Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
buzzfeed.com
buzzfeed.com
These people are scum. Uber was a neat app, but I have PLENTY of alternatives these days.
I opt out at airports, I donate to the EFF, I don't use Uber or any other app that targets people's privacy and actively threatens the freedom of the press.
(Oh, and like Sarah Lacey, I'm a mom of young kids too. Reading that article induced such a shudder of horror, and will likely do the same for any parent who reads, or even hears about, that story. Uber has done major, major damage to their brand on a visceral level.)
EDIT: Oh my God, they also have the location data of the comings and goings of lots of politicians and industry regulators, don't they? Late night trips from locations some of those people might not want made public? If they'll so casually threaten a mother's kids, threaten journalists with $1M smear campaigns, what else have they already done?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-...
Wow I forgot about this fiasco. It literally reads like a scene from The Circle. Disturbing.
This is a direct attempt to shut her up -- this an attempt to silence their critics via blackmail -- and they hoped it wouldn't get mainstream press coverage. They hoped she would find out just via whispers from those who were there.
It may not meet the legal definition -- but there is a clear demand and menace:
The demand is that journalists do not write negative stories on Uber.
The menace is that Uber will retaliate against any journalists by digging up dirty on them personally and thus hurting either their reputation, careers, or relationships.
You do if you're a psychopathic megalomaniac who got shoved money up the ass by shriveling old millionaires for having a business model that is based on siphoning money off less-than-minimum wage workers.
"spending 'a million dollars' to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. .... they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine"
proposal is a bit out of order. The money to throw $1m around that kind of way comes from Google and like investors and they could object that they don't want to be associated with that stuff.
And given the publicly documented exploits of Travis Kalanick I think there's a strong case to be made that Uber's toxic culture comes from the top.
Culture always comes from the top, toxic or otherwise, imho.
But if someone who worked for me started talking about exacting revenge on enemies -- in a public forum or not -- I would definitely have a problem with that.
The executive mentioned 'they'd be justified' in digging up dirt on Sarah Lacy. I wonder on what basis that one would justify that - the article mentions Lacy's criticism for a dumb ad campaign in France, but that doesn't seem like something that would provoke a response saying 'we'd be justified on digging up dirt about you'.
Does anyone know if Sarah Lacy has dug up dirt on Uber staff and their families?
EDIT: according to other posters, who read the website in question, Sarah Lacy regularly reports on people's personal lives. Which sounds like exactly what the under person was talking about doing back.
(1) First their senior business executive (Michael) not only floats his plan at very public venue, but mentions both the budget ($1M) and the number of researches (4) they were thinking of hiring.
(2) And then later, in damage control mode, the spokesperson (Hourdajian) tries to clean up by saying they've "never considered" doing opposition research -- despite Michael having just named both a specific budget they were thinking of allocating, and a specific number of researchers they were thinking of hiring.
Here's the marketing copy on Uber's website right now: "WELCOME TO ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE", "TIME, VALUE, AND CONVENIENCE — YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL", "HAVE MORE FUN WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MATTER MOST", "YOUR SHORTCUT TO EVERYWHERE IS ARRIVING NOW".
Oh really, so you're fine spewing total bullshit but you're gonna have a hissy-fit and act like a toddler when someone writes a sensational article?
Get over yourselves!
Every major company does this, just not in the ham fisted way that Uber has done. Want NYT tech reporter to give positive reviews of Apple? Give him special access to newsworthy stories from inside, early access to devices, free gear, fly him out to special events and treat him like a prince. He gives an overly critical review? Take it all away. He'll have to hear from his friends at WSJ how great this year's event was, or how cool the devices are. They'll be special, he won't.
What you've described - while highly problematic - is a pretty big distance away from "blackmail".
It's like comparing a hang glider to a jumbo jet. Sure, both are bad behavior and have some common motivations, but the moral gap is gigantic.
"your families" = "your children"
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption to make. "Your family" could just as easily be referring to adult family members only (spouses, siblings, parents, etc.).
It seems like you're jumping to that conclusion solely because it makes his comments more inflammatory.
The comments were about "digging up dirt". Sleazy as that is, it doesn't even require personal contact.
Even simply exposing that information is a threat, possibly causing a chilling effect - which is exactly what this Uber exec wants.
>disturbed individuals [...] looking for a target
What??? Where did you get here from "digging up dirt". (For one, you don't need dirt to post someone's name on /b/ or whatever you have in mind.) The level of hyperbole on this submission is awful and pains me to read.
Vague talk of investigating 'your families' comes off more as an attempt to intimidate; arguably the vagueness is intended to provoke anxiety and worry to a greater degree than a specific allegation (as above) that could be refuted or debunked.
"No, no, we won't look ONLY into your children, we'll ALSO look into your spouses, siblings, and parents."
The primary reporter that Uber was talking about at that dinner is Sarah Lacey at PandoDaily. Sarah has been very critical of Uber in the past. She also has two very young children and has written a lot about what it's like to start a company and pitch investors while being pregnant and/or having young kids at home.
The obvious implication is that they were going after her kids.
Here's her response, in PandoDaily: http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa...
> The obvious implication is that they were going after her kids.
Obvious implication? I think it's more of a convenient assumption you're making to suit your own personal grudge against Uber.
The comments he made were clearly idiotic, but your eagerness to interpret them in the most extreme and sensational way possible is no better.
What's really cute is that even Uber doesn't even deny that this happened. No, that's all on you, dear HN commenter.
This whole story feels like they took a frustrated guy venting at dinner and making it into a conspiracy.
Meanwhile, Sarah Lacey comments publicly and insultingly on people's political positions, emotions, and dating life.
What the man said was very stupid. But it feels a lot like, "She wants to attack our sex lives, politics, and call us terrible people? We should dig in to what she's done."
That's still unacceptable, but seems like blowing off steam and being frustrated at someone who makes money off of being mean and generating outrage.
