His comments here further that impression: he throws around jingoism in his awkward attempt to impress his companions ("every year is hard for Uber...") and is either uninformed or dishonest with regards to the driver's complaints.
The "footage of him with two women" could not be cut out because it is the entirety of this video. It's necessary both to prove the identity as well as adding context and body language.
The women aren't identifiable and him being out & about with two women could have been observed by anybody, and was probably observed by the people at whatever Super Bowl event he was visiting.
It's also hard to judge this without remembering that Uber employees had, for years, full access to any customer's ride data, and often used it for fun & stalking. They boasted about their ability to algorithmically tag "rides of glory", set out to punish a journalist by digging up private information about her, and collect data about user's positions not directly required for their actual service.
I fail to see how this is character assassination. It's a primary source – the video itself carries the meaning, and if that is damaging to his reputation, then the flaws are his and not something made up by any journalists. Likewise, I ain't reducing anyone's "bayesian priors" because the driver's credibility is completely irrelevant. He's not making any relevant statements of fact beyond those visible in the video.
And the first thing people do is debate the ethics of recording him.
Looking through his Wikipedia (ok, not a fantastic reference source ;) ) entry, there doesn't seem to be any mention of involvement (employment/directorships/etc) with financial institutions.
?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
Here's the info about their subprime lending:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11852940/uber-subprime-auto...
The problem is, I can't help but wonder if the current context for Uber, puts such emphasis on Kalanick's behavior, that even a normal night out with 2 women is judged negatively. I mean let's face it, he really didn't do anything wrong in the video. He flirted a bit, and tried to have a reasonable discussion with the driver.
When the conversation got out of hand, he left.
It's sad how often people with pitch forks look to even the most normal of behavior, to crucify someone.
Not really. Uber's actions are, certainly, but the opinions and actions of the CEO in his personal life are only of interest here because technology executives are the celebrities of Hacker News readers.
Well what do you know, at the time of writing this, it's the top comment!
> The fact that the footage of him with two women wasn't cut out is frankly disgusting and a total invasion of his privacy. He didn't do anything wrong except flirt a bit. How tawdry of Bloomberg to show that material.
It's relevant because he said things like this:
“That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”
at a time when we're supposed to be trusting that Kalanick is fixing his company's culture...
> the most blatant character assassination
Where was the character assassination? They just reported on what happened in the video. The video is relevant to the public interest. Do you have a right to not be filmed in an Uber... maybe? I don't know. It's not my car, and the driver could need the film for their own protection. I think I would be okay with being filmed as long as it wasn't secret.
Would you be OK with the video being published on a major news site?
"Character is what you do when you think nobody will find out."
Edit: Also, you probably are being filmed elsewhere in any major hotel (lobby, halls, etc). And I've seen plenty of that footage end up on TV.
edit: here's some precedent that may suggest you do have expectation of privacy as a passenger in someone else's car, though the scenario is different http://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
I think its unfair to say that simply by doing business with the general public, every CEO becomes a public figure.
That doesn't make it right. Clearly you would not be happy about it either.
I think the interesting part of this story is not Kalanick's character based on the video, but rather the business decisions Uber made and how that has impacted their drivers.
It appears Uber has benefited from people investing in fancy cars. If it was their business plan to mislead people into doing that and then force them to take Uber X rides, then that is wrong, though not illegal.
It's why we don't get to see Trump's or Congress' tax returns without some kind of court case.
If they're forced to do it by law, it will be forced upon you too, and boom, everyone knows all your financials.
We can decide what we want to add to our culture. Secret videos don't need to be part of it.
Imagine yourself as the driver. If the video had never been published, he would never have even gotten an apology from Kalanick. I sympathise with those who don't have the kind of power that the CEO of of Uber does. He is a serf in the hellish gig economy that Kalanick has made himself a billionaire many times over. This is the most meaningful political impact he will probably ever make in his life. Kalanick, meanwhile, will probably be okay, even if this leads to a chain of events where he is fired.
I want to choose a kind of culture where the working class are not so powerless against the rich. Just because one thinks it should be the law for the president to release their tax returns, doesn't mean that they think every single person should be subject to such an invasion of privacy for no reason.
There is no such thing as privacy when you get to be that big. And frankly, any leader competent enough to run a business that big should already know that.
Regarding Uber black, another HN user points out,
> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request. Yes drivers can reject Uber X request, but if you reject a certain amount of Uber rides, they kick you off their system. Probably why the driver is complaining about going bankrupt, you need a luxury car to drive Uber Black, but if you're stuck picking Uber X fares you'll lose money.
That seems like semantics to me. The pay was lowered.
> In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile or $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute.
Nip arguments in the bud, not at the leaf.
I like that attitude.
