
Why is every story on Uber Delhi driver raping a passenger getting instakilled? - plinkplonk
Every story on this incident is getting killed moments after submission.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8711222
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8711196
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8711178
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8711146<p>Is this story off limits on HN (genuine question)? 
Or is it some kind of pro Uber voter ring?<p>Given the previous discussions on HN about what an Uber executive said about a journalist etc I find it difficult to believe that HN readership doesn&#x27;t care about this case, so I thought I&#x27;d ask. Fwiw this is on top of the news in every newspaper and TV Channel in India. TechCrunch reported it too (in a weaselly fashion, but still).<p>EDIT: I am fine with a mod judgement saying &quot;Such stories are irrelevant to HN. Flagged&quot;.<p>This was a genuine question. I am not an &quot;outrage warrior&quot; or anything (see my comment history), I just found the instakills odd from a &quot;something is funny here. I wonder if someone is gaming HN voting&quot; perspective, and thought I&#x27;d ask.<p>Edit2: I did send email to the  mods and didn&#x27;t get any reply (understandable, given it is Saturday night in the USA. I just don&#x27;t like nasty people gaming systems, which was a possibility here. Hence the post. Mods, feel free to remove if you think this is inappropriate)
======
dang
I've been traveling all day and didn't see this, or the emails, until now.
These stories were killed by user flags, not moderators. I'll look at the
details in a minute. In the meantime, I'm burying this post for what should be
an obvious reason: procedural questions about story ranking, and HN support
questions in general, are off-topic for HN. The site guidelines explicitly ask
you not to post them here.

Edit: I looked at all the flagged stories. I don't think it was a ring. It
looks to me like users who feel that the story is off-topic for HN. Perhaps
they feel this way more strongly because they're Uber fans—hard to say—but
flagging of outrage stories (i.e. high controversy-to-substance ratio) is
well-established on HN.

In cases like this, when the community is deeply divided, each side has a
reasonable argument, and a large number of users clearly want the story to be
discussed here, we usually pick one URL and override the flags for that one.
If I hadn't been offline, I would have done so earlier.

The problem now is that it's not clear what the best URL is. None of the
articles look great. I unkilled the Techcrunch one, but the thread promptly
turned into a discussion of its title. If someone can suggest a good choice of
URL in the next few minutes, I'll do that again. Otherwise it will have to
wait overnight.

~~~
oskarth
I find it hard to imagine how a moderator of a forum like HN could be more
responsible, responsive, humane and just than dang. Keep up the good work.

------
jellicle
I hope you don't think that a campaigner with as much experience as David
Plouffe is going to neglect to hire a social media firm to handle Reddit and
HN stories about Uber.

This is what (a small part of) Uber's venture capital is going towards: hiring
people to downvote and bury critical posts. It would almost be negligent not
to do so, at this point in the internet's development.

~~~
plinkplonk
That is an interesting idea.

As long as HN's code has the ability to detect such co ordinated flag kills
and alert the mods, all good (imo).

Just to be clear, I have no position on whether HN should or should not
discuss such stories (I can see arguments for either side, and lots of grey
areas). I'd be personally fine with a 'tech only' focus (say).

My question was about _why_ these stories were getting killed moments after
submission, since many discussions have happened about women in tech,
diversity, company business model unethicalities etc, without triggering flag
kills.

~~~
freshhawk
I might be misreading your response but just to reiterate: Asking if Uber has
a reputation management firm to handle stuff like this is like asking if they
have tax lawyers.

And a professional, expensive firm would certainly have enough clean accounts
to do this undetectably if that was even necessary (no idea what detection
ability HN has).

In my opinion that's the most plausible answer to why, but it's not the only
one.

------
eklavya
News link: [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhi-
cabbie-r...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhi-cabbie-rapes-
executive-returning-from-party/articleshow/45399533.cms)

Negligence: Quote"The woman had boarded the cab after booking it with Uber. We
have found gross negligence on their part as they did not have even a GPS in
the cab and the driver had not been verified."

~~~
husayn
My story with this link survived the culling:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8710607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8710607)

~~~
martinko
Nope, flagkilled.

Honestly this is starting to look absurd. HN readers consider this event
interesting and worth discussing (as evidenced by this thread). There is an
obvious effort to either censor or manipulate the system in order for the
stories to stay off the front page. I would have expected more outrage.

~~~
ColinWright

      > HN readers consider this event interesting
      > and worth discussing (as evidenced by this
      > thread).
    