Again, the behavior is totally unacceptable. But making this out to be a conspiracy rather than a frustrated executive ranting at someone who is known to be rude and very personal about the rudeness and who gets paid on pageviews and outrage is a little much.
powerful and wealthy people NEED to be scrutinized. when we do, we often discover that they are sociopathic scum like several of the executives at Uber have turned out to be.
Reporters and journalists can and do scrutinize people. However, what has become of journalism is that for sites like Pando Daily/Tech Crunch/? etc. they are gossip magazines about Silicon Valley business people and software developers. Not only are they talking about the companies, they are talking about the personal lives of the people that make up the companies.
Given the work/life balance of most startups and successful companies, it is tough to judge the differentiation between a tech company's executives. There are reasonable legal precedents being set for common tort law with celebrities, however when do the executives of a company become a 'Public Figure' and lose their right to privacy? Why is it okay to follow someone and publish everything they say and do?
The same thing, of course, can be said for journalists. The lines are being blurred all around.
Is that really your position? Or do you want somebody in the room to be a responsible grownup?
(Of course, preferably both sides would be grownups, but one side crawling into the gutter does not excuse the other side for also doing so.)
Journalists are not special beings, but it is typically presumed that they report in good faith, and without ulterior motives. I know that isn't always true, but it's true often enough that I think the burden of proof would be on the people being investigated to prove that the journalist's intent was malicious.
"Look into your personal lives, your families" somehow magically became:
> threatening to reveal details of the location of their children
There's clearly a great deal of stupidity on both sides here.
Also, if you don't interpret "families" as including children, what do you interpret it as? Her parents? Does that make it better?
Play fair. Don't be a Prolog interpreter.
It avoids the "think of the children" reaction, so yes.
Again, read Sarah Lacey's rebuttal piece in PandoDaily. Her first thought after hearing about the threats (by phone) is for the safety of her kids, who are not with her at that moment.
Don't misunderstand me here--I just think there are two sides to this story, and both sides are assholes.
1) How does someone being annoyed by a story make the reporter unreliable?
2) Why would they be in full damage control mode over the earlier articles or this one if they weren't true?
2) The thing about bad PR is that it doesn't have to be true. Regardless, I'm not even talking about the basic facts reported by Buzzfeed. I'm talking about Sarah's interpretation of them as a threat against her children, which is unwarranted by the original report and likely her own sensationalism.
2. Again, we have no reason to think this isn't true - they're in damage control mode trying to say it wasn't serious but nobody is claiming that it wasn't a real quote. Much as you seem to be personally invested in attacking her credibility, it's simply not possible to seriously claim that "My family and my children" (her words) is a particularly unreasonable interpretation of a threat to investigate “your personal lives, your families” (his words). Even assuming the most likely interpretation that the threat was to expose something about an adult (past legal mishaps, an affair, etc.) some of the most significant damage from those attacks would be suffered by children who don't really understand why their parents are being targeted.
Seems to me very clear that one's quite a bit deeper in the wrong than the other, "doing their business".
(also, I disagree with the term "sensationalizing" when the facts of what actually happened are in fact already "sensational" enough to stand for themselves. Stating that you're worried about your children when someone calls to investigate and dig dirt on "your personal lives, your families" isn't really adding any extra "sensation" to what is already out on the table, it merely informs me that she has children to worry about)
If she wasn't kowtowing to Kalanick's PR team, she was remiss and doubtlessly only hunting for page views. Definitely had it coming--turnabout is fair play.
But this type of stuff has happened to Uber enough times that they've developed quite a shady reputation. Uber has lost the benefit of the doubt in many people's eyes because at the very best, they hire shady people to do shady things for them. At the worst, they're stalking private citizens and intimidating them to keep quiet.
While confrontational by nature, I do not see any of the parts displaying stupidity, but perhaps yourself. Please try to live up to your chosen handle for this exchange.
OTOH, it could also be (certainly if it was serious and possibly if it was just venting) a sign of something bad. Sarah Lacey's criticism was that Uber have an "asshole culture." This does not exactly disprove her statement.
I'm not touchy. I think a lot of "PC outrage" (including possibly hers, I haven't really dug) is the nasty "fun to be outraged" variety. This has a terrible effect, turning corporate (also police and every type of official) vernacular into an unnatural lifeless sludge. I'm usually on the other side of these kinds of debates. But, there is such a thing as misogyny, asshole culture and such. They exist, and this might be a sign of it here.
Uber are an extremely aggressive company. They need that aggression to do the job they're trying to do which brings them into conflict all the time. Aggressiveness can spread. Uber is now a big company. They have many people's livelihoods, safety & privacy in their hands. There's a standard they need to meet. If a senior exec talks like this to reporters off the record, it may be the kind of talk that happens a lot.
It is a little disturbing, even as just talk.
Yes! Extremely unprofessional and completely unacceptable regardless of whatever it is she did to "deserve" it.
By the way, is there a link to this article she wrote that is allegedly so over the line?
Of course you would have to completely ignore the constant pattern of scummy behavior from Uber that is perfectly consistent with this particular incident.
b) The page view journalism model rewards writers for being inflammatory and exaggerating. This means you really need to keep a close eye on writers for disinformation because when something spreads, it happens really fast, within hours. Rather than lengthy investigative pieces, the model is basically a fire hose of shit and watching which chunk sticks and goes viral. This also means writers tend to produce volumes of articles attacking the same or similar individuals and organizations. Some of the ludicrous stories I've seen recently track back to writers with minimal to no credentials and a long stream of irrelevant "stories." One piece of shit stuck and it blows up. What these guys are doing is more closely analogous to trolling and hate speech than informed research.
I'm not the kind of person who imagines the world is constantly devolving towards a lower state. I think the negatives from the current nature of "journalism" are outweighed by the positives we have gained from the same communications & publishing trends.
