Saturday, March 4, 2017

HEROIC Uber Used Fake App to Confuse Regulators



This is awesome.

The Financial Times reports:

Uber on Friday confirmed the existence of a controversial programme that used a fake version of its app to confuse unwitting regulators and competitors trying to order cars.
The secret weapon — codenamed Greyball — has been used during the ride-hailing company’s battles with regulatory authorities and rivals around the world over several years.
It operates by displaying car icons in random locations and automatically cancelling rides requested by ‘passengers’ believed to be regulatory officials or competitors...
Uber said on Friday that it believed Greyball was fully legal. “This programme denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers,” the company said in a statement on Friday after the programme was reported by the New York Times...
To make Greyball effective, Uber employees researched police officers, local regulators and rivals in each new market, and added them to the Greyball list. The programme began in 2014, and has mostly been phased out in the US where Uber has made peace with regulators in most of its key markets.
  -RW

7 comments:

  1. This drew a lot of "Uber - Hate" at Zero Hedge. Not everybody thinks like us, Wenzel. :(

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  2. But Uber is using the streets that were paid for with tax dollars. According to libertarian autism rules, they are not true free market competitors.

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    1. And abolitionists ate food which used inputs grown on slave plantations, so they weren't true abolitionists.

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    2. "But Uber is using the streets that were paid for with tax dollars."

      Gas tax? Uber drivers pay it. Automobile registration tax? Uber drivers pay it. Property tax? Uber drivers pay it, same as anybody else. Exactly what is your complaint?

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  3. That's awesome, love it when technology is developed to give a big middle finger to government goon squads along with their lackeys and supporters.

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  4. Kudos to Uber for standing up to the state. This reminds me of the VW "emissions scandal." Unfortunately, VW caved to the EPA. They should have told the EPA to stuff it and stopped selling cars in the US if necessary. Now there's a renewed effort to smash VW with a bogus report (and some bogus pictures in the media) that 1,200 Europeans are going to die early deaths because of VW. I'm sure that Eric Peters will have something to say re that soon on his website. He posted an article a couple of days ago called Silence of the Lambs on Oliver Schmidt facing 169 years in prison for his role in the so-called scandal.

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    1. P.S. to my own self: The Silence of the Lambs article is also available at today's (Monday the 6th) Lew Rockwell website in addition to the ericpetersauto site.

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