[HN Gopher] Uber is turning data about trips and takeout into in...
___________________________________________________________________
Uber is turning data about trips and takeout into insights for
marketers
Author : sethops1
Score : 229 points
Date : 2025-12-08 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| lwhi wrote:
| Uber really are the piranhas of the corporate world.
|
| I can't imagine any depth they wouldn't dive to, in order to get
| a morsel to feed on.
| andsoitis wrote:
| From the article: _"aggregate users ' data without revealing
| their identities."_
| malshe wrote:
| That's how it starts
| squigz wrote:
| Why do you think this makes it better?
| crazygringo wrote:
| You think data tied to _individual_ users isn 't any worse?
| That privacy has no value?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think they're suggesting that anonymized and
| potentially aggregated data can still have individual
| data extracted from it:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-
| york-...
| squigz wrote:
| What the heck? Where did I say either of those things?
|
| Privacy is very important. That's why I think sharing of
| customer data - individual or aggregate - is bad.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You asked why someone would think aggregating would make
| it better.
|
| Aggregating protects privacy when done properly.
|
| It seems pretty obvious to me that sharing individual
| data is orders of magnitude _worse_ than sharing
| aggregated data.
|
| If you think they're the same, then you don't seem to
| value the privacy that aggregation provides.
|
| So what am I misrepresenting about what you said?
|
| I'm tired of false equivalences. One thing that's maybe
| slightly bad, and another thing that's super-super-bad,
| aren't equally bad.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Aggregating protects privacy when done properly.
|
| When done properly is going a lot of heavy lifting there.
| Time and time again it's been found most aggregates are
| not filtered properly and be deanonymized with eaze.
|
| It's not that one is big bad, and one is little bad, it's
| the little bad can become big bad with a small amount of
| work by an attacker/company. Then when you add in zero
| external third party verification of these company
| claims, you really don't have any reason to believe them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _When done properly is going a lot of heavy lifting
| there._
|
| Not really. There are common practices for it. Yes it
| hits HN when deanonymization can happen at a well-known
| company, just like it hits HN when there's a security
| vulnerability that gets patched at a well-known company.
|
| But "it's the little bad can become big bad" is what's
| doing the heavy lifting in _your_ argument. No, that 's
| not how it works. There's no universe in which aggregate
| data can be deanonymized to _anywhere_ close to what all
| of the individual profiles would be. It 's a completely
| false equivalenace, period.
| squigz wrote:
| And I'm tired of people acting like companies putting on
| a show of protecting our privacy is doing anything
| actually helpful. But you're right. I'm wrong and clearly
| don't care about privacy.
|
| As a completely unrelated aside, I wonder how much social
| progress is hindered by people alienating people on their
| own side.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Just don't make false equivalences.
|
| It's easy, just admit the two are not the same and move
| on. You don't need to get defensive about it. I wonder
| how much social progress is hindered by people making
| wrong statements and then getting defensive about it?
| kotaKat wrote:
| Over/under on when someone is able to de-aggregate an
| identity down to an individual user?
|
| I've got it on less than 6 months.
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| 6 weeks would be optimistic
| schnable wrote:
| how do de-aggregation attacks or whatever you'd call this
| work?
| snapcaster wrote:
| One of the easiest methods is to find a different data
| source with overlap and use that to map real people to
| anonymized lists. Big tech companies find this super easy
| to do because of all the internal data they already have
| on everyone
| indymike wrote:
| More like 15 minutes.
| DennisP wrote:
| Also from the article:
|
| > Uber Intelligence will let advertisers securely combine
| their customer data with Uber's to help surface insights
| about their audiences, based on what they eat and where they
| travel.
|
| So the companies have the identities. It sounds like they're
| going to be learning something about their customers, the
| question is just how much detail they'll get.