The best thing you can do as an individual is to not read stories from these sorts of groups. The headlines are misleading, the stories are often irrelevant and misinformed. Stick to places that publish accurate titles and require writers with some sort of credentials.
Just look at this discussion
The "blowing off steam" theory doesn't strike me as plausible. If it had happened at his local alley while talking with his bowling team, sure, maybe. But the CEO and and SVP of a $16 bn company don't sit down with a bunch of journalists by accident. Either the guy was intending to intimidate journalists (and Lacy in specific) or he is so dangerously clueless that a) he should not be a senior executive of anything bigger than a lemonade stand, and b) it would be hard to explain how he made it this far.
A journalist friend said that powerful people threatening journalists is routine, and that this sort of thing has a chilling effect on coverage. When smart people "accidentally" do something very self-serving, a reasonable working hypothesis is that they actually knew what they were doing.
Several relevant scenes from The Big Lebowski come to mind ... :)
(it'd make me seriously reconsider my choice of bowling-buddies, though :) )
People are correct to freak out when someone targets another person by digging into their private lives, the problem is a lot of tech journalists have gotten away with this, especially when the founders or entrepreneurs in question have been libertarians or right-wingers.
A frustrated guy venting at a business dinner, attended by an influential crowd, specifically addressing a person they just hired that could (and probably would) make this "conspiracy" happen for real if he made the call.
See, personally, I think even in a perfectly informal off-the-record setting, what he suggested was simply wrong and should be called on it. Whether you're frustrated or not. Unless it was extremely clear from the context it was just a joking "haha we should .." with no intent to follow through, then, maybe then it becomes acceptable to say these sorts of things in an informal off-the-record setting, assuming you're sufficiently acquainted with the current company that you know they won't be put off by such a tasteless remark.
What he called for was a personal attack on someone's personal life. With a straight face, to his hired media mouthpiece. It's IMO not very different (though obviously less illegal) from telling your hired muscle "we should teach that person a lesson, beat them up a little", with no intent to follow through, obviously. The window to make that last bit over-abundantly clear evaporates within a minute or so. And even then, in what sort of company does he think it's okay to even begin to vent about that sort of thing, even without intent to follow through? Surely a lot more private than some fancy I-thought-it-was-off-the-record dinner.
Obviously his own moral compass didn't prevent him from saying these things, in the first place. That's exactly why he should be called on "venting" such ideas. Even when he honestly had no intent to follow through, he's a powerful man, speaking directly to someone whose task it would be to make this happen, someone might take it seriously and warm to the idea that such behaviour could be acceptable.
There was no mention of revealing the location of children.
There was no mention of "rifling" through the location metadata of another female journalist.
There was no "implication" about leaking customer data.
As far as I can tell, the article amounts to almost exactly what's in the headline: dirt digging.
If you want to criticize Uber, it's certainly possible to do it without exaggerating or making stuff up, otherwise you risk making legitimate critics look like sensational buffoons.
"In fact, the general manager of Uber NYC accessed the profile of a BuzzFeed News reporter, Johana Bhuiyan, to make points in the course of a discussion of Uber policies. At no point in the email exchanges did she give him permission to do so."
Or does "rifling" mean something else to you?
I guess it's talking about the travel logs from 2 paragraphs above?
But at the same time, the point isn't that "the Uber GM found some hideously private information about the journalist," the point is that regardless of what their "information policy" is, the GM could access the account of the journalist, and was apparently comfortable doing so based on his own discretion and sense of propriety rather than explicit permission. If his sense of propriety was fine, and the information was innocuous, then that particular event wasn't a big deal. But it kind of makes lie of the idea that another high-level individual at Uber who may have, shall we say, different ideas about propiety could not abuse the information that Uber is entrusted with.
To access detailed customer information required getting a one-time-use key, which is generated from a request that references other documentation (bug reports, customer support requests, etc) as well as a justification.
This key would only work against a single customer, and expires after some time.
The requests themselves are regularly audited internally to prevent abuse.
This is the level of internal privacy guarantees a company like Uber needs. No employee should have unmonitored, carte blanche access to customer data.
The fact that the CEO can access data at whim should be very troubling. That means they don't have even the most basic infosec guidelines in place.
All of those things are in his statements. He doesn't have to spell it out for you to know what he means.
There was no need. It's kind of like when someone says "we know where you live", "watch your back", etc -- the implication is clear.
Pando also shares a common investor with Lyft, so there's that...
Personal flame wars on the net are one thing, but involving your company in that shit? The minute you take money and hire other people it's not your personal sandbox. This 4chan crap should at best come with a huge "my opinions are my own" disclaimer and should never involve your company.
I've desperately avoided commenting on anything related to his because I've known Travis for about a decade, but... you are sadly mistaken. Uber has a downright toxic culture. Sarah might have gone a little far here and there, but it is not because Travis is capitalistic, but because he's turned into some kind of megalomaniac nearly unrecognizable from the person I knew a decade ago.
I recently saw a lovely email sent by Travis for an offsite reminding everyone that they were not allowed to fuck their subordinates and he, by extension, was not allowed to fuck anyone. That isn't just toxic to women. That is downright scumbaggery.
That sounds like a reasonable reminder of the rules and protocols. Unless you are suggesting that the power differential can be overcome and managers should have sex with their subordinates.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of VC money does that to people. Looking forward to the documentary about Uber after its function is turned into a commodity.
What's wrong with that?
That sounds very speculative and about someone's state of mind. Could you give concrete examples of what you mean?
> These people are scum. Uber was a neat app, but I have PLENTY of alternatives these days.
You won't consider them only because alternatives exist? What are you trying to say there?
Like "That's it facebook, you have abused my privacy one too many times, I will disconnect for a whole week-end."
If I say: "I should dig up dirt on that person" - that's much more specific, but not always. It's harder to ignore and it's far more difficult to put a just-kidding spin on it.
