Rendered at 19:30:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
mholm 1 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately necessary. Essentially every girl I know has had at least one bad experience with a creepy uber driver. These are people that are entering their address and often their workplace into the app. It's a big reason why a lot of my friends are picking Waymos instead.
SoftTalker 56 minutes ago [-]
The other night at the grocery store a woman with a cart and groceries approached me in the parking lot, asked if I (a male) could give her a ride home. Was probably innocent enough, but I declined. No way I'm going to accept even the possibility that she'd claim I did something, with no witnesses. That's just the world we live in and it's sad in a way. No trust anymore.
I hope Uber drivers have in interior camera running in their cars, for their own protection.
taurath 51 minutes ago [-]
When faced with the choice of trusting a stranger, you turned it down, then made the decision about the lack of trust in the world?
Trust in strangers has never been easy in the US. If something is to change, it has to start individually.
gchamonlive 44 minutes ago [-]
This falls into the domain of the ethics of care. Sure change needs to start some place, but it doesn't need to be done recklessly. Nobody does anybody any favours by putting themselves in dangerous situations. To care for other people, to give them the attention they need you need to prepare yourself for it first.
ihsw 48 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
add-sub-mul-div 46 minutes ago [-]
It's wild how much this actually happened and isn't made up. It sounds so contrived as to be only useful for making a passive aggressive rhetorical point, but for it to happen in real life, wow!
foxyv 34 minutes ago [-]
If this happened in real life, the actual fear would be getting car jacked by her and the five guys at her "home." Not a false rape accusation that will be ignored by the police.
irl_zebra 53 minutes ago [-]
This incident is creepy enough that I would also not agree to a give a random stranger a ride home, absent any additional context or mitigations. Maybe to avoid waking up in an ice bath with my liver gone. But, to not give a ride because of some perceived idea that they would claim you assaulted them or something is a bit "this person should go touch some grass" or whatever.
RajT88 49 minutes ago [-]
The world we live in is one where women being assaulted is an order of magnitude larger problem than women falsely accusing someone of assault.
foxyv 21 minutes ago [-]
In addition, your chance of being falsely accused is low. Your chance of being prosecuted if you are falsely accused is low. Your chance of being convicted, if you are falsely accused AND prosecuted is low. Also, the accuser's chance of being prosecuted for making the false allegation isn't that low.
We're talking about less than 100 cases per year. The real thing to be worried about is a false conviction for drugs or DUI. That happens way more often.
dchftcs 38 minutes ago [-]
You need to develop some empathy and learn that false accusations can destroy lives and families. You have no right to force someone accept even a 1% chance that something like that happens, even if it's less prevalent than assaults.
john_strinlai 32 minutes ago [-]
they didnt say false accusations dont happen, or that they arent harmful, or that anyone should be forced to do anything.
you read what you wanted to read, instead of what was actually written
Dylan16807 25 minutes ago [-]
It looked to me like RajT88 was participating in a rebuttal of SoftTalker's comment. I don't think that interpretation is "reading what you wanted to read". The place you put a comment has implications for what you're arguing.
allreduce 43 minutes ago [-]
I've got to ask. Is this kind of violent crime common or perceived as common in the US? If a stranger asked me for a ride home here my first thought wouldn't be that they want to attack me.
sanswork 18 minutes ago [-]
The US has a pervasive culture of fear. It's a big part of why guns are so popular.
I have had countless discussions with americans about guns that go along the lines of "What happens if (insert extremely rare violent incident) happens?" and they all literally seem unable to comprehend that these are just not things I even think about at all, and they really shouldn't either given how extremely rare they all are.
But a huge percentage of the population does worry about being victimised constantly.