| zx8080 wrote:
| Everything? Ok, everything. Names "anonymmized" (but easily
| trackable) and the list of addresses. Why not sell it to
| get money? /s
| baggachipz wrote:
| Source: "trust us bro"
| morkalork wrote:
| The allegation that driver payouts are manipulated to:
|
| 1) Hook new drivers with better than average rates before
| tapering off 2) Take into account the age/model/value of the
| vehicle and what payments for it would look like in the market
| and dole out enough to cover costs but not "too much" that
| they're getting ahead of other drivers
|
| Totally baseless and sourceless hearsay tho. Still, if true,
| really plays into the image of "there's no depth they won't
| go".
| underlipton wrote:
| Add another: the various platforms talk to each other (or
| analyze driver movement) in order to manipulate order
| offerings in such a way as to discourage drivers from taking
| orders from more than one app at once. One app will wait
| until the other has confirmed an accepted order before
| deluging you with their own orders, all taking you in the
| opposite direction (which makes you late for one or more
| deliveries, giving cause to terminate your contract).
| gruez wrote:
| Source?
| underlipton wrote:
| Pure anecdata. However, the change from the first two
| days I multi-apped and made almost 3 times my usual
| hourly rate, to the following weekend, when
|
| >neither app would send me orders for up to half an hour
|
| >as soon as one had assigned me and order, the other
| would start sending my multiple per minute
|
| >all of these orders were either comically low-
| compensation (no tip), a 15-minute-plus drive away from
| the order I'd just accepted (to areas it had never sent
| me before), or both
|
| was marked.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| So many times on this website, people say, "I will pay for the
| service to get rid of advertising." You pay for this service and
| rides aren't getting any cheaper. It is naive to think any
| company isn't finding ways to monetize your behavior, whether
| you're paying them or not.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| People object to advertising because it is annoying and
| distracting. If the ads disappear, they got what they paid for.
| It's not about avoiding their "behavior being monitized", most
| people don't care about that at all.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| No, I care about that as much or more.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| But are you most people?
|
| I'd wager that just by the virtue of being commenters on
| HN, we're already outliers.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| You're an outlier. Ask ten people at your local bus stop if
| this is important to them, and tell me how many start
| laughing at you :)
| squigz wrote:
| If I went up to random people and went like, "Do you
| approve of companies tracking what you buy, eat, do,
| where you go, and every other aspect of your life?" I
| promise you I would get a majority of "No"s
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| The question I'm asking is "would you pay more money if
| the service promised not to sell your data". That's a
| hard no for most people.
|
| If you frame it as a negative thing with no downsides for
| agreeing with you, of course people will agree. But
| that's not the reality.
| squigz wrote:
| The claim you made was that people don't care about their
| behavior being monetized.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Don't care enough to sacrifice anything tangible to avoid
| it, yes. I would think it's obvious the question as you
| framed it biases responses to the point they're
| meaningless...
| dylan604 wrote:
| 'People object to advertising because it is annoying and
| distracting. If the ads disappear, they got what they
| paid for. It's not about avoiding their "behavior being
| monitized", most people don't care about that at all.'
|
| That's your quote as I read it in case some editing
| happens. There's no caveat in your original post that you
| are claiming now. You've moved the goal posts. As you
| originally stated, I agree with all of the follow up
| comments to it that you are now trying to expand on your
| original comment. Maybe that's what you always meant but
| just left out of the original. It happens. But now you're
| being obstinate about it in a way that doesn't look good.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| No, you're just nitpicking the semantics and missing the
| forest for the trees. Everyone except you seems to
| understand that that was the beginning of a _discussion_
| , not an opening statement in a fucking court.
| dylan604 wrote:
| yeah, it's me with the problem, that's why i'm at least
| the 3rd person to take issue
| ajbourg wrote:
| Not because people don't value their personal data but
| because they, rightfully, value those promises as worth
| approximately nothing.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| It's an interesting theory, for sure. Continuing down the
| rabbit hole... I guess you could ask about "company
| promises" versus "regulatory prohibition". But then one
| might argue _that_ similarly rests on the population 's
| perception of the efficacy of government regulation,
| which is certainly also somewhat low...
|
| What's the solution then?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| People will also say they will pay more for a ephemeral
| good like privacy or patriotism, so I think you'd be
| surprised if you ask them your question. Where you're
| right is will they actually do it, and even if they will
| how much?