If I say: "I should spend a million dollars and hire four researchers to dig up opposition research on this person to expose their private life" - that's pretty damn specific. You can't unsay that. There's no way to spin that that it doesn't sound like a threat, especially if it's known, or at least believed, that you have the resources and connections to pull that off.
Michael may be a guy who was just spouting off in frustration without thinking first, which is fine - it happens from time to time. But he's also in the top tier of a very valuable company and he's paid to pay attention and be on his toes.
And he wasn't.
He then tried to laugh it off by saying "he doesn't think that way". Well, it came from somewhere in his brain. There weren't any flying monkeys dropping notions from the sky; no random inspiron from a long-dead galaxy just collided with a neuron and LOL I SEZ STUPID STUFF.
He screwed up badly. He needs to be held to account for that and harshly, because that idea is out there now. It might not be acceptable now, but sooner or later, given enough repetition, it will become acceptable.
"He said that he thought Lacy should be held “personally responsible” for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted."
The top comment on this page talks about a "visceral" feeling, I had the same one. I had the same feeling I had when I heard things like Todd Akin (a politican in the US) talking about "legitimate rape." Do we really want people like this shaping our future?
Some of them even manage to do it without threatening reporters.
Anyway, watch this :-D
A concept so simple that is lost on so many.
Really? Then why is it so notable that the person is a "female journalist"? Why are people deliberately distorting "journalists are dragging our private affairs out to use against us, we should do it to them" as "he's threatening to reveal the locations of people's children"?
>are not behaving to a standard that people would support.
Many people do support, that's precisely what I said. I am supporting them, lots of people are supporting them.
The simple idea of "journalists are dragging our private affairs out to use against us, we should do it to them" is where these people fell down. Sure, some people are distorting it and it could therefore give the appearance of being pc, but in reality this is a moral problem.
Had they (he) held themselves to a higher standard, behaving in a morally responsible way, none of these things would happen and indeed they could be a leader in more ways than they originally intended to be (transportation).
HN posters are not a random sample.
Going by those assumptions, rule out the general public, and while I still don't have a random sample, I have something. Pretty much the only thing around without actually polling. And that only thing concludes the opposite of "lots of people are supporting them." But whatever, that's all smoke.
ps, agree with scarmig's point -- he's not "blaming the victim" but it does feel like shifting the blame, which minimizes what these crimes mean.
The culture of bending anything to suit the agenda / narrative where one's feelings are prioritized over reality.
So sure, it's possible that he'd also talk about destroying a male journalist for the same thing. Heck, it's possible that he has the bodies of a dozen journalists, all male, buried in his back yard. But given that this was already about sexism and misogyny, given Uber's notoriously douchebro culture, and given that prominent women on the Internet are regularly attacked in ways that men aren't, interpreting this as a continuing pattern of misogynistic behavior seems reasonable.
That doesn't make his response or anything about it gendered. It doesn't matter who slanders, it's frustrating when it happens, and joking about digging up dirt to do the exact same thing back to a journalist so they know what it feels like is tantamount to wishing an abusive person would some day get to know what being on the receiving end of that feels like.
Also, you should really check your sources about harassment on the internet. Prominent men are harassed more often and more violently than prominent women. It's a recently constructed myth that's been hyped up by the media over the past few months that the internet is an especially hostile place for women.
Uber did some sexist stuff. A woman called them out for it. A man got upset and talked about a detailed revenge fantasy against her. He did not name any other journalists, even though plenty of people have been critical of Uber. Gender is part of this story.
I'm not saying that this guy is or is not a sexist or a misogynist, and I'm not saying that Uber does or does not have a culture that contributes to sexist or misogynist behavior. I wasn't present. I don't know enough to determine "true" here. Probably nobody does. Probably nobody ever will.
I am saying that is reasonable to suspect that gender plays a role here. Which is why I said "interpreting this as a continuing pattern of misogynistic behavior seems reasonable," and not whatever you think I said. We live in a world with a history millennia long of systemic sexism and endemic misogyny, a history we haven't entirely emerged from yet. People who see this incident as part of that history are not insane. They are reasonable.
I'm not saying that's the only reasonable interpretation. I'm saying reasonable people can differ on things like this, and you frothing at me won't change that.
What you imply has troublesome connotations, which you seem unwilling to honestly address, so you just insult me instead.
I'm not backtracking at all. I said that gender was clearly in play, and that it seemed reasonable to see his behaviors as misogynistic given the context. I stand by those statements.
That's the third time you've insulted me and you're saying you didn't insult me? It's reasonable to see your behavior as trolling. Learn to discuss things like an adult instead of making personal attacks and maybe I'll take your ideas seriously. As it stands, you're only discrediting yourself.
By the way, judging from my comment score at least four other people inferred the same thing from your comment that I did. That's a large enough number that maybe you're the one who didn't explain yourself clearly. Think about that before making any more comments about my reading comprehension.
You are failing to comprehend the exact words I wrote in a way that I am having a hard time seeing as other than willful. Because of that, I'm taking you as a person with an axe to grind, not someone who's serious. So if you would like to be taken seriously...
And given that you leapt in to accuse me of being part of HUAC, calling me a troll is a little rich. Regardless, gender issues in tech are an interest of mine going back 20 years, so no, I am not trolling. But by all means keep up with the drama.
> By the way, judging from my comment score at least four other people inferred the same thing
Yes, that is the only possible interpretation of an upvote on Hacker News. Oh no! You have showed me! Chastened, I retreat from the field.
Speaking of failing to comprehend the exact words someone wrote. If you want to be taken seriously you should extend the same courtesy to others, even those who disagree with you, full stop. I was disagreeing with you in good faith because I was troubled by the implications of what I thought you were saying, and instead of providing any kind of helpful clarifications you provided personal attacks. Which one of us has the axe to grind?