Correction - _some_ readers consider this event interesting and worth
discussing. As evidence elsewhere, other readers are flagging the story. One
of the mods[0] has stated clearly[1] that it's being flag-killed.

    
    
      > There is an obvious effort to either censor
      > or manipulate the system ...
    

Nope - standard HN reader actions doing what the system is designed for.

========

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660)

~~~
001sky
Its absurd to flag-kill stories with no upvotes. If something is taking up 10
spots on the front page and / or leading to shitty discussion...yeah go flag
it up.

Clearly there were 600+ people who upvoted the topic of this thread, and a
group of people who are censoring HN.

They're not flagging crap off the front page, they are censoring the NEW page.

I'm not sure how to conclude that's anything other than wrong...?? It may only
take a couple of flags to kill a story but lets say it takes 5-6....who the
hell are the 5-6 people trolling the NEW page killing stories?

At what hour on a weekend night? That's not a co-incidence. Its pretty absurd
to think that's legitimate or healthy behaviour.

If the mods want to kill stuff...whatevr..."HN reader actions doing what the
system is designed for" is a broken system.

Its basically a bunch of truthers an bullies having their way. I don't see how
its fairly characterized as "guardian angels" looking out for the integrity of
the site or its discussions.

------
WallWextra
Uber is a bunch of sketchballs and a bunch of sockpuppets flagging the story
is totally within the realm of plausibility.

~~~
pain_perdu
I can verify that they do pay very close attention to HN posts and when I
previously disclosed some internal info they attempted to stomp it down very
rapidly.

~~~
dang
You're hinting at an abuse of the site that we should probably look into, so
I'd appreciate it if you'd email hn@ycombinator.com with details.

------
ivanca
The funny (or scary) thing is that South Park predicted exactly this 100%: An
Uber competitor hires a criminal to be a Uber (Timmy) driver to sexually
assault the first female passenger it gets[0] and get it really bad press.

BTW, this also happen in taxi cabs, but somehow they don't make the front-page
of hacker news[1][2][3], I wonder why that is.

[0]7:40 at [http://southpark.cc.com/full-
episodes/s18e04-handicar](http://southpark.cc.com/full-
episodes/s18e04-handicar)

[1][http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-
lauderdale/fl...](http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-
lauderdale/fl-lauderdale-taxi-driver-charged-20141126-story.html)

[2][http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/2370444/taxi-
drive...](http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/2370444/taxi-driver-
assaulted-female-passenger-before-raping-another/)

[3][http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/bail-refused-
for-t...](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/bail-refused-for-taxi-
driver-accused-of-raping-two-passengers-in-his-
cab/story-e6frf7kx-1226506843629?nk=bdaf38fb02bd248e8f55a540d369ebec)

~~~
marquis
>BTW, this also happen in taxi cabs, but somehow they don't make the front-
page of hacker news[1][2][3], I wonder why that is

Woman speaking here. I've been using Uber/Lyft over taxis because of the
driver verification system and also the tracking. I will always send my ride
tracking link to whoever I am travelling towards if I am solo. I am sure that
taxis have their drivers verified also, but taxis don't send me their driver's
name and car license plate nor can I track the ride within the taxi service
system itself. User is using technology to make the relationship between
passenger and driver safer. If they fail on this, they need to be totally open
and honest about it and discuss how to find better solutions. Drivers also get
attacked by passengers - the safety measures go both ways.

~~~
wvenable
I had a family member attacked by a cabbie. The driver was actually mere hours
away from getting away with it too because a) The passenger had no record of
the transaction and b) The cab service recycles their camera data every few
days.

The way I see it, there is no guarantee of safety in either situation. You
never know if your driver is a criminal or crazy. But services like Uber seem
considerably more safe: There is extreme record keeping, user ratings, and no
direct money changing hands.

------
pcthrowaway
clickable links:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711196)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711178)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711146)

note: Yes, as OP mentioned, clickable links are all dead anyways.

~~~
001sky
Now all...dead

(not sure if that was the obvious intention)

~~~
pcthrowaway
I always just comment with links as clickables (if someone else hasn't
already) to save everyone else the keystrokes.. in this case, they're all
dead. Unfortunately, HN only links hyperlinks from comments.

~~~
001sky
No worries, just clarifying in case folks didn't understand.

