
Uber Faces FBI Probe Over Program Targeting Rival Lyft - WisNorCan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-faces-fbi-probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001
======
motardo
If Papa John's calls in thousands of fake pizza delivery orders to Donimos,
are they doing research on response times and how many drivers their
competitor has, or are they committing a crime?

~~~
cgb223
That depends, did Domino's pay for each pizza in full or cancel them when they
made it 90% of the way there?

~~~
sjg007
They'd probably still be charged. Also dominos and papa johns and even Pizza
Hut don't compete in delivery zones (unless there is so much demand for pizza
that it doesn't matter). The losers are the local shops. Prices are nationwide
which is where the competition is. They really just want people to order a
pizza delivery.

Unless your are in New York but I guess that local pizza wins. Maybe a few
downtown areas as well.

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mabbo
Well, good.

It's an investigation, not a definite thing. The FBI isn't charging anyone
with anything, they just are saying "let's have a good look here and see if
something illegal has gone on". There's lots of reasons to think they might be
right, but I leave it to them to make the call.

We should want investigations into possible crimes, especially when the
overall victims are consumers who will have less competition for their money.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
_We should want investigations into possible crimes,..._

Of course. That said, though, I wish they'd keep this sort of thing private so
that there is more chance folks are actually innocent until proven guilty
instead of having public opinion labeling you as such before the trial.

~~~
sangnoir
That is not going to happen in the US - mugshots of suspects are public _way_
before people get their day in court. I know at least 1 European country
(can't remember which) that won't allow the publication of suspects' names (or
was it photographs?) until they are convicted.

~~~
anon1385
There's issues with going that way though - it gives the police the power to
arrest and detain people in secret and prevents anybody talking about it.
Historically police forces have a bad record of abusing that kind of power.

It's also going to be pretty unenforceable in the era of social media.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
The abuse of power in the US is a _much_ larger problem to be sure, and
honestly that stuff has already happened [1]. And this is with the stuff
supposedtly being public. Surely there are other ways that blend protecting
privacy of the presumed innocent without letting up on police forces.

We can do things like keep mugshots of unconvicted people out of public view,
especially on police websites and media outlets. We can quit putting folks'
names on the front page when covering a story. Sure, publish arrests the cops
have made with a general location, withholding people's names and addresses.
We can have all cops wear body cams that may or may not be recording and
release them to the public once we've blurred the person's identity.

Some of this would take changing a system. Stiff penalties to cops that break
the law and are convicted. Better training. A chip sewn into uniforms (which
can be laundered at the station with no need to take them home to protect the
police during their personal life) to track movements. A bail system that
actually looks to see if someone is a flight risk and limits on how long we
can keep folks in jail. A robust public defender system (it is a right to have
a lawyer, after all, even though some states make destitute folks pay for it
nonetheless).

We could start public service announcements asking folks not to judge folks
before they are found guilty with evidence. We could use official, licensed
services to do background checks and disallow arrest records to be part of the
check (probably a few exceptions for security reasons). Train police officers
a bit better so they minimally can be aware of their natural biases and work
against them.

I'm not saying this list is perfect nor all inclusive, but it is a start.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-
square...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square-
chicago-police-disappeared-thousands)

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wbharding
This probably explains why Uber charged me $2 last time I canceled a ride with
them. They need a billing paradigm that prevents them from being taken
advantage of by strategies like those that they employ against their
competitors.

Nevermind that the ride I canceled was 10+ minutes away, and was canceled
immediately upon being booked.

Advantage: Lyft.

~~~
jamesmishra
Hey William, the reason Uber charges a cancellation fee is to compensate the
driver for driving towards you.

Without cancellation fees, drivers would have to eat the cost of whatever
progress they made towards you.

While the policy varies by city, typically an UberX or UberBLACK vehicle can
be cancelled for free within 2 minutes.

UberPOOL rides typically get billed cancellations immediately, because the
canceling rider may have also added to the ETA of an Uber rider already in the
vehicle.

Uber will occasionally waive the cancellation fee when the ETA of a POOL
pickup is significantly higher than the prediction given pre-booking.

If you believe you may be eligible for a refund, you can contact Uber support.
Read more here:
[https://help.uber.com/h/24e75a3b-cf44-44e4-abae-8c2dce3b07a3](https://help.uber.com/h/24e75a3b-cf44-44e4-abae-8c2dce3b07a3)

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BinaryIdiot
> Hey William, the reason Uber charges a cancellation fee is to compensate the
> driver for driving towards you.

Sorta? So one of the last times I cancelled a ride the driver was 8 minutes
away which, not ideal, was fine. The problem was the driver was sitting at a
restaurant. After 15 minutes passed he was _still_ 8 minutes away but
occasionally his car icon would move a little here and there (but staying at
the restaurant).

I cancelled and it charged me a cancellation fee. Fortunately, after talking
to a few friends of mine, it seems no matter why you get the cancellation fee
(your fault or not) they will immediately refund it with credits if you
complain.

Pretty aggravating experience, however.