I'm sorry if I misunderstood. You drew an analogy to Arthur Miller and communism. I presume the reference was to Miller's famous troubles with HUAC. Not seeing anybody else nearby, I assumed was the witch-hunter in this analogy. I also assumed that you were equating anti-sexist efforts with anti-Communist hysteria, which I think is a) wrong, and b) insulting to the last 150 years of people doing anti-sexist work. But since you insist it was all in good faith, I'll assume that you meant something else entirely.
If in the future you would like people to gently provide helpful clarifications, you could perhaps start by asking reasonably neutral questions. Instead of, say, leaping into contentious threads with conclusions about what people meant and drawing dramatic analogies to the famously wronged. However good your personal intentions were, there are a host of people, especially here on Hacker News, that are less committed to good-faith discussion and are are reflexively opposed to anything that might suggest that there are gender issues in tech.
Specifically, I think it's reasonable for Uber executives to take exception to their company being characterized as misogynistic. I don't think taking exception, even strong exception, to these accusations is a misogynistic act in itself.
Do I believe that one can in good faith believe that current concerns about sexism are a witch hunt? (Note that "hysteria" is an unfortunate word choice here in that it was an imaginary disease used to smear women for centuries, and the name itself is rooted in the notion that having lady parts makes you crazy.) Sure, I guess. In the same sense that I think one can have a good-faith belief that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. In both cases I think some are consciously acting in bad faith. But I think the bulk just don't know enough about the topic to have a valid opinion, so they run with the one that's politically and/or personally convenient for them to have.
As a guy, I get it: the shift from thousands of years of male domination to something more equitable feels like a loss. We quite literally didn't have to think about how women would take things. Now suddenly our speech and actions are having consequences they didn't used to have. It's easy to feel that we get in trouble for saying "normal" things. But it didn't work the other way: women always had to be conscious of how men would take what they said.
The system of beliefs and behaviors that punished women for speaking up and speaking out is on the wane, but as we see with Kathy Sierra, it's still powerful. Until it's destroyed, I think everybody has an obligation to help end it, or at least stay out of the way. And when people do things that look a lot like supporting and continuing that system (as Michael did here) they should not be surprised when people do not look charitably upon that.
While I hardly want to be in a camp that defends him in any way, he was specifically addressed her claims. How is it misogynist for him to argue that the risk of sexual assault are lower in an Uber vehicle, or vice versa?
Yeah. When a prominent dude is so upset by a woman accusing his company of sexism and misogyny that he publicly talks about spending a million dollars to destroy her life, it's hard not to see this as systemic misogyny in action.
Especially telling to me is that his CEO was there at the dinner. If one of my employees was talking like this in public, let alone to other journalists, his goose would be cooked. "I'm sorry, Mr. Michael has clearly had a little too much to drink. The press has an important role to play in our society, and Uber would never do anything like this." Then, the next morning Michael would announce that he was leaving to spend more time with his family.
But instead we get some mealy-mouthed damage-control PR.
It's very dangerous when people in power cannot maturely handle conflict and disagreement.
Also - I'm not one to usually browse Buzzfeed, but this was their story to break, so props to them for getting it out there.
I fully expect Sidecar to just give up in Chicago any day now.
I think Yglesias has the right take — the very qualities necessary to make an legally-grey service successful are going to become antithetical to them succeeding as a normal, law-abiding, “legally white” service. http://www.vox.com/2014/11/18/7240295/uber-privacy
But they've raised money at a $17 billion+ valuation, from people who invested on the theory that they at least have a shot at a x5 profit -- so they need to target a valuation of $100 billion or so.
Which means that "make a popular service that people use and which has value and that is capable of turning a sustained profit" is now abject failure for them.
Success for Uber looks like "become part of the fundamental infrastructure of large parts of the world." It is NOT clear that they are on track to do that, and failure to do that is a real possibility, in a way that "failure to have a popular service that can make money" is not really a possibility.
So maybe we just have to accept that this is the new normal and we should all focus on how we can play dirty tricks on our competitors, how we can intimidate the journalists who have written bad stories on us or haven't covered us. Where does the strategy to use intimation via oppo-research stop? Can we apply this to any dealings with politicians, angles, VC, policy makers? I bet it can be effective in these areas as well. Maybe a company's strategy to "force outcomes" should be a required slide in all pitch decks now?
I wonder if Uber stops at just using intimidation in less developed countries where things are rougher and governments are more pliable than in the US and Canada? If there are few limits to Uber aggressiveness and they have money, you can easily pay people in a lot of developing nations to improve outcomes in a large variety of "creative ways", and you can easily distance yourself from how those outcomes are achieved.
It does seem that Uber teaches us that this is the new normal and if we are not doing this, we are not maximizing shareholder value.
No we do not; this is the time to push back on it. Otherwise, as you say, you end up making the country more lawless and less developed by sending the thugs round to "achieve outcomes".
Uber (for me, so far) has been far superior than local taxis, and it's all low hanging fruit: credit card billing, email receipts, comfortable cars, GPS tracking & ETA, friendly drivers who don't harass you, tips included in price, global business accounts, discounts & perks. Local taxis don't offer any of that, they're not even trying. Maybe Lyft & Sidecar offer that, but they're not in any of the cities I travel to globally. The world is not just San Francisco.
Make a damn good service first. I can't switch to your service if you won't even offer it to me.
I'm only glad that he really looks like the asshole he is (and so does weev btw.). At least you can still trust your gut instincts.
I could see that happening on a consumer level as well, all you need is that data and a smartphone.
However what I do wonder is how actually effective something so ambiguous is? and how much it would be gamed? This is after 2007-2008 when we find out that financial institutions were able to game the risk classification of investment vehicles despite being wrapped in supposedly ambiguity-busting red-tape.
If theres something shady happening, it is often not hard to find - there are lots of environmentalists and NGOs that regularly dig up dirt. Also, a company can't just fake a reputation.
Not saying that nothing can be hidden, but its not just bits and bytes and paperwork that can be faked, its the real world.