It is the main reason that despite the obvious financial benefits and my love for certain landscapes/areas of the US I've never had the slightest desire to move there.
ryandrake 31 minutes ago [-]
I think, due to a lot of reasons including skewed media reporting, a lot of uncommon things are perceived as common in the US, and vice versa.
foxyv 15 minutes ago [-]
Depends on the area. I grew up in a bad neighborhood and everyone was grifting. If you gave a random stranger a ride you would get to take a tour of the roughest places in your city and maybe a "friend" that sees you as a free taxi driver. It was rarely malicious, mostly just people were poor and didn't have access to transportation. But their friends and family can sometimes be pretty dang nasty.
This is called being a "Soft Touch."
EGreg 50 minutes ago [-]
Interesting
One of you is afraid that YOU are going to get assaulted or worse.
The other is afraid you’re going to get ACCUSED of it.
What has this society become?
baggy_trough 46 minutes ago [-]
A low-trust society.
commandlinefan 44 minutes ago [-]
> picking Waymos instead.
Can you pick Waymos? I was in Austin with my daughter who Ubers quite a bit (because dear God there's nowhere to park in that damned city) this weekend. She called an Uber and a Waymo showed up and she was grateful because she prefers them too, but she said that she's not aware of a way to specify that you just want a Waymo.
OkayPhysicist 43 minutes ago [-]
Here in the Bay Area, Waymo is a separate app, not integrated into Uber like it is in Austin.
slumpt_ 45 minutes ago [-]
Fully agree and am pretty disappointed reading replies on here. Anyone familiar with the demographics of this forum? What % male is it? If you have women in your life, ask their thoughts on this. It’s easy to not understand problems that don’t exist for us.
scuff3d 45 minutes ago [-]
I drove for Uber back in like 2016, right around when Pool was introduced. Picked this dude up and then had to stop to pick up another fair, he saw it was a woman's name on the app, and when she called me to figure out where I was at he immediately started yelling sexual stuff into my ear piece.
Of course she immediately hung up and cancelled the ride. I drove a few blocks in the opposite direction he wanted to go and threw him out of my car.
That's how he acted with me in the car. Can't imagine how he would have been alone with a female driver.
59 minutes ago [-]
dyauspitr 46 minutes ago [-]
Not necessary and unfairly punishing working men and defacto creating a 50% quota larger market share for female drivers.
ravenstine 27 minutes ago [-]
What does "creepy" mean here? It seems like we're lumping in claims of men being creepy with men committing violence. Being creepy in and of itself is not a good reason to institutionalize discrimination.
Lyft already has such a feature, and personally I've been getting into Empower more, which also has the feature. This app pays more for drivers due to not actually acting as a taxi company but simply connecting the driver and rider marketplaces, something Uber tried to do as well but failed due to legal challenges as well as keeping margin for themselves. Empower just charged $50 per month to drivers as a subscription fee for the service and then lets them keep all the actual ride money.
However, just as with a marketplace connector like TripAdvisor or TaskRabbit, your mileage may vary (literally) in terms of driver ratings and safety, due to Empower not doing as comprehensive background checks as Uber or Lyft, so it is up to your personal risk tolerance.
paxys 45 minutes ago [-]
So Uber is finally dropping the pretense of "vetted drivers" and "strict background checks" and whatever else they claim in their advertising. It's good that women get this service, but I'd be pretty concerned as a man as well. At this point whenever I call an Uber it's a 50/50 whether the person and car listed in the app will be the one picking me up. A lot of times I wonder if the driver has a license or insurance at all. They've been churning through drivers so quickly over the last decade that it's now impossible to get new ones on the service without massively lowering standards and looking the other way when something comes up as irregular.
avidiax 37 minutes ago [-]
Uber is already being sued by male drivers in California:
I think the lawsuits probably make sense. While you can claim that there is a statistical danger, you can make that same claim about a number of other protected characteristics. Would we allow riders to request only female, heterosexual, over 45, wealthy Quaker drivers, if that happens to be the statistically safest driver characteristic?
lordfrito 32 minutes ago [-]
Sex is a protected class under Title VII of the civil rights act. And the supreme court recently said that even majority classes (men) are protected by this. Since Uber involved in the decision to send more business to female drivers than male drivers, this would seem to me to run afoul of employment discrimination (sorry we don't need as many men workers today, too many of you competing so market forces mean we're going to pay you less, etc).
