Hacker News Reader

Comment by meltyness | Hacker News Reader

Their definition of TNC is what the rest of the world calls ridesharing.

I find this definition hopelessly inadequate and obfuscatory, and suspect the authors of targeting certain classes of conclusions.

Maps, Waze, and any autonomous technology obviously fit this definition, and I cant fathom the reason for their exclusion. Namely "governance, governance, environmental, social."

View on HN

Similarly, "ridesharing" is a marketing slogan created by Uber to aid their attempts to not have their operations be classified as taxis/cabs in order to evade regulations.

Language often targets conclusions!

A lot of people parroting this line, but I suspect you guys all did not use or were not in the market for Uber or Lyft. Their main offering pre-pandemic was in fact Uber Pool and Lyft Line, which was indeed shared rides. This was extremely popular and was the default option in the app.

> parroting this line

The line is true. "Ridesharing" used to mean something completely different.

> Their main offering pre-pandemic was in fact Uber Pool and Lyft Line, which was indeed shared rides.

First, this used to be known as "splitting a cab," not "ridesharing." Second, Uber was branding its service as "ridesharing" long before it launched Uber Pool. Uber Pool was only added a few years after Uber spread across the US.

This article is an example of how "ridesharing" was used in the pre-Uber days: [0]. A typical passage from the article:

> It's not that there's a shortage of rideshare sites on the Internet. One of the largest sites in Canada is Carpool.ca, which thousands of people and hundreds of employers and universities use to organize carpools.

0. https://www.thestar.com/business/small_business/leadership/2...

Uber was originally called UberCab, and I guess given the lack of medallions they had they couldn’t be called a cab. Strictly speaking Uber was ride sharing. You could turn Uber on from your commute from A to B and also ferry a few passengers during that time… granted I’m not sure if it was possible to see the routes ahead of time.

Your suspicions are not correct (I personally hired many taxis through both Uber and Lyft prior to 2020).

I challenge your assertion that shared rides were the "main" offering: Uber Pool was 20% of rides in 2016.zero]

Use "ride-hailing" or just call these things what they are: taxis.

[zero]https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/uber-says-that-20-of-its-r...

Your article was from 2016, a mere 2 years after the launch of POOL. Shared rides became the default option and by 2019 I didn’t know a single person that rented out a whole car just for themselves unless they also had a group of people more than 2.

It may not be what people selected, but at least in Lyft it was the default and cheapest option. Pre-2020 all my Lyft rides were shared.

Pool and Line came pretty late in the game after the regulations changed. Uber absolutely used ride sharing to claim they weren’t taxis before Pool.

In the policy brief series linked, they do draw a distinction between TNC and ridesharing:

> Ridesharing — Ridesharing involves adding passengers to a private trip in which driver and passengers share a destination. Such an arrangement provides additional transportation options for riders while allowing drivers to fill otherwise empty seats in their vehicles. Traditional forms of ridesharing include carpooling and vanpooling. This term is sometimes used to refer to ridesourcing.

> Transportation Network Company (TNC) — A company that provides ridesourcing services.

In the policy brief, they're

- not investigating TNCs, by any reasonable definition, the two companies they target are publicly traded companies

- exclusively seeking to criticize ridesharing relative to public transit, or as-yet non-feasible means

- not framing things in any conceptual framework, ESG is not a conceptual framework it's a political viewpoint about role of government (in this case literally regulatory recommendations) masquerading as a conceptual framework

The structure is not investigative, it's persuasive. This is what market manipulation looks like.

CMU is situated in an extremely affluent district in Pittsburgh, and this type of behavior is to be expected. Totally beautiful place though, do recommend a visit if you have the time.

To repeat, outside the frame: places that didn't have a robust taxi system to begin with, internal operations and transformation capabilities of a tech company controlling taxi and traffic distribution.

They ought to just define the word the way everybody else does. What possible reason could they have not to?

They're using the definition of "ridesharing" that everyone used before Uber came along. Uber branded itself a "ridesharing" app in order to avoid regulations on taxicabs, despite the fact that what Uber does has nothing to do with ridesharing.

To differentiate the things like car pooling from things like Uber.

I think probably because "ridesharing" is a pleasant word that evokes a nice image of people carpooling together instead of conjuring up exploitative, shit companies like Uber

"Ridesharing" is a loaded word promoted by Uber and Lyft to make their computer-dispatched taxi companies sound like something else. There is no reason to adopt the preferred terminology of one side of an issue. Your characterization of this usage as universal is not accurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com