Still, there must be ways to protect such information as freedom of speech?
We have many of them, and we used to have more: journalists and news organizations. The press is supposed to serve as a very wide barrier against gross abuses.
But of course, we - not just politicians, but all of us - have spent the last few decades throwing our wallets at the least journalistic news outlets and away from the ones conducting actual investigation and reporting.
We very much made the bed we are sleeping in right now.
We have them (or have had them -- they are hard to keep together because interest doesn't remain intense) -- formed of the people opposed to the laws.
We also have organizations -- much better-funded, and that stay together better, because the interest is more concentrated and wealthy -- that go after the careers of politicians that refuse to pass those kinds of laws.
There is very little lockin with Uber at the consumer level, so goodwill is incredibly important for the company. At some point if they keep this shit up they are going to come up snake eyes and something will go viral.
Beyond that they are more or less loading the gun for anyone who wants to make the argument that the industry needs regulation.
If I was an investor I'd want heads rolling.
However, it may be worth mentioning that none of what you describe is really a 'new normal,' except perhaps in application. It only seems that way because we've had decades of regulation against various underhanded practices which used to be standard operating procedure. 'Intimidating the press' used to mean simply buying all the newspapers, firing everyone and having company men print whatever you wanted. Or getting some Pinkertons to beat someone half to death.
Original call for speakers: "For the 2015 edition, we are looking for speakers and panelists. A touchy topic we’d like to address is "ethics in Silicon Valley – startups playing dirty can't be the new normal". If you are qualified and willing to discuss this topic on stage, get in touch"
So far, no takers...
The optimal position (with no dirty tricks) is unstable. We stay there by punishing those who deviate. This is why the pitchforks come out in cases like this.
They "don't reflect his or the company's views?" How can they not be 100% reflective of his views? And how can we possibly take anything said by anyone at the executive level at Uber seriously at this point?
Unfortunately I don't think this Uber story will be different. Most people don't take a stand on anything (unless it involves consuming even more fast food, like a Chick-fil-a "reverse boycott").
It hurt them enough to reverse their stance on SOPA in mere hours. Have you been to godaddy.com lately? "Internet freedom!" is actually one of the things they advertise on their page.
Now, I too was hoping in those days that the company would just die... and that's unlikely to happen to Uber as well, considering that dollar is kind and a lot has been given to Uber by so many investors. The best you can hope for is a massive firing of executives at the top, since that's where a lot of toxicity seems to be coming from.
Uber just came to Raleigh, NC where I live, and I was pretty stoked to try them out. Not gonna happen now - I'll stick with Taxi Taxi.[1]
Well, it seems we have come full circle. Who's the asshole now?
It's quite possible that Uber will create the market by and then be eclipsed by other players who are less unethical.
Cross-referencing with geo-data, time, and weekly occurences, I am pretty sure Uber could infer who's in my social circle, and under which category (coworker, wife, arm-candy...)
The day Uber links its userbase with Facebook we are doomed.
Imagine Larry Page saying: We'll sift through whatever data we've got on you and see what dirt we can find.
No need to imagine the threats against family. No need for any of the more nasty details. Just the basic premise, but in the setting of an established Silicon Valley company.
Done yet? No. Because you couldn't. Because any serious CEO worth their salt simply wouldn't.
And all those of you whose natural reponse is to defend these people, please imagine yourself doing it for Page as well. Would you, really?
Did I miss something, because I'm pretty sure this story is the latter scenario.
They're both bad actions, but only one is an abuse of trust and/or resources.
Not only is it not nice, it shouldn't even have been possible without logging this against a ticket number at the very least.
We should all cut the crap, there is nothing to be surprised by here.
If you don't think they're disruptive, I'm not sure how you define disruptive.
Taxi monopolies easily grow into a problem. They overprice the rides and stifle the market. But this can usually be sorted out through political action, through opening competition, all without automatically destroying all semblance of security for the workers.
All rides free New Years Eve and Halloween. No ride will ever cost more than $X (should not be hard to figure out - with an * too) To show good faith, ride once, the next is on us (for x weekend). Publicly terminate knuckelheads ("Jimmy the Greek") [1] Establish & Invite consumer, safety and the driver community to form an oversight group to ensure Uber holds itself to community standards.
My Luddite world has no idea what a Uber is, but they sure know how to ask and find out. New things to my Luds come from hearing human voices - asking neighbors/friends is still #1. Nothing out there now says "Uber has cleaned up its act" First impressions have to be disproven and last the longest.
If you check the EMVco specs (they're a doozy! http://www.emvco.com/specifications.aspx?id=21), merchants still receive your name.
The only thing that tokenization provides is a proxy card number.
> Also, Apple is not involved in the transaction beyond selling you the hardware which hosts the secure element.
That's not actually true; if you read the fine print (or the emvco specs), you'll note that they can track a lot more than they might claim to.
https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iOS_Security_Guide_Oct_20...
They disclose up-front: "Apple may receive anonymous transaction information such as the approximate time and location of the transaction, which helps improve Apple Pay and other Apple products and services."
All this overreacting and exaggeration is getting to me. Such terrible writing and she really is going overboard with all this.
Being agnostic on the Uber CEO's character (don't know him) I'd caution him to stop giving material to a nascent angry mob and those stoking it.
Or spend $0 and actually improve things in the company so they don't need PR to tell people they're not horrible.
Trust me, people will continue to use it as long as there is a value add - cheaper, better etc. In general, nobody cares about what happens behind the scenes.
No, really. He did. "Hey Sarah, I realise there's this massive story blowing where I threatened to wage war on you and your family and I know you're a high profile journalist in this area but can we just have a quick friendly chat off the record?"
Scroll to the bottom of her article: http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa...
Is it at all relevant that the journalist is female?
It allows them to take something non-gendered and create an absolute shitstorm from it.
You mean like the media does with every public figure, ever? Like the media is doing with this exact story right now?