Can someone explain to me how this is (or isn't) legal under Title VII?
It seems if this is fully legal because it's the customer making the decision, then pretty much any form of "in app" discrimination is legal as long as it's the customer doing the discrimination. How long till "I don't want a black/white/gay/etc driver" options show up?
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm
paxys 29 minutes ago [-]
Is it illegal to set a filter for a female gynecologist over a male one? Or a male gym trainer over a female one? Or a massage service, hostel, sports team? Is it illegal to set a gender preference on a dating app? Is it illegal to issue a casting call for a female actor or model?
This kind of "discrimination" is a part of society, and has been tested in courts plenty of times.
akramachamarei 2 minutes ago [-]
I don't think you need scare quotes, this is discrimination. Discrimination isn't always bad. IANAL but it seems like these are cases where we just kinda ignore some laws, and society usually goes okay despite and in spite of it. Just my uneducated impression.
Could you link to some cases where this kind of thing has been tested? I have an amateur interest in law and this issue is puzzling to me. It's not at all clear to me why it's okay to discriminate against Uber drivers based on the genitals they are born with, but not e.g. their skin color or religion.
buynlarge 33 minutes ago [-]
Car share apps could have a camera and audio on mode.
- The inside of the car is surveilled and made available for both parties after the ride.
- The intent is made clear, that this is to capture a trace of any harassment or misconduct. Hopefully making this statement puts all parties on their best behaviour.
- Any failure to comply by the driver, camera blocked or audio muffled, then driver gets penalised.
bsenftner 58 minutes ago [-]
A population of class action attorneys just smiled. A paycheck is materializing.
paxys 40 minutes ago [-]
Does anyone have experience using this feature? I can't imagine it'll be easy to get matched with a female driver. From my own experience Uber/Lyft/taxi drivers are seemingly 99%+ men.
hexyl_C_gut 1 hours ago [-]
If this form of discrimination is ok, can we get other filters?
glouwbug 58 minutes ago [-]
Women's only gyms and hours exist already. If there's a need, and they feel safer this way, let them have it
GaryBluto 54 minutes ago [-]
> they feel safer this way,
What if somebody started a Whites-only gym because it made them feel safer?
sanswork 51 minutes ago [-]
Are there many assaults on uber passengers because they are white? Are there many assaults on uber passengers because they are women? There is your answer.
waterhouse 50 minutes ago [-]
If Whites had, on average, 2.5 standard deviations lower upper-body strength than non-Whites, then maybe.
commandlinefan 47 minutes ago [-]
That's not why women ask for women-only gyms.
waterhouse 34 minutes ago [-]
It's one of the relevant factors. It, and related facts, make it usually possible for a man to overpower a woman (and a predator self-selected for being somewhat above average in fighting ability might be confident of overpowering multiple women, or at least being able to get away in the worst case), which has implications for safety.
ihsw 45 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
voxl 47 minutes ago [-]
There really is a lefty blindspot in this discussion centered around the uncomfortable reality that leftist spaces are typically misandrist, but alas.
asmor 39 minutes ago [-]
Typically? I mean sure, those spaces exist, but the typical "leftist space" is usually still drenched in rape culture, maybe with some pretense of not being so (ending up as a bad experience for everyone except the self-important people running it).
kelseyfrog 48 minutes ago [-]
No one owes anyone moral consistency.
