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We should not accept the promotional term "sharing economy" for companies like Uber. That is spin. A more accurate term is "piecework subcontractor economy".
Because I reject technology that mistreats me, I will never order or pay for an Uber car. I hope there will always be taxis I can use. But what about you?
Privacy
- Uber requires passengers to identify themselves, both to order a ride and to pay.
- It also records where you get the ride and where you go with it.
- Uber can track who has a one-night stand. In fact, it did so.
- Uber doesn't make things easy forpeople whose accounts have been stolen.
- Uber plans to snoop on users' locations and contacts all the time.
Uber has the technical possibility to do this because its app is nonfree: it is controlled by Uber, not by the user. In addition, snooping depends on a nonfree operating system. With a free system, the user could tell the system to lie to the Uber app.
- The US government can get those records, and any lawsuit (such as a divorce lawsuit) can subpoena them.
- Uber gave the US government data on millions of customers.
-
Uber's clever policy of not being directly responsible for anything
that goes wrong extends to harassment by drivers, and its practice of
identifying passengers enables drivers to find out who the passenger is.
This makes some women
scared to use Uber.
This problem comes directly out of the practices listed above that mistreat all users of Uber.
-
Uber
executives and staff have stalked passengers in various ways.
If you take an ordinary taxi and pay cash, it will generate no records associated with you — except in New York City where the government might apply face recognition to identify your photo in real time.
To recover our privacy and make democracy safe, we need to redesign digital systems so that they do not collect information about people in general. First step, don't help any new ones gain a foothold.
Users' Freedom
- Uber requires customers to run a nonfree program (an app).
As always, a nonfree program tramples its users' freedom.
I'm not talking about the software that Uber runs in its servers; that does not directly affect customers. If some of that software is nonfree, it tramples Uber's freedom, but not the customers' freedom. The nonfree software and digital services that Uber requires its users to use attack their freedom in various ways.
- The Uber app requires running other nonfree software (in the case of Android, Google Play).
Abuse of Drivers
Taxes
Comparison to Real Taxis
-
Uber haschanged
the regulations that cover charging passengers for making cars wait.
This decision itself may not be objectionable. Taxis typically charge for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency which is at least somewhat responsible to the people. Uber is a business headquartered somewhere else, which accepts no responsibility to the people of any city.
We should not allow a company to privatize the making of the regulations that create our social order.
-
Uberplans
to do away with human cab drivers.
It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed.
With real taxis, you can flag one on the street or phone in any fashion; you can pay cash; you can be anonymous.
Beware of thinking of Uber as one more option in addition to real taxis. At the moment, that's true, but if Uber is a big success, real taxis could disappear.
Then what will you do, if you don't want to tell Big Brother where you are going?
Discrimination
Misc
Copyright (c) 2014-2016 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.