HN is not just a tech news site, it's the Silicon Valley startup community's tech news site. There's a large selection effect at play.

The Ars Technica readership seem to loathe Uber.

To be fair, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Uber: they are cheaters with no ethics [1], the executives are blatantly misogynistic [2], they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers [3], and of course I could go on, but I'll leave it there.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re...

[2] http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delet...

[3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c...

> they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers[3]

I didn't follow that case closely, but according to that article that's a pretty gross mischaracterization of what happened, since the driver had "evaded Uber’s earlier security checks by providing a fake police reference letter."

You also imply a pretty explicit calculus ("well, some rapes will happen, but it's worth it") that I doubt occurred except in the sense that any taxi company would have to consider.

But maybe there's a better source?

edit: not to take away from your other points. I've had extremely mixed feelings about uber due to those incidents and others, balanced by how completely awful cab companies tend to be and uber's genuine good points.

Perhaps this one: http://time.com/3693737/uber-new-delhi-india-rape-case/

> The new screening process will include requiring address verification, a local criminal court search and a national criminal database search

makes it sound like their previous background check did not include, "has this driver been convicted of sexual assault before?" This particular driver had indeed been previously found guilty of sexual assault, and Uber hired him without caring about that.

Sounds like you've got some sort of agenda to push.

I've never had a job ask me if I've been convicted of sexual assault, and if anyone was going to be asked, you would think it would be someone with the last name Dildonics.

Does your job involve being alone with strangers in a situation where you control their environment? Cabs, car shares, etc. are a somewhat special situation as they routinely deal with people who aren't familiar with the area, operate at times without many witnesses around, and often get people who are at higher risk (drunk, sick, physically impaired, etc.), and they control the route, ability to leave the vehicle, etc.

It's not quite as bad as, say, child care but requiring stricter background checks really doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation.

Also, they keep your trip data forever with no way to opt out of data collection.

Actually, I was talking about Slashdot.

I'm not sure I would call Slashdot a tech news site anymore. They seem to loathe tech.