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I'd guess that if you ask people about a broad right to
| privacy, they will mostly express support for it. You
| could ask: "Would you pay extra for a
| guarantee your personal data is kept private?"
|
| vs "Would you pay extra for a guarantee
| your data isn't sold for marketing purposes?"
|
| ...and I would guess the first would have a higher "yes"
| rate, although still low. But I also expect a chunk of
| people would ask you to define "private" before answering
| the first question...
|
| One might argue "private" implies more than can truly be
| promised, for example no US company can promise to ignore
| subpoenas and actually follow through.
|
| I'd say it mirrors for patriotism: "do you support
| $OUR_COUNTRY" will get more "yes" responses than almost
| any more specific question about support for anything
| tangible. Precisely because it's sort of meaningless and
| unobjectionable... (well except in the US, where I'm sure
| it's correlated with whether or not one's favored party
| is in power)
| gremlinunderway wrote:
| It's because acompany promise is useless without actual
| enforced regulation which is harsh enough to actually add
| trust in such a contractual agreement being honoured.
|
| This is how we have a free-market to begin with. You need
| enforcement and structures in place so people will
| actually trust any of this crap. Instead, we have the
| nutjob early 90's cyber libertarians thinking this will
| all be magically fixed with just magical freedom and the
| invisible hand fixing everything.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Yeah, I don't disagree, another comment touched on the
| distrust part. But would people trust government privacy
| regulation more?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I specifically mentioned people _on this website_. Based
| on comments I regularly come across on this website, I
| don 't think the person you're responding to is an
| outlier. I would hope we can stay on topic.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| You missed the point.
|
| People on this website are too small a fraction of
| society to ever move the needle. My point is that it
| doesn't matter what people on this website want with
| respect to privacy, in our capitalist democratic society
| it will never happen unless _most people_ want it.
|
| The reality right now is that most people don't want it.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If that was your point, I suggest you post more clearly
| in the future, because your post did not suggest this.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| If we're giving each other advice, I'd suggest you read
| more carefully and with a more open mind in the future :)
| criddell wrote:
| Some of us don't care that much about advertising, but we
| object to surveillance.
| gremlinunderway wrote:
| People "don't care" because they do not understand the
| implications or the technology, not because they genuinely
| have no interest in privacy. Of course its easy to dupe
| people without technical literacy by characterizing it as
| some benign "targeted advertising" as if its a service being
| provided _for_ you (when clearly it 's not) rather than the
| actual answer which is "we want to follow your every movement
| and pattern of behaviour as if we had someone following you
| in an unmarked car and then sell that data to anyone willing
| to cough up the cash without any of your consent".
|
| This narrative is incredibly toxic and honestly a very
| antisocial viewpoint of people as if they are all just stupid
| sheep who deserve to be exploited.
|
| There's zero reason why its unfair for a person to both
| object to advertising because of the annoyance (because it is
| annoying) AND for a person to not want to be digitally
| surveilled endlessly without their consent.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| > People "don't care" because they do not understand the
| implications or the technology, not because they genuinely
| have no interest in privacy.
|
| I don't disagree with you there.
|
| > This narrative is incredibly toxic and honestly a very
| antisocial viewpoint of people as if they are all just
| stupid sheep who deserve to be exploited.
|
| The people get what they vote for, whether or not its what
| they deserve. The only way to move the needle on this is to
| educate people. Telling people they're "stupid sheep" for
| not wanting the thing you think they should want is not
| typically a winning strategy, in my experience.
|
| > There's zero reason why its unfair for a person to both
| object to advertising because of the annoyance (because it
| is annoying) AND for a person to not want to be digitally
| surveilled endlessly without their consent.
|
| I'm simply saying I think _most_ people care more about the
| first thing.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Your opinion is unpopular in this subset of folks here, but
| it's valid.
|
| It isn't out-of-keeping in this kind of company for a person
| to start discussions about personal data privacy. In fact: We
| chat about this stuff here _all the time_.