Bear in mind the start of this thread was discussing the driver being rude. You can call it "market forces" as much as you like, but if Uber is happy to sit back and let its drivers pay the price, its CEO can expect to be given a hell of a lot of abuse in return. And he'll deserve it. Don't expect to be treated well when you don't treat others well.
Uber isn't a charity. I don't condone Uber's culture or whatever the CEO may or may not have done to create such a workplace but you have to understand that Uber is a business, like any other, out to maximize profits. Everyone seeks to maximize profits, and if the market calls for changes, then you make those changes lest you give up market share to your competitors.
No, but it functions in a society, and shouldn't be under the mistaken belief that it is immune to societal change.
We can all agree that self-driving cars and automation in general are a positive technological development. But what if it results in mass unemployment? It's short sighted to say that Uber only has to seek to maximise profits - it also has an interest in there being a large customer base with money available to use their product. Presumably it would also prefer that those customers are not rioting and trashing vehicles in the street.
This is a mini version of that. Uber has screwed over this driver, and he is justifiably angry about it. "Well, we'd lose market share if we don't do it" is not a winning argument to anyone except other advantaged rich people.
This is hardly something that is for the common man, and has little to do with self-driving cars or automation.
WHAT?! How are the vehicles on this site even close to a limousine? http://uberestimate.com/what-is-uber-black/
Every corporation seeks to maximize profits. They may make investments, but every company expects a positive return on those investments in the long term.
I think we are responsible for our own actions. No one forced this driver to use Uber. Uber and Lyft always had very open relationship in the sense that drivers routinely double dipped in the pool without legal issues. There is absolutely no expectation that the terms under which the drivers are operating are set in stone and they aren't going to change in the future.
You have to look at things within the legal framework. $97k is a lot of money and people sue for much much less. That driver probably had no case at all.
By that token, their drivers aren't charity workers either. If we put aside the inter-personal aspect of the video (which is contentious to say the least) this, to me, espouses the fundamental flaw in Uber's approach to their business: they have no respect for their workforce.
Unless they can get their self-driving cars working in time (which is another contentious subject), I suspect their eventual failure if it comes will be due to how they treat their drivers. Personally, I use Lyft because (a) in SF Lyft and Uber availability is more or less fungible and (b) I got tired of Uber drivers giving me an earful on how badly Uber treats them. Lyft drivers, in my experience (which is anecodtal, but I take at least 5 Lyfts per week and often 10+) are reasonably happy about their work. After the recent news I went ahead and deleted my Uber account, but that was an easy decision to make since I never use them anyway.
Driver ads, however, display successful-looking models quoting some unrealistic (as frequently pointed out by quite a few news sources) dollar amounts, and let's face it, the clientele it's targeting is very removed from robotics/AI development, unlikely to have an economics degree (or speak fluent English, for that matter) or disposable income to trade up / trade down their vehicle of choice to reflect the strategy of the day.
Your argument can be rewritten to apply to Countrywide Mortgage and fake Viagra peddlers, does that make those businesses right?
If customers are voting with their wallets that they want more UberX and less Uber Black, then Uber Black drivers should be faced with a choice of chasing volume or margins, not forced to subsidize customers.
That is not how capitalism works. Uber drivers are responsible for both fixed and variable costs. The marginal revenue of a fare might be less than the marginal cost and the decision to accept a fare needs to be made by the driver. If Uber drivers do not have the ability to make revenue management decisions they cease to be contractors. Uber is misleading its drivers and the IRS by labeling its drivers as contractors and passing losses onto them.
Uber Black in Washington D.C. is basically exclusively run by private limo operators driving Escalades. Owners of recent model $70,000+ cars are not your typical Uber driver, and do have other sources of income.
Almost every Uber black driver I've taken has handed me their card and proceeded to upsell me on their services outside of Uber.
I don't have any personal experience driving, would be nice to have a clarification on that.
But if you expanded the list of duties to be sufficiently large and indefinite ("gardening and whatever else I need"), then a court might rule that you have created an employment relationship and are responsible for providing various other benefits.
So it would seem to favor the "employee" classification if Uber had a long history of "oh, and you also need to take these other requests ... oh, and support spotify integration now ... oh and you have to auto-accept requests before you're done with the current."
You are right that some drivers going bankrupt is how the market would correct, but forcing them to take uberx fares at below cost is a dreadful idea and definitely not free market economics. If anything, it's like a govt regulation that requires businesses to do some stuff below cost to still be in the game.
Uber works so that each seat (or pair, or row of seats) is operated by a single driver, mostly at their own personal risk – with the operator of the plane controlling a lot of the equation.
Normal airlines assume an aggregate risk of the entire demographic and seasonalities of air travel. If customers suddenly stop traveling business, the airline can do something about it (lower prices, improve service, better marketing, and so on). With the Uber model, there's not so much a single driver can do, but they carry a lot of the risk.