46 minutes ago [-]
CSSer 34 minutes ago [-]
Honestly, thank you. I and many of my other friends have had this happen so much that we don't even react beyond an eyeroll, empty stare, or slight look of contempt for the perpetrator, when we tell each other the stories. I've had a ten minute drive in an unfamiliar city feel like an hour because a brief moment of conversation turned into a man repeatedly asking for my number, explicit details about where I live (not just the city, but the neighborhood, streets and even using phrases like "How can I find you if I visit?"), and my social media accounts. He did all of this despite clear, polite and repeated declinations towards his requests. He said things like "I'd like to be your friend" and further "I'd like to get to know you", and despite being firmly and clearly told, "No, thank you," each time he continued onward until the moment I stepped out of the vehicle. He was not subtle. It was very direct, and his tone sounded more and more frustrated as he persisted.
For anyone reading who has not previously considered it, please imagine what it feels like to be in a moving, locked vehicle you're not in control of, in an unfamiliar place, with someone who is much stronger and taller than you who's not respecting your verbal boundaries. What guarantee do you have it will stop there? What could happen if I truly upset him? How much more unpleasant could it become for me? Meanwhile, I'm paying for this. Even with the option, I'm still paying with the extra time I willingly choose to wait.
wosined 46 minutes ago [-]
Why does the same argument never work in reverse? When men want something for themselves then the same people say that that would be sexist.
brookst 31 minutes ago [-]
Considering that 90% of sexual abuse in Uber’s safety report was committed by men, it seems disingenuous to frame this as some unreasonably discriminatory “oh they just want to have their own space”.
baggy_trough 42 minutes ago [-]
We are all equal; it's just that some are more equal than others.
stackedinserter 47 minutes ago [-]
Women's only hours is a clear discrimination. It shouldn't exist, or exist also for men.
I guess we're moving full steam towards sharia-law-like segregation.
khazhoux 34 minutes ago [-]
I hardly think letting women choose female drivers qualifies as “full steam towards sharia.”
hexyl_C_gut 51 minutes ago [-]
If people feel safer with white only gyms, can people have that?
kelvinjps10 44 minutes ago [-]
Go and have yours.
Like nobody stopping you
hexyl_C_gut 38 minutes ago [-]
Civil Rights law
john_strinlai 21 minutes ago [-]
what are some example discriminatory filters you want, and what is your reasoning for wanting them?
xnx 18 minutes ago [-]
Low scent preference: no perfume/cologne, car air "freshener", food smell, smoking
john_strinlai 15 minutes ago [-]
i dont think preference for no perfume/cologne or no smoking is typically seen as discriminatory from a legal standpoint, is it?
my workplace has a no perfume/cologne policy, and we have lawyers on staff, so itd be interesting to find out it is.
paxys 47 minutes ago [-]
Do you think having women's only bathrooms is discrimination as well?
Ekaros 44 minutes ago [-]
Yes unless there is almost same amount of male only bathrooms. As member of most hated minority I can accept that there is correspondingly to population less bathrooms. So 51% of bathrooms should me female only and 49% of them should be male only.
55 minutes ago [-]
nout 37 minutes ago [-]
I think as a society we moved away from trying to say that women are exactly the same as men in every aspect, so this change seems reasonable to me.
slowmovintarget 9 minutes ago [-]
Are you saying it's not acceptable for a woman to choose a female driver over a male driver for a sense of her own safety?
Deep breath in... There are two types of discrimination. Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, let's call them Type I and Type II.
Type II discrimination is the evil awful kind we rightfully rail against. It is "treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex..."
Type I discrimination is of the broader sort; "an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, choosing accordingly." We run our lives with this kind of discrimination: is this food safe to eat? is this activity safe to participate in? do I trust this person given what I know about them?
