If you play them often enough, apparently you can win money. Drivers make up to $100/month for using them.

Yup, that's the one! I like how the website claims that drivers get better ratings and higher tips. Yeah, well, this one-off anecdata sez the only reason I left a tip and didn't ding the driver on the rating was because I wasn't confident that the driver had a choice in the matter.

And sorry, Lyft, for unfairly disparaging you; too late to edit now. But, not unlike your competitor, you'll soon do something that will make me feel justified in my disparagement. ;-)

Can't even read the article about these ads because of the amount of ads on it

https://archive.ph/EsQ5M

Right, so basically taxi cabs but personalized ads. GG on marginally progressing the wheel.

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