What happens when you look at it like this; A Uber driver must accept some % of request sent their way (any class), but if you want to be sent uber black request then you must have an appropriate car.
I feel like you are looking at it from a top down view, vs a bottom up view. I am not saying ether view is right or wrong. I just find it hard to follow the logic to how that makes them employees.
But I have struggled with the employee argument from the start, so I am a bit bias at this point.
A big part of why I think people feel the way you do is because the system is programmed, and automated. If i was a guy looking for contractors to do jobs for me naturally people who were more consistently available and that I have worked with in the past would get jobs before people who can only be available "whenever". The only difference is that was some sort of decision I made in my head vs a system who had thresholds programmed.
What I feel like uber has done is automated the process of hiring contractors for on the spot jobs. And somehow people don't like the automation of it, or the rules. I feel like the solution is simple. Don't drive for uber if you don't like the terms. Go get a taxi medallion if you want to make your own rules, or drive for one of the competitors.
The IRS has guidelines: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/appx_d_irs_ic_test.html
Arguments for drivers as employees:
Behavioral Control 1a (the relevant argument I am making), 1b (Black drivers have specific types of cars), 1f
Type of Relationship 11
> What I feel like uber has done is automated the process of hiring contractors for on the spot jobs.
That is not true because Uber dictates the pricing. In fact you as the passenger are not hiring the contractor. If you look at it from a per-ride-transaction perspective it is actually one more reason why Uber drivers are employees (Financial Control 7, Uber limits the extent to which a driver can realize a profit on an individual ride).
Looking at Uber drivers as being contracted by the passengers does not make sense.
I think 1a and 1f are the strongests points. I do feel 1b is a bit of a stretch. I don't think somebody becomes an employee because they require you to use a hammer and not a rock to push nails into wood when building a house. While that is not the best analogy I think you should be able to expect the contractor to show up to work with the right tools to do the job.
I would really like to see a system that was more like a real time Angie's list. In such when ride request came in drivers made bids, and requesters could pick from the bids. The bids might also have information about distance from pickup location (or expected pickup ETA, along with price). Maybe have a default setting to pick lowest bidder and shortest ETA. But other things like car styles or types could be part of the system too.
In any case thank you for your reply. You have given me some things to think about.
This is actually a relevant distinction for the building trades. A contractor will have their own nail gun with a brand-specific feeding system, or might even choose to use an impact driver in certain circumstances. When a construction firm requires all its subcontractors to have a particular model of nail gun that would be an argument for them being employees.
> I would really like to see a system that was more like a real time Angie's list. In such when ride request came in drivers made bids, and requesters could pick from the bids. The bids might also have information about distance from pickup location (or expected pickup ETA, along with price). Maybe have a default setting to pick lowest bidder and shortest ETA. But other things like car styles or types could be part of the system too.
This was how a lot of people expected Internet commerce to work in the early 1990s - the research term for it was agents/multi-agent systems. The passenger would have their agent put out a call for bids for a ride from one location to another. The driver's agents would reply with bids and the passenger agent would take the lowest one. The driver's agent would base the bid on some function that could take into account things like distance, predicted driving time based on current traffic conditions, predicted mileage cost based on MPG estimates based on data from the car's OBDII sensor data, etc.
That would be a market system. Uber and Lyft are a duopoly from the point of view of passengers and monopsonies from the point of view of drivers.
Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, you'll get a high CPM (like Uber Black). Sometimes you'll get a low CPM (compare this to Uber X). Regardless, you have to do X amount of business with them or else they drop you.
Sometimes this means taking higher quality traffic (thus potentially higher CPM), and funnelling it to a certain advertiser at a lower rate simply to maintain your impression level.
That doesn't make web site owners, employees of ad companies even if they're solely dependant on a single ad company for their livelihood.
> To bring supply back in line with demand, some drivers who used to drive Uber Black should either leave or downgrade
Sure, or some passengers who used to want a cheaper UberX but find it unavailable should either resort to alternative methods or upgrade to UberBlack - market equilibrium can be found in either direction.
Why? If I were a driver, you can be sure I would be filming everyone. Does that mean I would have no credibility?
Here in London I've assumed that cabs are always filming.
Considering that he did change the price from under the driver, and that is very likely what did indeed bankrupt the guy, I don't blame him from acting out in any way he can.
The fact that the CEO just screams out "BULLSHIT" when he points out the price decrease which affected him and that his only response just makes me lose respect for him completely.
Kamel: “We started with $20.”
Kalanick: “Bullshit.”
Kamel: “We started with $20. How much is the mile now, $2.75?”
Not sure referring to California laws follows here. It's for a different reason.