>> Ideally, Discrimination I, applied to people, would mean judging each person as an individual, regardless of what group that person is part of. But here, as in other contexts, the ideal is seldom found among human beings in the real world, even among people who espouse that ideal. If you are walking at night down a lonely street, and see up ahead a shadowy figure in an alley, do you judge that person as an individual or do you cross the street and pass on the other side? The shadowy figure in the alley could turn out to be a kindly neighbor, out walking his dog. But, when making such decisions, a mistake on your part could be costly, up to and including costing you your life. [1]
This kind of discrimination is what we're talking about. I'd venture that not only is it OK, it is necessary. In this case, men that have had no background check, and whose form of employment is as an Uber driver are more likely to harass women (or do worse) than a female driver. Allowing women to make a selection based on this likelihood means that female customers that are alone can make choices to still use the service while reducing the overall risk.
Mitigation of this risk in normal taxi services take the form of background checks, bonds, and a chain of responsibility running from employer to employee to customer. It places more risk on the employer deliberately. Uber deliberately chooses to avoid this risk and responsibility. That choice is baked into their business model. That means enabling this kind of discrimination from their customers is a required feature of the service.
[1] Discrimination and Disparities, by Thomas Sowell
xenospn 58 minutes ago [-]
This is as discriminatory as choosing strawberry ice cream over chocolate. To say, not at all.
marky1991 55 minutes ago [-]
What is your justification for that?
If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?
brookst 44 minutes ago [-]
You mean a cake brokerage or something?
These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.
A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.
Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]
So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.
In your cake shop example, the more accurate version would be some gay couples only agreeing to buy wedding cakes from cake shops with gay bakers.
On account of it's the customer choosing the service provider, albeit with the help of filters provided by an aggregator, instead of service providers denying service to customers based on their belonging to a class.
edit: I missed that you can, as a woman driver, also filter out male riders.
rkomorn 47 minutes ago [-]
The preference can also be set by women drivers not to accept men as riders, so I don't think your example fully covers it either.
marky1991 48 minutes ago [-]
Why does it change whether it's discrimination or not depending on who does it?
I don't see how the distinction is material.
commandlinefan 48 minutes ago [-]
> If an employer
Actually, in this case, the rider _is_ a (temporary) employer.
EGreg 44 minutes ago [-]
My libertarian view on discrimination (independent of the Civil Rights Act) is this:
If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.
If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”
PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.
marky1991 38 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I think the argument that "discrimination is fine so long as it doesn't result in complete shutout of a vendor/customer" is reasonable. But that argument didn't fly for the cake controversy case, so society doesn't seem to agree.
Absolutely wild that none of the dissenting comments suggest a means of lowering or eliminating sexual harassment of women passengers. Why not start there? Get creative.
Dylan16807 31 minutes ago [-]
Do you have any compelling ideas on how to do that? I don't think it's 'wild' that people criticizing a company action aren't starting their comments with "here's how I'd fix society".
kelseyfrog 22 minutes ago [-]
I'm fine with the fix. My point is to those who aren't. Suggest something better.
brookst 29 minutes ago [-]
So when you read Uber’s annual safety reports you didn’t see anything in this vein, either as actions taken or changes in statistics?
kelseyfrog 23 minutes ago [-]
I'm talking about the comments here. Like yours that would rather shoot the messenger than actually make a positive change in the world.
It sounds like you'd rather I shut up, then you know, actually do something.
35 minutes ago [-]
recursivedoubts 37 minutes ago [-]
"As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all."
Uber is only getting this now? Wasn't this like a core offering of its longtime competitor, Lyft?
nicce 45 minutes ago [-]
This wasn’t even problem in EU before Uber lobbied regulation changes. Drivers had to meet strict criterias before the changes.
54 minutes ago [-]
maest 1 hours ago [-]
Does this mean women drivers will command higher rates?
jlawson 48 minutes ago [-]
It'd be hilarious if women formed their own closed rideshare economy; they'd discover that they demand much higher prices from each other than they get from men.
brookst 28 minutes ago [-]
It would be funny if the market showed women were willing to pay a premium to avoid being raped?
general1465 24 minutes ago [-]
After figuring that they are paying more than males, they would be protesting against "rideshare gap"
mrits 13 minutes ago [-]
does Uber Comfort not cover this already?
nicce 43 minutes ago [-]
Happened already in Finland. See Club WOWO Oy.