------
pajtai
Strange, I just posted this tech crunch article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711409)

and it got several upvotes and was on the front page, but now it was removed
from the home page

not sure how the home page rankings work, but it was on the home page for a
while and getting up votes

~~~
ww520
An article can be flagged. If it has been flagged by too many people, it will
be "flag-killed." Guess certain people don't like the article and want to
suppress it.

------
jacquesm
'flagkilled' means that user flags killed those stories.

~~~
001sky
_[flagkilled] Uber Confirms It Is Assisting Police in India Following an
Alleged Rape (techcrunch.com)_ [1]

This only has 1 upvote. Why would it have N^F flags?

"Flagkilled" must be something else or who knows?

[1] Link is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222)

------
plinkplonk
I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but the Uber driver has been
jailed for rape before, and so a background check (which is mandated by law
for all cab drivers, but Uber doesn't do) _would_ have uncovered this.

[http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/arrested-uber-driver-
was-...](http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/arrested-uber-driver-was-jailed-
earlier-too-on-rape-charges-sources-631344?pfrom=home-lateststories)

------
dsl
I'm going to guess that it is a keyword filter issue.

Every story you link to includes "r a p e" but your submission is missing the
e.

------
danieltillett
I want to know how this story got 42 up votes in under 10 minutes?

~~~
mintplant
That tends to happen with meta posts, especially those implying potential
wrongdoing on the site. People just upvote them quickly.

~~~
danieltillett
This makes sense. It still seems suspicious to me.

------
rosser
...and _bam_. 600+ points after 3 hours, and suddenly it's on page 9. Nothing
to see here. Move along.

~~~
dang
Yes, we buried the meta post as off-topic. It's not a borderline call.

As usual, we didn't close the thread to comments, so ongoing discussion can
continue.

------
mintplant
Can submissions be killed by votes? I always thought that was only by
moderator action or automated filtering (eg. hellbanned users).

~~~
plinkplonk
I'm assuming 'flagkilled' means enough users flagged these articles. If the
moderators actively killed all these articles (some are to newspapers with
millions of readers, and not link farms or whatever) that would be ..
interesting, but ok.

I think HN mods are nice people and are probably unaware. I did send them
emails, but I didn't get a reply (which is understandable given this is
Saturday night in the USA). I suspect either a pro uber voting ring or a
software bug.

~~~
mintplant
Ah, I didn't see the "flagkilled" tag when I looked, before I turned showdead
on.

------
AxisOfEval
Apparently, it is OK to care about profits and not customers these days.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/opinion/joe-nocera-uber-
vs...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/opinion/joe-nocera-uber-vs-uber.html)

------
jsnell
As far as I'm concerned, that's a perfect example of a story unsuitable for
HN. There's nothing there to satisfy anyone's intellectual curiosity. It's
just a volatile mixture of rubbernecking, outrage, gender issues,
schadenfreude over a controversial company, and having it be about a tech
startup to give it just a tiny bit of supposed HN relevance.

(I flagged the one copy of this I saw on the front page, and it's certainly
not because of liking Uber).

~~~
IkmoIkmo
I was going to post the following (below -----), but I read the stories and
they mainly focus on the signup process for Uber. While I still mostly feel
like my original post, it is troublesome to hear that Uber employs people with
no background check or verification into a job which, if you think about it,
entails a trust-relationship not unlike that of a doctor or cleaning lady/man:
someone in in an intimate setting who you entrust to care for you. For a
doctor it's obvious, a cleaner enters your home, where you trust they don't
steal sneakily or assault you. And for a taxi driver who drives you home at
night, you expect when you hire through a large company that you're in the
hands of a professional you can trust. Not a person who went through
background checks/verification/training as much as if you took a random
stranger and put them in a car.

So to that extent I'd say Uber has a lot of work to do in its signup process.
But beyond that, it still feels like an incident that doesn't justify a post
on HN. I wonder what the process is like for regular taxi companies in India
and if it's much different. Did you guys remember the Polish woman who was
raped earlier this year in a non-uber Indian taxi?

\------ original post below -------

As horrible as this is, it's a non-story for me. That's not to say the rape
isn't horrible. But we need relevance, we can't just report any horrible fact.
About 17k children die each day, it doesn't make sense to fill HN with that
daily unless there is some direct relevance. If we didn't have a 'relevance
filter', I nor anyone else would visit this particular community anymore.

Now what's the relevance here? Uber? And...?

Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone (pretty much 100% guaranteed
one of them did in the past decades). Should that be a story we talk about on
HN, just because it's bad and because it's a tech company and no other reason?
Of course not. So why should it be a story that a non-employee freelance
driver rapes someone in a country of over 1 billion people?