And now we have the case where a company that has successfully navigated the hardest part of the cycle (becoming a big enough snowball to be self-sustaining) that they can turn around and challenge the journalists.
It's like a child who has grown up and now comes back to challenge the parent. Fascinating in an abstract general way.
And the big deal is that is very much on the public interest to not see the days of the pinkertons come back again, so the bears have to be trained and get used to being poked at.
That said, I do agree that painting this as a "media controversy" is grossly off the mark. This isn't your usual (somewhat entertaining) mud slinging between trashy bloggers, this addresses real misbehavior by a real tech company.
Imagine if Glenn Greewald and Snowden were treated as merely "media controversies".
The Asshole Problem(tm) is becoming a huge, gigantic, glaring issue that will only get bigger. The deafening silence from our industry whenever deplorable behavior like this surfaces is itself worth addressing. This especially includes the usual deafening silence from investors (including YC) whenever their companies are caught doing something overtly evil.
Instead we get a heavyhanded version that allows a few to destroy possible reasoned discussion by squelching it as a side-effect of this rationale, and instead we get lots of topics that don't really foster discussion, are often not interesting or important (even to those intellectually minded) - there are plenty of banal articles on startups that get upvoted and end up on the front page, but no similar policy gets instituted simply because they are "not controversial", and yet they take up the same space, and certainly are less fulfilling. The process is opaque, and I know I'm not the only one here who has questioned this.
There are sometimes situations where flags are deemed inappropriate, and yet the effects don't get raised when moderators even acknowledge when the flags were incorrect.
It does look a little rank when there's been heaps of "rah-rah Uber, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt" type articles in the past to have negative ones pruned.
If you're interpreting mods' behavior in maintaining this site as paternalism and think a set of randos voting on articles that attract their attention is an entity to which the verb "trusted" could even be applied, you are completely out of touch with reality.
The posts were obvious duplicates, so we did the routine thing and demoted all but one of them. It's true that we didn't merge the threads (which we've recently begun doing in many such cases), but IIRC that's because most of the discussion in the other threads at that point was about why they weren't the Buzzfeed story. Did I get that wrong? If so, it was for the mundane reason that at 1 A.M. I was tired and less meticulous than I try to be.
By "seems destined, etc." I meant that many people here obviously cared about the story. "Media controversy" doesn't strike me as absurd at all, but let's not quarrel over wording; let's seek each other's meaning instead.
FWIW, my personal opinion is that, assuming the story is accurately reported, it's outrageous. But it's our duty to try to factor personal opinions out of moderation decisions.
You seem to be complaining that HN's front page isn't decided by votes alone. It never has been; it has always been a blend of voting and curation. Voting alone would cause HN to be dominated by outrage, gossip, fashion and promotion. That would kill the site. [1]
I dislike that fact as much as any HN user, and probably have more reason to dislike it. But there's no question that it's true. It's so true that it's an interesting question why it's true, given that this is a community of smart people, and I even have a whole theory about it... but I'll spare you.
1. I'm just echoing what tptacek already said in this thread, as well as regurgitating what I've posted dozens of times, but it does seem necessary to regurgitate.
Let's make HN about sensationalist articles about shirts and off-hand jokes at private dinners.
Why not just unmod all of the websites that do this routinely. This is hardly as big as half of their "stories", and then let the front page be covered with stories that sit there for 2 days because they have 3000+ upvotes?
This place has become a more toxic version of Reddit. Oddly, this story isn't on the front page there, or even on the front of /r/programming. Or even in the first 4 pages. I guess they're doing something better.
How about we take it a step further and ban positive mention of Uber, since it seems the majority here hates Uber for one reason or another, even if they're mostly uninformed (and yes, quoting BuzzFeed or PandoDaily as fact makes one uninformed) or do so because someone poked their feelings. Maybe next we can ban gendered pronouns and require people disclose their full names, place of employment, and home address, because anonymity is the cause of online toxicity. We definitely need to lower the downvote bar to 0 so that new people can immediately begin downvoting anyone they don't like or disagree with. Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Serious discussion about how to manage HN needs to begin with the insight that many people here disagree with one, and most are participating in as much good faith as oneself. If you don't take that in, you're not grappling with the real problem. (I don't mean you personally, of course, but all of us.) In that case it inevitably feels like there are obvious solutions which for dark reasons we're refusing to implement. In reality, it's just a lot harder than that. That's incredibly frustrating, but we can't get anywhere by ignoring it.
If there was a criminal suit filed along side the allegations made, perhaps you'd have a major story. This is just another in a long line of hit pieces that seem to have no basis in reality.
Let's get facts before we throw around slanderous accusations. Or even apply some basic reasoning.
This is just one more event in a long history of Uber being an extremely bad actor. They use dirty tactics to try to run their competitors out of business instead of competing on their merits, they treat their drivers and riders like shit, they gleefully flaunt their ability to track anyone, anywhere, any time and use it against them. Now they've gone on record (his emailed apology puts the entire affair on the record, no matter what he thought during the dinner in question) admitting that they are willing to harass, intimidate, and even threaten the lives of journalists and their families.
In short, this company is ran by a bunch of sociopaths who think they can do no wrong. It's going to bite them in the ass, and I hope sooner than later.
Really? Hmm...Ctrl+F "hypothetical" 0 of 0 results.
And here's a screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ifydpomabnm8ijb/bfss.png?dl=0
Troll harder.
Please don't bait other users, even when they seem to you to be trolling.
Freedom of the press cannot exist under capitalism, who controls the hiring and firing and owns the organization controls the information.
/devil's advocate.
If I'm a business owner that's being investigated by a journalist, I want to find out the who, what, where, when and why.
I am entitled to investigate the people who are investigating me.
journalism startups are businesses. they make money by investigating businesses like uber. Uber is entitled to investigate in return
If your goal is not to intimidate, what purpose does it serve and accomplish? Freedom of the press is important and is part of the Constitution. Journalists can investigate a business even if you think they shouldn't.