SequoiaHope 1 hours ago [-]
Since their passengers (women in this case) on average earn less, that customer base would be less likely to drive up the price. Also probably only a small percentage of the customers would choose this.
slowmovintarget 58 minutes ago [-]
The real problem is that this is necessary.
This same thing that keeps on happening when we try to reinvent things "without all that stuff that just adds friction." As with software, one should understand the underlying reasons for constraints in the old system before building the second one.
Banking -> crypto and NFT "without all that stuff..." -> wash trading.
Taxi service -> Uber "without all that employer stuff..." -> drivers with no background checks and no interview process
I understand part of this is routing around the damage of monopoly maintenance (medallion system, for example), but let's fix that instead of taking away the protections in place.
Sorry for the rant. I know this is like asking water to run uphill.
kelvinjps10 41 minutes ago [-]
It happens with taxi drivers too. I know women friends/family that don't like going in taxis because of the unnecessary flirting and
harassment where with Uber it's easier to report and check by the driver's rating.
moduspol 41 minutes ago [-]
Certainly that's an issue, but at least as bad is when things get over-regulated and nobody's willing to re-assess.
nathanaldensr 50 minutes ago [-]
Hardly a rant. You're just describing the "move fast and break things" ethic (or should I say unethic). Or said another way: "all of the convenience with none of the responsibility."
xenospn 1 hours ago [-]
That might be tough - I remember having plenty of women drivers back in 2012 when uber and Lyft just got started. These days they’re extremely rare.
gmueckl 44 minutes ago [-]
This might be mitigated somewhat by offering female drivers a similar options to limit themselves to female passengers. It would ovviously only work whwre demand is actually high enough.
rkomorn 40 minutes ago [-]
Isn't that what's described in the article as well?
vaginaphobic 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
brewcejener 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
urba_ 52 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
nine_zeros 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
stackedinserter 39 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
ray023 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mothballed 1 hours ago [-]
I had no idea you can request to exclude on the basis of protected class. Could you exclude black riders as well as a safety precaution in places where say that demographic has higher homicide rates?
asmor 60 minutes ago [-]
That's not even as close to as smart of a gotcha as you think it is.
hrimfaxi 54 minutes ago [-]
Can you explain why? I am surprised this kind of discrimination is allowed, too. I know some discrimination is allowed like for hooters, etc but that is more on the hiring side not on the customer options side.
metabagel 32 minutes ago [-]
Because it's a legit safety concern not based on racism or bigotry.
ryandrake 42 minutes ago [-]
Everyone is dunking on this, but nobody is really answering why offering a filter based on race (or religion, for that matter) isn't OK, but filtering on gender is OK.
asmor 32 minutes ago [-]
It's not primarily discrimination, though if you want to describe it as a side-effect, sure. We live in an imperfect world. Sexual assault is horrifyingly common and even normalized in banter in our culture.
Whereas "black crime" is generally not based on reliable statistics because of overpolicing and luring you into a car is not exactly the MO there either.
Der_Einzige 53 minutes ago [-]
Despite being only ~49% of the population, men commit:
Around 79-80% of violent crimes (based on victim perceptions of offenders in National Crime Victimization Survey data and arrest statistics for violent offenses).
80%+ of arrests for violent crimes in older FBI Uniform Crime Reports breakdowns (e.g., 80.1% in 2012 data, with consistent patterns in later years).
~88-90% of homicides/murders (e.g., 88% of known murder offenders in 2019 FBI data; similar in recent years where males dominate offender stats for murder).
> In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that opposition to homosexuality is part of BSA's "expressive message" and that allowing homosexuals as adult leaders would interfere with that message.
How does this discrimination factor into Uber's expressive message?
metabagel 31 minutes ago [-]
This is super offensive.