~~~
jamesmishra
Hey Kris, I'm sorry to hear that you had a bad experience, but it sounds like
you were able to get your situation resolved with the support team.

The situation you describe happens pretty rarely--Uber has done over five
billion trips in seven years, and typically drivers are fairly intent on
finding their rider quickly and delivering a five-star experience.

In the future, perhaps various improvements to the product can mitigate the
situation you describe. For example, Uber uses accelerometer data from the
driver phone to improve ride safety.
[https://eng.uber.com/telematics/](https://eng.uber.com/telematics/)

If you have any thoughts on further improving the Uber experience, feel free
to reach out.

~~~
to_bpr
Are things so bad at Uber that they've decided putting a PR guy on HN is a
worthwhile investment?

~~~
jamesmishra
I don't work at Uber anymore, but I visited the office recently and things
look pretty good! :)

I just really love the company. I only left because my best-friend-in-the-
whole-wide-world and I wanted to start a startup.

Although if the startup doesn't take off... I'd definitely consider going back
to Uber.

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TaylorGood
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/uber-is-
apparent...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/uber-is-apparently-
facing-a-third-federal-criminal-investigation/)

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asdfologist
At this point, it would be more newsworthy to see what Uber is _not_ being
investigated for.

~~~
Crontab
Making a profit?

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bko
Serious question, Who gets the proceeds of an eventual settlement? It appears
that Lyft was hurt or Lyft investors and uber was committing essentially
fraud. But I feel like these settlements are normally used to line the pockets
of the regulatory and persecutory bodies.

~~~
matt4077
These are two different things...

For a criminal probe such as this, any possible fines generally go into the
administration's coffers. I know many people like to believe that prosecutors
may be motivated by that money, the people making decisions on prosecution (US
attorneys in this case) are so far removed from the general budget of the
federal government that it's an absurd idea. The amounts are also negligible
in the scheme of things.

Then, there are class action lawsuits, where the settlement is usually divided
among a large number of citizen that were actually harmed, and a rather big
chunk goes to the lawyer.

Note that the latter is also kinda how the system is supposed to work: almost
by definition, class action lawsuits are used in cases where each individual
was harmed only slightly, making an individual lawsuit too much of a hassle.
The lawyers take on most of the risk of the trial.

In both cases, it's more important where the money is coming from than where
it's going: the preventative effects of such costs far outstrips the
importance of healing the actual harm that occurred.

~~~
bko
Im not 100% convinced authorities are not motivated by settlement funds.

In ny, the mayor used bank settlement funds to buy iPads for police. It was a
significant amount of money.

[http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/490-14/mayor-
de...](http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/490-14/mayor-de-blasio-
commissioner-bratton-district-attorney-vance-major-initiative-to#/0)

Mortgage settlements were large and went to various administrative entities
including prosecutors office.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/business/dealbook/24mortg...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/business/dealbook/24mortgagelist.html)

~~~
wavefunction
Even more simply, a prosecutor can point to settlement or damage amounts as a
measure of their 'effectiveness' and there won't be much analysis beyond the
dollar amounts involved.

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brd
Interesting to compare this to the recent LinkedIn case that favored web
scrapers. Similar techniques, only difference is Uber's approach likely had a
material impact on Lyft's service and cost.

I think I'm okay with this trajectory of scraping being legally acceptable so
long as no meaningful harm is done to the entity being scraped.

~~~
_jal
This is generally how I've thought about it, too.

Intent clearly also matters, and is easy to infer in many cases - scraping
information looks quite a bit different than feeding a competitor's dispatch
database with garbage events. Although I would love to hear a creative
lawyer's story about how that was actually benign.

If you're scraping data, make sure you go out of your way to be nice to their
servers. With some fragile sites, it is easier than you think to knock them
over, and you really want it to appear that you're going out of your way to
not cause problems. (Also, look for another role - maintaining scrapers is
miserable.)

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sschueller
Is there any possibly that Travis will face jail time?

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soheil
Paste the link in Twitter and click the first result for a non-paywall
version.

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striking
Facebook version:
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farti...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fuber-
faces-fbi-probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001)

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ArchReaper
Non-paywall link?

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BoringCode
WSJ will show the full article if your referer header is set to twitter.com.
You can do a search on Google like so: "[https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-
faces-fbi-probe-overprogra...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-faces-fbi-
probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001) site:twitter.com"

[https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/906145108277559296](https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/906145108277559296)

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rashkin
There is definitely a fierce competition between ride hailing companies for
the bigger market share in the industry. Uber has already damaged its
reputation by how it does business in the past. Now the new CEO Dara
Khosrowshahi has more problems to solve and FBI probe on Uber is just an
additional one.

