“Jerks” can be “people who are disabled and require more time getting in and out of the car”. Being on crutches, for instance, will cause your rating to fall. (At least that was my experience while in Boston)
Well the good thing about a marketplace is that when you act poorly at one business, you can still visit another one.
Uber isn't and shouldn't be the only option available to people. The laws that force every company to offer everything to everyone without question are almost always the markets with only one option.
All you're left with is a pseudo-market that offers few of the benefits of real private or public markets. A pretend public service with even less accountability and fewer people profiting from the industry.
> Well the good thing about a marketplace is that when you act poorly at one business, you can still visit another one.
We’re quickly heading to an Uber/Lyft duopoly. And they use similar ratings systems. Soooooo, I’m not sure what your point is. This isn’t a market, it’s a VC funded takeover of transportation.
Drivers have no way of knowing if someone will tip/review before they are prompted for a rating. Drivers rate riders immediately after the ride finishes.
So, yes, they don't base it off the actual review (that may be a service other than Uber that I'm recalling), but they'll often base your review off the review they expect you to give them.
Successful, long-time drivers do not waste there time with this pettiness. Nor do they waste time talking to reporters about insignificant issues like this when that time could be better spent actually making money. I've been driving on and off for 5 years now and all us veterans on the Facebook groups laugh at how silly all the constant nitpicking is.
As with any rating system, there will be outlying bad raters. That's why it is normal for absolutely no one to have a perfect 5 star. It's really not a bid deal.
You’re creating a bit of a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. “No ‘veteran’ driver would rate someone based on tips or their expected rating.”
Yet people are being rated on their tips. People are being rated based on their expected ratings of the driver, regardless of their “success” as a driver.
It’s a big deal because it locks someone out of a system that has forced out its competition (illegally in some cases; such as in London).
I'm not arguing against the idea that low-star riders make drivers' experiences worse and that's why they have low ratings. I'm arguing against the idea that a "social metric", which can be changed and expanded (to include, hypothetically, your credit score), should be used to deny access to services, without strong guarantees about the sources and other aspects of that social metric.
The Orwellian aspect is when companies start sharing their scores, and when those scores start having clearly highly subjective influences.
I had a very similar reaction 25ish years ago when I found out as a teen credit agencies exist and were somehow not illegal (but employment blacklists are).
Don't worry - I was told they are optional, and you only need them for major things like if you getting a new car or house financed. Anyone worried about these things were mocked with the slippery slope "fallacy" typically being the counterargument.
Of course scope creep inevitably happened - and now you are effectively locked out of many parts of society if you have a poor credit score. We were told it was outright illegal to use credit scores when hiring people (again, 25 years ago) so our fears were unjustified.
Now we're running credit reports on entry level warehouse positions, some volunteer jobs, etc. With every reason to believe it's going to get more pervasive.
As these "social rating" systems get more normalized with consumers, I fully expect to see "novel" new uses and data sharing starting to happen.
After watching some videos of what Uber drivers have to put up with, as well as having a few friends that work in retail, some kind of "social metric" may not be the worst thing.
As a society, we put up with a lot of terrible behavior and people get away with it because they don't care about making a scene or situation that is uncomfortable for everyone else. We pay higher prices to deal with these people's behavior: constantly complaining until they get free stuff, abusing return policies, review blackmail, vandalizing state/national parks, cutting lines, etc.
You're right though that we need very strong guarantees around the sources and accuracy of such a metric.
Who gets to decide who counts as a jerk? You? Think of somebody who's a jerk. Would you want that person at Uber deciding whether you should get a ride?
This question of "who decides?" is essential. I see snarky response after snarky response that ignores how power and authority corrupt decision-making.
I hope we can all agree that the decision to bar someone from participating in important ways in society should not rest on the unsupervised whims of people in Bay Area meeting rooms.
It’s pretty obvious who decides who is the jerk, the drivers. If you have an average of like 1 Star, is every single driver you’ve ever ridden with wrong? I think this is fine, they’re not drawing an arbitrary line, they’re saying wow if this person has made drivers rate him this badly then they shouldn’t be using the service. This seems entirely reasonable to me - I’ve ridden with some real assholes and don’t take Pool anymore as a result.
“Jerk” could mean anything though. “Jerk” could be girls that don’t flirt back. Or mothers with small children. Or disabled people needing more time getting in and out of the car.
Are you aware of any anecdotes of people saying their rating fell when they didn't flirt back or got on crutches or something? (Your point is still valid even if you don't, I'm just interested)
The big one no one is talking about are non-tippers.
It's becoming downright common for Uber drivers to outright admit they give 1 star ratings for non-cash-tippers.
But yes, I've anecdotally heard of ratings drop for women who typically are type-A chatty, but changed to quiet and withdrawn for a few weeks during major life events. Perhaps that came across as more surely, but just something as silly as someone perceiving a bad attitude from a rider can results in a lower rating score.
I've also talked to drivers who give poor ratings if they have to go well out of their way, and it ends up being a short ride. Sure, this really sucks for the driver - but is it the rider's fault at all? Other unpopular destinations get similar treatment (or so I've heard).
Just one driver? Just ten? Who decides what the threshold should be? And what happens when Uber and Lyft decide to ban riders for criteria other than their star rating? Other tech companies have begun to ban people for reasons having nothing to do with their behavior online.
If they use their momentary advantage to push out other legitimate options for transit, then there is a good argument for regulation protecting riders.
Maybe Uber shouldn't be making any decisions about users. Just present the rating to the driver pool and let drivers decide who they pick up and who they do not. It doesn't entirely solve the issue of "what is a justifiable reason for rating a rider (or driver) poorly?" but it makes it less catastrophic for users.