Look if this story had a sociological context about gender relations in India
that was interesting for HN, sure. I'd love to read about that. My girlfriend
was just in India this summer for social work and we chat about this every now
and then. If it was a story about gender-violent policies at Uber, sure,
that'd be interesting. If this was a story about how Uber attracts
disproportionately higher rates of criminal drivers, sure. But there's none of
that.

So I don't see the relevance, and without any kind of trend, evidence of bad
policies or whatever, it's just a single incident. Shit happens, and without
context this is a story that smears a company. I'm no fan of Uber, but there's
a lot better things to focus on IF this was an incident.

Anyway I'd be happy to hear otherwise, I could totally be missing something.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone "

This is somewhat iffy logic. If Microsoft's purported USP was "our OS is way
safer than the alternatives" (this is, partly, how Uber positions itself in
India[1], which is smart, given the horrible "rape in moving vehicles/by taxi
drivers etc" history in India) and then it turned out that Windows was much
easier for cybercriminals to hack into and steal your credit cards (than say
OSX, which made no such claim) that would be worth discussing on a site about
OS es.

Or maybe not. Hence the question.

[1] Uber Delhi used to have this in their marketing copy (emphasis mine) "Uber
is New Delhi's best way to request a _safe_ , reliable, affordable ride"

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Yeah fair enough, although it does seem as if they just went with the
'standard' message, by your analogy 'windows is a safe and reliable OS to make
payments', as opposed to 'windows is out now, enjoy the safest way to make
payments ever conceived'. If you then get hacked after the first message
('it's just safe and reliable'), and it's a single case of 1 person being
hacked due to a single 3rd party app not behaving like it should without
permission from Microsoft, I don't know if it's worth discussing. As another
member said, it feels like a tabloid story that's only interesting because
Uber has a $40b valuation and rape is a justifiably concerning topic in
general. But it doesn't seem like anything systemic is going on here.

I've never used Uber and am not too familiar with their marketing, but I'm not
aware of them ever pushing hardcore the notion that they're the safest
concerning the trustworthiness of the driver. I don't even think that's a
marketing variable, even in a place with a history of rape in moving vehicles
that you mentioned. (reliability of the driver concerning trip duration,
professionalism etc, sure, but whether you can trust him not to hurt you?).

I think the core question is whether they really missed out on something in
the screening process. If not, it kind of feels like this is a lone incident
in a country of 1 billion people, one of few such cases (2 or 3 now?) after
tens of millions of rides.

~~~
plinkplonk
"country of a billion people". Oh please, not that tired cliche again. Police
verification of employees is _standard_ in India, even for software jobs. Uber
as usual seems to be cutting corners, playing fast and loose, operating
outside the law. The drivers aren't really 'employees' just 'licensed driving
partners' and so Uber has no responisibility.

If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people") everybody
would _rightly_ be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix. But hey
some third world country half a world away and it is just people being
unreasonable.

And this "numbers" logic is fallacious. Why is the police shooting of an
African American causing such ripples in a "country of 300 million people"
with millions of police/citizen encounters. Surely the proportion ending in
unarmed citizens being shot for no good reason are really really low? Then why
all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged?

Yeesh. Some people.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people")
> everybody would rightly be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix.
> But hey some third world country half a world away and it is just people
> being unreasonable.

Blah, stop putting words in my mouth. I'm from such a 'third world country',
and my gf just returned from her work in India. Let's also ignore the multiple
times someone was charged with rape over there in the US (I don't live there,
you know). I'm certainly not saying nobody cares because it's India. I'm
saying it appears like a single case related to uber in a country of 1 billion
(where rape happens every hour) after millions of rides.

> Then why all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged?

Because it's SYSTEMIC, that's my point. It literally, not kidding, literally
happens every single day and enough is enough, and it is a consequence
partially of some identifiable issues in the police system that they're
responsible to fix (and haven't been doing for decades). That's why such a
story is interesting. Why is it not interesting if a white person is shot by
the police? Because arguably it's not systemic, it's not based on a certain
culture, on certain policies. For example if you go to a police station to
train them on cultural sensitivity often the first question is 'what do you
think if you see am 18yo black kid in a nice car?'. They'll virtually all say
'drug dealer'. And the white kid? They'll virtually all say 'rich daddy'. And
they're brutally honest in this. That's literally racial discrimination, as a
citizen is seen and treated differently SOLELY based on the color of their
skin and such racial profiling it's pervasive in American (police) culture.
It's a small example of how systemic the problem is.

But here I DON'T see that as of yet. It looks like a genuine incident that
Uber couldn't have done much against. If they screened the driver, he probably
wouldn't have been filtered out unless he was going around telling everyone of
his rapist tendencies. There's no gender-violent culture or policies we can
specifically identify at Uber that should be rooted out but isn't, contrary to
howwe can EASILY identify race-biased culture and policies in the American
police system that should be rooted out but isn't.

I'm all for extra screening of taxi drivers by the way and think Uber should
be doing this and doing it better. No argument from me there. And while I've
never used Uber, unlikely I ever will, didn't flag this story, don't like
uber, I don't think it's fair to bring this story as if Uber took some huge
missteps and caused this rape. It appears to me like an incident.

------
ameen
This could result in Uber's implosion in India. What were they thinking when
they had an unverified driver? Heck even local taxicab providers use drivers
with extensive background checks and police verification (atleast in
Bangalore).

No point in using Uber if they sink to such levels. The only reason they
could've gone with such a driver would've been economic.

------
Ataub24
could be domains that are being linked. some domains get auto-killed.

------
auser678
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960)

My story got killed too

------
athampraveen
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711510)

------
vjdhama
And it's off the front page. How'd that happen?