Looking into the financial ties of journalism is game. But the industry and business of journalism is not the same as someone's personal life, their sexual preferences, children, family, etc.
If your goal is not to intimidate, attack, or slander, what purpose does it serve and accomplish? Freedom of speech and self publication is important and is part of the Constitution. Entrepreneurs can investigate shady journalists who seem to have a bias and who are crossing ethical lines even if you think they shouldn't.
Looking into the financial ties of companies is game. But the industry and business is not the same as someone's personal life, their sexual preferences, children, family, etc.
You know I didn't advocate probing the personal lives of entrepreneurs, and if you honestly believe I did advocate that then the problem is you are reading something that I didn't say.
If anything, saying something like "investigating the personal lives of entrepreneurs building real value" sounds more like a sound bite a bad politician or PR rep would concoct to shield a business from public scrutiny. Instances of 'entrepreneurs building real value' is also something that is fair to cover by journalists.
Journalism is a constitutionally protected activity that is a cornerstone of democracy. Without an informed public, democracy cannot work. Attempting to subvert that by threatening journalists is flat out wrong.
If you are a business owner, sure, you can legally investigate journalists. But that is very different than threatening to leak material about them to influence press coverage.
Also, your "turnabout is fair play" logic is ridiculous. Greenwald got the secrets of the NSA, but that does not mean that the NSA is entitled to steal Greenwald's secrets.
I'm sure the NSA disagrees!
Isn't the underlying theme behind the secrets that Greenwald got that the NSA feels that it is entitled steal everyone's secrets, whether or not the targets have first gotten the NSA's secrets, because NSA?
I'm sure there are sleazy execs at Uber, but if the media pointed its glare at any other similar-sized company, I'm sure it would find them there, too. Uber may have more because it has grown so fast. It would behoove of them to start cleaning house so that this type of story doesn't kill the golden goose.
Were was this criticism when some guy's personal phone calls were broadcasted and dissected? When Gawker was buying people's sex tapes? And not months ago, although then too, last week[1].
This is the world you created. Enjoy.
EDIT: And if you're downvoting, I'd love to hear why.
[1] http://defamer.gawker.com/somebody-is-selling-an-usher-sex-t...
Edit FWIW, I personally do not and refuse to use Uber. I think that they are vile. But...
I find that too many journalist hide behind 'freedom of the press' when they are axe-grinding. A lot of online tech reporting that I encounter is knee-jerk reaction and factless click-bait. Personal blogs, where you'd expect to find this behaviour, in my experience tend to be far more credible...
What is happening is that, UBER is still going through its real challenge and hasn't established itself as a household name, like Microsoft, Apple, Google. Lot of people are still critical of its intent (including me perhaps), and its ultimate success, but these small startups that are piggybacking on its name are making matter's worse.
Most of these Uber for X startups, are not going to succeed, generally speaking, and when a start-up fails, brand value gets hit as people associate "failure" "didn't work" "not so good" with that name. Uber in that sense, is taking a hit on its brand name due to failure of other businesses (which I think is a bit unfair).
This is gossip about a man's frustrated rant at shitty media coverage. It's a non story and is totally off topic. If there was evidence he had hired people to dig up dirt with intent to blackmail, extort, or otherwise coerce people, we could be talking about criminal proceedings. But seeing as there's no mention of any criminal wrongdoing, this is complete and utter trash, and they know it. Another in a very long list of reasons never to read Buzzfeed.
I'm not here in a position in support of Uber because I literally have no idea what is and isn't fact. If every article negative of them is as misguided and useless as this one, I can't possibly hope to form a coherent and well informed opinion about a company. Definitely not based on clickbait headlines and opinion pieces without solid evidence of wrongdoing. You can hate Uber for all the valid reasons you can find, but getting angry at someone for expressing frustration is truly next level pathetic. This clickbait shit. What the fuck.
Some people are linking a Pando article, which says, as a direct quote:
> Earlier this evening, a bombshell story by Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith proves the reality is way worse than anyone on our team could have expected.
In reference to this article. You can see why this shit can't be taken seriously. Referring to garbage like this article as a "bombshell" or "proof" of activity is completely divorced from reality.
Threatening journalists who write negative articles is indefensible. It's a stupid thing to say, especially to a room full of journalists.
It's firmly on topic here because it speaks to ethics of company founders.
It's completely defensible. Would you rather people go to jail for painting hypotheticals of crimes? Perhaps we should send everyone who's ever written a violent novel to jail? Thoughtcrimes are real, now. People can never be frustrated.
Further, why does this article repeat over and over that this wasn't "off the record" going to every length to try to justify publishing it? If there was no confusion about it being "off the record", there's no need to mention any of it. And it still doesn't matter.
Feel free to say that in your boardroom.
But if you say it in front of journalists don't then be surprised if journalists then report it.
Of course they carefully report the off-the-record status of the meeting, otherwise (as has already happened) you get people saying "what about ethics?" Establishing the nature of the meeting in advance closes those threads quickly.
The gap between a funny hypothetical and a veiled threat is small, but it does exist. This, to me, comes over as a veiled threat. As such, it wouldn't completely surprise me if this would lead to a criminal prosecution and possibly to a small conviction in court. It certainly feels more real than the typical "I have a bomb" joke at an airport that gets people in trouble.
I haven't read anything suggesting that people should go to jail. I know I'm unlikely to use a taxi service that contemplates blackmailing or retaliating against me using private information if they decide that I'm too annoying, though, even if they decide not to do it. I'm kind of surprised other people feel differently, TBH.
> Further, why does this article repeat over and over that this wasn't "off the record" going to every length to try to justify publishing it?
So that the reporter's future sources will feel comfortable giving explicitly "off the record" information with the expectation that it will stay confidential. It has literally nothing to do with the accuracy of this story one way or the other.