Last week, Uber achieved the Uber of bad PR.
At an upscale New York soiree, a senior vice president of the $18 billion car-hire service purportedly touted the merits of dropping $1 million into an opposition research unit, and deploying it to unearth unflattering details about journalists who see fit to criticize the company.
These plumbers would expose reporters' personal and familial lives. Ever chatty Emil Michael, per a subsequent writeup in Buzzfeed, proceeded to focus his wrath on Sarah Lacy, the founder of the venture capital-funded, incestuous tech insider site PandoDaily. There are any number of reasons to question the motives and worth of Lacy's professional output. But that's not what Michael was purportedly after: This wasn't professional. It was personal. This was about exposing intimate details of someone's life to inflict pain — and make an example of her.
That's revenge. That's blackmail. And that blew up the internet.
Journalists' reaction to this proposed attack on one of their own was as swift and merciless as Uber aims to be in ferrying around smartphone-wielding clientele and kneecapping its opposition. Company founder and CEO Travis Kalanick — that perfect amalgamation of frat bro libertarian and James Bond villain — disgorged a twitter barrage and Michael released a terse apologia.
Neither thought to include the words "I'm sorry."
Because they're not. Like so many people caught in the act of being themselves, the damage control message essentially boiled down to I don't really believe the things I think and then say; I didn't know people were writing it all down and I sure wish they hadn't been.
So, the outcry against Uber (and the ranks of disgruntled users surging to delete the app from their phones) is justified. But it's also a bit misguided.
All these loathsome things never really happened. An Uber executive spouted off about smearing journalists. But the horrible things its people say carry weight only because of the horrible things its people do.
And that's what's perverse: Uber is getting a harder time now for the awful things it hasn't done than the awful things it has.
Glance outside your window and there's a decent chance it's raining. We need the rain, but, understandably, you may still be bummed. Uber honchos are not.
Thanks to "surge pricing," Uber charges more during high-demand periods such as inclement weather. This led to the debacle of hurricane and flood victims hoping to flee to higher ground being charged premium prices for the privilege. It also led to the spectacle of Kalanick offering "pro-tips" to New Year's Eve riders hoping to avoid being gouged by his company.
It's not every day a CEO offers up "pro-tips" on how to avoid falling prey to one of the core tenets and profit-generators of his business model. It feels a bit like a werewolf lecturing potential victims on staying indoors during a full moon. It's surreal, patronizing, and par for the course: Uber's valuation keeps heading skyward, as do the rates posted on the internet by bewildered riders, deprived of $470 for a 15-minute crosstown jaunt after Outside Lands.
Uber, perhaps more so than any other company today, personifies the id of unrestrained free-market capitalism. The company will do whatever it takes to prosper. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
Uber isn't immoral so much as it's amoral.
Condemning Uber for the nastiness of its actions — equipping drivers with burner phones with which to ceaselessly call and stiff competing services; shamelessly flouting city and state laws then retroactively lobbying regulators into accommodating them — feels a bit like scolding a cat for how it treats the mouse.
So, when an Uber driver on Dec. 31 struck and killed 6-year-old Sophia Liu, the company claimed it played no role in the incident. Depending upon whether a dashboard light flashed on or off, the company claimed, culpability rested with a multibillion-dollar entity or a sad-sack driver left out on his own: "This tragedy did not involve a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system," was the company's legalistic response. Through some alchemy, driver Syed Muzzafar intermittently transmuted into the state of being an Uber driver and, conveniently for Uber, not one.
That's a loathsome thing that really did happen.
Provided you aren't charged war profiteer prices or menaced by a malevolent driver in a vehicle that, unlike a cab, won't have a camera in it, Uber does a damn good job of squiring people from Point A to Point B. It is meeting a need. And users are willing to pay for this convenience. They overlook the eventuality that, if anything goes wrong, they will be left to fend for themselves — and, it would seem, gave little thought to what this supremely analytical company is doing with their personal information.
Last week, belatedly, that changed. But, as Rachel Swan's sidebar to this column reveals, breaking up with Uber is hard to do. The company subjects those hoping to disengage themselves from its services to a mind-numbing process. It's ever harder to protect one's personal details, especially when we willingly give so much away to whomever requests it, for whatever end.
This current imbroglio was sparked when one of the world's smartest, most technologically savvy, data-driven companies was apparently caught engaging in old-fashioned revenge plotting of the manilla envelope-full-of-glossy-photos sort. Uber is a remarkably efficient business. But, again, this was personal. They're not so good at that.
A growing number of ex-users are doing their best to rain on Uber's parade. It remains to be seen what, if anything, this will accomplish. Our memories are short.
And Uber likes the rain.
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