44 minutes ago [-]
ray023 49 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
cindyllm 45 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
sheikhnbake 59 minutes ago [-]
imagine typing this in 2026
khazhoux 29 minutes ago [-]
It’s a legitimate legal question
cheezur 1 hours ago [-]
We are reinventing, from first principles, the discrimination we fought so hard against in the 20th century.
usefulcat 53 minutes ago [-]
If there wasn't a need for this then I might agree with you, but there is a need and that's the much bigger problem here.
jlawson 58 minutes ago [-]
Because we're learning, from ground truth, why we discriminated in the first place.
I hope Uber drivers have in interior camera running in their cars, for their own protection.
Trust in strangers has never been easy in the US. If something is to change, it has to start individually.
We're talking about less than 100 cases per year. The real thing to be worried about is a false conviction for drugs or DUI. That happens way more often.
you read what you wanted to read, instead of what was actually written
I have had countless discussions with americans about guns that go along the lines of "What happens if (insert extremely rare violent incident) happens?" and they all literally seem unable to comprehend that these are just not things I even think about at all, and they really shouldn't either given how extremely rare they all are.
But a huge percentage of the population does worry about being victimised constantly.
It is the main reason that despite the obvious financial benefits and my love for certain landscapes/areas of the US I've never had the slightest desire to move there.
This is called being a "Soft Touch."
One of you is afraid that YOU are going to get assaulted or worse.
The other is afraid you’re going to get ACCUSED of it.
What has this society become?
Can you pick Waymos? I was in Austin with my daughter who Ubers quite a bit (because dear God there's nowhere to park in that damned city) this weekend. She called an Uber and a Waymo showed up and she was grateful because she prefers them too, but she said that she's not aware of a way to specify that you just want a Waymo.
Of course she immediately hung up and cancelled the ride. I drove a few blocks in the opposite direction he wanted to go and threw him out of my car.
That's how he acted with me in the car. Can't imagine how he would have been alone with a female driver.
EDIT: How intellectual of you, HN.
Lyft already has such a feature, and personally I've been getting into Empower more, which also has the feature. This app pays more for drivers due to not actually acting as a taxi company but simply connecting the driver and rider marketplaces, something Uber tried to do as well but failed due to legal challenges as well as keeping margin for themselves. Empower just charged $50 per month to drivers as a subscription fee for the service and then lets them keep all the actual ride money.
However, just as with a marketplace connector like TripAdvisor or TaskRabbit, your mileage may vary (literally) in terms of driver ratings and safety, due to Empower not doing as comprehensive background checks as Uber or Lyft, so it is up to your personal risk tolerance.
https://onlabor.org/january-25-2026
I think the lawsuits probably make sense. While you can claim that there is a statistical danger, you can make that same claim about a number of other protected characteristics. Would we allow riders to request only female, heterosexual, over 45, wealthy Quaker drivers, if that happens to be the statistically safest driver characteristic?
Can someone explain to me how this is (or isn't) legal under Title VII?
It seems if this is fully legal because it's the customer making the decision, then pretty much any form of "in app" discrimination is legal as long as it's the customer doing the discrimination. How long till "I don't want a black/white/gay/etc driver" options show up?
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm
This kind of "discrimination" is a part of society, and has been tested in courts plenty of times.
Could you link to some cases where this kind of thing has been tested? I have an amateur interest in law and this issue is puzzling to me. It's not at all clear to me why it's okay to discriminate against Uber drivers based on the genitals they are born with, but not e.g. their skin color or religion.
- The inside of the car is surveilled and made available for both parties after the ride.
- The intent is made clear, that this is to capture a trace of any harassment or misconduct. Hopefully making this statement puts all parties on their best behaviour.
- Any failure to comply by the driver, camera blocked or audio muffled, then driver gets penalised.
What if somebody started a Whites-only gym because it made them feel safer?