|
| But in reality: The number of discussions I've had about
| personal data privacy and monetization face-to-face with
| people _that I did not meet through a computer network,_ or
| _bring up myself_ is exactly 1.
|
| It's thus my observation that most people in the world care
| about this issue approximately...never.
|
| (The reason they don't care may be that they don't know
| enough to even begin to question whether the people behind
| their air fryer, genealogical DNA service, garage door
| opener, and food delivery system may have ulterior motives.
|
| But guesses about root causation are, at best, both
| tangential and broadly inconsequential. We can guess and
| figure and re-figure and even prove theories until the cows
| come home.
|
| And it doesn't matter.
|
| They didn't care yesterday, they still don't care today while
| I write this, and they will continue to not care tomorrow.)
| teeray wrote:
| If you have the disposable income to pay to remove advertising,
| you are exactly the market segment advertisers want to reach.
| They will always be willing to pay to outbid that segment's own
| desire to not see ads.
| landgenoot wrote:
| This is very insightful
| neom wrote:
| Just to give you another little titbit if you're
| interested. I work in go to market, and part of that is
| awareness, and part of that is advertising. Where people
| use the platform has a huge impact on the prices you pay to
| advertise on the platform, for example reddit is very
| expensive because they have a very high mobile traffic
| population, and the ads can't be blocked, advertising on X
| is hard because the people I want to reach all pay for
| premium, so the traffic you get from it now is basically
| useless, linkedin skews towards desktop, but their
| targeting is amazing, but because they skew towards desktop
| people run ad blocks, some platforms let you pick the
| devices you serve to, some don't, all of it impacts the
| price you pay to serve the ads.
| landgenoot wrote:
| So, don't do targeted advertising then?
| neom wrote:
| Well, it doesn't really matter that it's expensive or
| hard: that's what we have VCs for. More money you can
| raise, better targeting you can pay up for. You'd be
| amazed at how much oxygen you can suck out of a market
| for a million bucks.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yep. People are paying for the privilege of segmenting
| themselves into the high disposable income categories of the
| market. They're paying to do the corporation's market
| segmentation for them.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I started to rebut this with the expected value of the bid...
| but if you're advertising a sports car, it's worth paying
| $100/impression even if your conversion rate is 1%.
| rbalicki wrote:
| If the ad impression is worth that much (which seems
| extremely rare), then there's a profitable trade to be had,
| where I'm paid to see the ad and the platform is paid to
| provide the ad. Then all parties are happy.
|
| Anyway, the devil is in the implementation details here,
| but this doesn't strike me as a common case.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| For ads I see in places I paid not to see them, I add all
| the vendors to my "never buy from" list when this happens.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Isn't it fun when monopolies show you ads.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't know about "always", but the general correlation of
| interest in "paying to not have ads" and interest of
| advertising dollars in "paying to get to you" rings true and
| is often overlooked.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think the general correlation is that corps will find
| ways to make more money than they are now while they will
| all eventually realize data aggregation can be monetized
| monerozcash wrote:
| I'm not sure this is true, the people who would pay to not
| have non-distracting ads are likely a demographic that does
| not convert very well.
| SR2Z wrote:
| If they're half as likely to convert but four times
| wealthier, does it matter?
| monerozcash wrote:
| Four times wealthier does not mean they'll spend four
| times more on your products.
|
| The answer here isn't really obvious, but I'd suspect
| that in many cases this is not a very attractive
| demographic to advertise to.
| neom wrote:
| They should have used the term more valuable not more
| wealthy, their point is generally cogent.
|
| On the wealthy side, you don't need to be _that_ rich to
| pay not to get ads.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Added to that: it's in the middleman's interest to blur this
| distinction. You can sell a lot more "may or may not be rich
| enough to buy your product" adverts than you can "definitely
| rich enough" adverts. Even if the rate per advert is slightly
| lower, it probably makes the middleman (Uber in this case)
| more money. (And the rate per advert probably won't be a
| _lot_ lower because companies have fixed advertising
| budgets.)