~~~
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660)

------
Kinnard
Very interesting

------
mmanfrin
This now appears to be deleted/dead.

------
mkramlich
because not on topic for HN

rapes occur all the time, not relevant if someone just happens to be employed
by Uber

if a Microsoft employee beat his wife should that be on HN? no. nor would it
if he instead worked at a Texaco gas station

~~~
RealGeek
Uber markets itself as a safer and more convinient mode of transport. Uber
driver did not beat his wife, he raped a cystomer. That is breach of trust.

The right analogy would be.. If a Microsoft employee hacks your Windows
computer and steals your data, it should be a front page story.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> If a Microsoft employee hacks your Windows computer and steals your data

That's a good point. I wonder though what we can actually discuss here.

Consider this, if a MS employee hacked you using say, company access to your
hotmail account that only MS employees have, a system by design ripe for
abuse, and therefore fixable by MS and therefore a MS responsibility, then
that's relevant.

But if a MS employee hacked you on the job without anything special that makes
him a MS employee (he could've been working for DELL, Apple or hell he
could've been unemployed) and just happened to be a MS employee that hacked
you, what's the relevance? It's just an incident that MS has no real
responsibility for.

Even less responsibility if said employee wasn't an employee, but just a 3rd
party freelancer.

I think it begs the question: 'what didn't uber do that they should have?'.
Why are they at fault, why is this news? It sucks, yes, but as I posted
earlier here, 17k kids under 5 will die today, and tomorrow, as they did
yesterday. There needs to be some context, an angle on gender relations in
india, a gender-violent culture at Uber, bad policies in keeping track of
rides so abuse can go unpunished, for example. But I don't see it.

We've heard that the screening process is weak and I'll believe that. But I
genuinely wonder what part of the screening process is missing that could've
prevented this. I'm all for screening out repeat offenders for jobs like this
(where a client entrusts a caretaker, like for doctors, police or indeed taxi
drivers) but this feels like an incident that's only posted because it's good
tabloid material considering Uber is now a $40 billion company with a possible
rape case after tens of millions of rides.

------
eli
Please don't post "meta" stories to HN. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you have
concerns.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is there a better way available for the community to discuss or inquire about
issues like this (serious question)? Emailing hn@ (of course) seems very many
to one. I'd hope that the thought wouldn't be "The community is no place to
discuss peculiar community activity", even if that means shoving it off to
someplace else still on the site where those who believe its relevant can
discuss.

------
argonaut
FWIW, this very submission is technically against the HN guidelines
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)):

 _Please don 't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you
want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com._

~~~
baddox
From that same page:

 _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site._

~~~
cmstoken
Technically, your comment is also against the HN guidelines. And so is mine
(the very one you're reading right now). I think none of us are adding
anything to the discussion.

~~~
baddox
While a comment is, strictly speaking, something submitted, the guidelines
page seems to use "submission" to refer specifically to story submissions
(note the headers "In Submissions" and "In Comments"). If my interpretation is
correct, then my first comment, your reply, and this comment are not in
violation, although yours is factually incorrect. :)