> The statute applies to "confidential communications" -- i.e., conversations in which one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation. See Flanagan v. Flanagan, 41 P.3d 575, 576-77, 578-82 (Cal. 2002). A California appellate court has ruled that this statute applies to the use of hidden video cameras to record conversations as well. See California v. Gibbons, 215 Cal. App. 3d 1204 (Cal Ct. App. 1989).
If there's a reasonable expectation of privacy, all parties must consent to the recording.
To me this is a very classist oppinion. Normal people are filmed as they take the bus, ride the subway, go on the elevator, walk through the graveyard (seriously), go shopping, so why should a rich person who can afford a cab be granted an exclusive right to privacy which the rest of us don't have? If we promote this case due to the expectation of privacy that only serves to create this devide between rich and poor in which only the rich can afford privacy rather than a precident in which everyone deserves it.
What are you talking about? Normal, non-rich people totally have the same expectation of privacy when they take a cab. Would YOU be ok if your cab driver films you without any knowledge? A taxi/uber/lyft is a rented private car, it is not the same as public transportation.
Most taxis I've been in the past, oh, let's say 15 years, have had interior/passenger cams.
Edit: This seems to back up my understanding that most states are 1-party consent. http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-co...
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
This isn't true, and even if it were---cabs are private spaces; that's what you're paying for. Subways, elevators, busses are shared public space.
The CEOs being disconnected with the masses is bad, but so is the masses assuming that somehow THEY know just the right thing the CEO should have done without being privy to any of the data that a CEO has access to.
It's not too different from the arrogance you see on HN.
> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request. Yes drivers can reject Uber X request, but if you reject a certain amount of Uber rides, they kick you off their system. Probably why the driver is complaining about going bankrupt, you need a luxury car to drive Uber Black, but if you're stuck picking Uber X fares you'll lose money.
You can't force contractors to take lower fare rides and then still claim the high ground of "we didn't lower your fares to X"
Even when said "free markets" cause people extreme hardship?
Maybe teaching economics in primary school could solve this problem.
You're peering through time with rose-colored glasses.
American history is littered with instances using the press to smear and undermine the oppositions, whoever it may be.
The Founding Fathers, a number of them with close ties or financial stakes in printing press businesses, used it regularly to peddle an agenda.
Appearance and opinion have long mattered. Because they are really the only things we have on which to judge. Everyone has their own personal view and influencing that is the goal. Not truth. Never in the history of the nation has actual truth-seeking been the goal of the powers that be in politics or media.
Ideas like we're now in a "post-truth" world are bizarre. It's nearly a truism of the species to use a pedestal to smear enemies and endear to us our fans.
A relative of mine was a chief of a fire department. During a nasty contract battle, he had people picketing his home -- a miserable experience for his family at the time.
But... he was a public figure and the protestors were on a public sidewalk.
When you're a public figure that carefully nurtures a bad-boy, asshole image and attitude of privacy bordering on contempt, you shouldn't expect kid gloves.
Sorry, why should we care about the driver's "credibility" here? Are you alleging the video has been doctored?
There are legitimate reasons why this is done in a taxi: preventing people running away from payment, engaging in harassment or other bad behavior, or claiming you refused to pick them up for reason X when you had a good reason to not pick them up. From what I know of Uber, these reasons all apply to their drivers as well.
IMO the most incriminating thing in this video Travis did is that cornball shimmying in the back seat.
This is exactly how entrepreneurship works - you take risks, sometimes enormous risks with huge capital investments, and it doesn't pan out. Sometimes it does work out and you reap great rewards for a long time.
The driver signed up for this and the gamble didn't work out... now he's blaming Uber?
But driving for Uber isn't entrepreneurship. You don't control your marketing, brand, you don't acquire your own customers, no control over price or business model, etc. Drivers are really just cogs in the service, provide a car, drive the routes, get paid.
You can't "lose" $96,000 by being a driver...
Not identifying with Uber drivers as entrepreneurs is a very classist attitude.
He is a ruthless, greedy, ignoramus, misogynistic pig who needs his ass handed to him and Uber to crumble before his eyes!
It's definitely illegal. It's not immoral to film it necessarily, it is maybe immoral to release it without permission. But at some point you have to admit that it becomes "public interest" to leak information, even if it transgresses those moral standards. As an extreme example, if you had managed to covertly film Kim Jong Un, giving insight into the inner workings of the hermit kingdom, would it be immoral to make it public?
I'm no fan of Kalanick, but I thought he comported himself reasonably, taking the time to explain things from his perspective. He could have just said: "sorry no time". Instead he shook the driver's hand, tried to explain the logic of his moving down the luxury scale.
The fact that the footage of him with two women wasn't cut out is frankly disgusting and a total invasion of his privacy. He didn't do anything wrong except flirt a bit. How tawdry of Bloomberg to show that material.
What is wrong with newspapers nowadays? It seems the press decides someone's "fair game" and they just engage in the most blatant character assassination.