|
| So now, to justify removing someone from your pool of
| advertisees, they don't just need to pay what could be made
| by advertising to them; they need to pay for what could be
| made to advertise to them and (unwittingly) several poorer
| people.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > If you have the disposable income to pay to remove
| advertising
|
| So a fancy way to say that if you have 10 dollars?
| teeray wrote:
| I'm describing the general principle. If x + x = 2x, then
| it already follows that 1 + 1 = 2.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You could just as logically say that if the user has
| spent money to remove advertising, then they now have
| less money and are less valuable to advertise for.
| csa wrote:
| > You could just as logically say that if the user has
| spent money to remove advertising, then they now have
| less money and are less valuable to advertise for.
|
| Thank you for the laugh.
|
| While this may be true on an individual level, it's
| wildly not true in aggregate.
|
| The first dollar is hardest to get. Once someone has
| shown a propensity to spend _on pretty much anything_ ,
| they become _much_ more valuable as an advertising
| target.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| So it's not
|
| "If you don't pay for a product, you are the product"
|
| It's
|
| "If you don't pay for a product, you are a less valuable
| product than if you'd pay for the product"
| goalieca wrote:
| I paid quite a fee to have crave streaming service in canada.
| It's pretty premium with HBO and that. Yet, all the star trek
| shows are now behind ads.. several minutes for a 20 minute
| episode of lower decks. Things are getting out of hand.
| charles_f wrote:
| I was paying $24 for crave. They showed me ads.
|
| I'm not paying crave anymore.
| oniony wrote:
| But rest assured they'll blame piracy for their downturn in
| revenue.
| mystraline wrote:
| Get a cheap VPN and then pirate.
|
| That technically is also competition. And if the market
| offers garbage for money, but the illegal market is free
| and better, go with the illegal choice.
|
| You'll be treated like a criminal either way with DRM.
| So... Yeah.
| monerozcash wrote:
| Unlikely, does anyone in this sector actually bother
| complaining about piracy anymore? Except for sports,
| they've largely managed to kill it off.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was paying for Prime. They showed me ads. I'm not paying
| for Prime anymore
| AznHisoka wrote:
| If you arent paying, you are the product.
|
| And if you are paying... you're still the product as well.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. Only way to avoid becoming the product is to become a
| "pirate" instead. Pretty sad but it is what it is.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Thers no ads on the high seas?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not until that asshat company wanting to deploy satellite
| constellation that displays ads from space. It's not like
| there are billboards in the middle of the ocean
| qwerpy wrote:
| That was a stretch, really had to jam that little dig in
| there, huh?
|
| Although if they did somehow deploy their constellation
| as a legible ad, I wouldn't even complain. "Drink Coke"
| spelled out with a hundred satellites would be hilarious.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What dig?
| qwerpy wrote:
| I've seen ads of several varieties:
|
| - Public websites are chock full of ads
|
| - Downloading a file often means hopping through several
| redirects (each of which is an ad) and sometimes even
| having to "complete an offer" to get the final link
|
| - Private websites have some affiliate deal with VPN
| providers. "We did the research, this one is the best, if
| you subscribe through this link you will get some perks
| on our website".
|
| Of all the kinds of ads out there, that last one is the
| least objectionable to me. They don't force it on you, it
| doesn't clog up the important parts of the site, and they
| supposedly do some research to pick the best provider to
| affiliate with. I "never" click on ads but this one
| worked on me.
| malfist wrote:
| Why are you doing it that way? That's the hardest way to
| get content and most likely to infect you along the way.
| Just torrent stuff.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Torrent is what I meant by public/private website, I
| didn't want to spell it out in case someone got offended.
| I rarely use direct file download but for the odd mp3,
| console firmware/keys, etc it can be easier to grab
| exactly what I want.
| nemomarx wrote:
| If you can get a private tracker or sonarr running,
| pretty much no ads.
| gremlinunderway wrote:
| Yeah this is where I think government-regulation would
| actually be a solid-fit to try and govern some of this
| manipulative and unfair practices.