For anyone reading who has not previously considered it, please imagine what it feels like to be in a moving, locked vehicle you're not in control of, in an unfamiliar place, with someone who is much stronger and taller than you who's not respecting your verbal boundaries. What guarantee do you have it will stop there? What could happen if I truly upset him? How much more unpleasant could it become for me? Meanwhile, I'm paying for this. Even with the option, I'm still paying with the extra time I willingly choose to wait.
I guess we're moving full steam towards sharia-law-like segregation.
my workplace has a no perfume/cologne policy, and we have lawyers on staff, so itd be interesting to find out it is.
Deep breath in... There are two types of discrimination. Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, let's call them Type I and Type II.
Type II discrimination is the evil awful kind we rightfully rail against. It is "treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex..."
Type I discrimination is of the broader sort; "an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, choosing accordingly." We run our lives with this kind of discrimination: is this food safe to eat? is this activity safe to participate in? do I trust this person given what I know about them?
>> Ideally, Discrimination I, applied to people, would mean judging each person as an individual, regardless of what group that person is part of. But here, as in other contexts, the ideal is seldom found among human beings in the real world, even among people who espouse that ideal. If you are walking at night down a lonely street, and see up ahead a shadowy figure in an alley, do you judge that person as an individual or do you cross the street and pass on the other side? The shadowy figure in the alley could turn out to be a kindly neighbor, out walking his dog. But, when making such decisions, a mistake on your part could be costly, up to and including costing you your life. [1]
This kind of discrimination is what we're talking about. I'd venture that not only is it OK, it is necessary. In this case, men that have had no background check, and whose form of employment is as an Uber driver are more likely to harass women (or do worse) than a female driver. Allowing women to make a selection based on this likelihood means that female customers that are alone can make choices to still use the service while reducing the overall risk.
Mitigation of this risk in normal taxi services take the form of background checks, bonds, and a chain of responsibility running from employer to employee to customer. It places more risk on the employer deliberately. Uber deliberately chooses to avoid this risk and responsibility. That choice is baked into their business model. That means enabling this kind of discrimination from their customers is a required feature of the service.
[1] Discrimination and Disparities, by Thomas Sowell
If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?
These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.
A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.
Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]
So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.
1. https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?... (Page 20)
On account of it's the customer choosing the service provider, albeit with the help of filters provided by an aggregator, instead of service providers denying service to customers based on their belonging to a class.
edit: I missed that you can, as a woman driver, also filter out male riders.
I don't see how the distinction is material.
Actually, in this case, the rider _is_ a (temporary) employer.
If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.
If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”
PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.
It sounds like you'd rather I shut up, then you know, actually do something.
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm
This same thing that keeps on happening when we try to reinvent things "without all that stuff that just adds friction." As with software, one should understand the underlying reasons for constraints in the old system before building the second one.
Banking -> crypto and NFT "without all that stuff..." -> wash trading.
Taxi service -> Uber "without all that employer stuff..." -> drivers with no background checks and no interview process
I understand part of this is routing around the damage of monopoly maintenance (medallion system, for example), but let's fix that instead of taking away the protections in place.
Sorry for the rant. I know this is like asking water to run uphill.
Whereas "black crime" is generally not based on reliable statistics because of overpolicing and luring you into a car is not exactly the MO there either.
Around 79-80% of violent crimes (based on victim perceptions of offenders in National Crime Victimization Survey data and arrest statistics for violent offenses).
80%+ of arrests for violent crimes in older FBI Uniform Crime Reports breakdowns (e.g., 80.1% in 2012 data, with consistent patterns in later years).
~88-90% of homicides/murders (e.g., 88% of known murder offenders in 2019 FBI data; similar in recent years where males dominate offender stats for murder).
How is this any different to "Despite making up only 13% of the population..." - https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/despite-being-only-...
It is not and that's why it is so hard to defend any kind of filtration based on gender.
How does this discrimination factor into Uber's expressive message?