|
| There just needs to be a blanket-law where your data is
| considered every-bit as intellectual property as a piece of
| copyrighted media and for there to be consent established to
| sell or give your data to a third-party there needs to be an
| active exchange of payment, credit or services that is opt-in
| only, not opt-out from an intentionally obfuscated EULA
| update email.
|
| Require active opt-in and consent along with a clear set of
| goods/services/payment, and active simple on-demand
| revocation with strict timelines, and you could have
| companies actually properly incentivizing users to sell them
| their own personal data instead of it just being harvested.
|
| Unfortunately too many libertarian nutjobs out here think
| that the market here will magically fix all issues.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > too many libertarian nutjobs out here think that the
| market here will magically fix all issues
|
| I'll see your libertarian market nutjobs and raise you
| reflexive "regulation will fix it" liberals (I don't really
| know the right term here, but I guess it's the one that
| fits most closely with US politics for the last 60+ years).
| Neither group has much room in its worldview for the simple
| fact that some people are just jerks and will abuse any
| system.
|
| Regulation can be done well, but doing so in a way that
| doesn't just hand the entire segment to the current
| incumbents is _hard_ and regulatory capture isn 't just
| something market worshipers conjured out of thin air.
| underlipton wrote:
| Delivery in particular remains underpriced at even the high
| prices we see. The way the platforms are set up, you're
| basically paying to chauffeur a single order straight to your
| house, on-demand. Mobile tech and "own car" efficiencies don't
| begin to cover those costs. The problem was that this is the
| kind of service that they had to offer in order to supersede
| existing delivery.
|
| In an ideal world, you'd instead have drivers assigned to
| either particular neighborhoods or particular restaurants,
| allowing for order-stacking and predictable routes. Bonus for
| set-time daily deliveries (get your order in before 6 or have
| to wait until 9). Bigger bonus for set neighborhood drop-off
| points (like those consolidated mailboxes, but warming
| compartments). Anything more bespoke would cost extra.
|
| Unfortunately, the balance of inefficient operations,
| decreasing competition, and "line go up" is that prices have to
| increase.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Delivery was financially viable for decades before delivery
| apps. That's why restaurants did it on their own. What's not
| financially viable is VCs investing billions to create global
| oligopolies, and and then expecting outsized returns on that
| investment.
|
| At the same time you have processes like increasing
| suburbanization and development of even more car-centric
| infrastructure, which makes houses and restaurants even
| further from each other, and makes cheaper delivery vehicles
| like motorbikes infeasible.
| underlipton wrote:
| All of that is true. However, I think you don't account
| enough for the differences in the current and previous
| delivery models in delivery's viability. The old model was
| "drivers employed or contracted to individual restaurants,
| with fairly strict distance limits." Today's apps let you
| order from arbitrary restaurants to arbitrary delivery
| addresses. The other factors make the situation worse, but
| just this one is enough to turn a viable model into one
| that can't be profitable without someone involved getting
| scammed.
| efsavage wrote:
| In the earliest days of getting people to pay for cable TV when
| OTA was free, the pitch was that you'd see fewer/no
| commercials. That didn't last long...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not really. Cable TV started as a better way for people to
| get OTA channels when they were in marginal reception areas.
| My family had cable TV in the 1970s and it was a maybe eight
| or ten OTA channels and except for the PBS station they all
| had commercials, between shows and during shows.
|
| HBO was the first offering that didn't have ads during the
| show.
| efsavage wrote:
| Interesting, I grew up in an area with good reception, so
| the pitch was definitely fewer commercials on the cable
| channels (HBO, Nickelodeon, MTV), I remember standing in
| the living room as the salesman said this. It was true for
| a while, but eventually they caught up to OTA ad loads.
| dylan604 wrote:
| HBO was always a premium ad free channel. MTV was never
| promoted as ad free.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| and premium channels were ridiculously expensive back
| then too!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yea, the no ads theory of the history is cable seems to be
| pervasive. The only ad free channels were the premium ones
| like HBO. It's like people think the OTA channels that were
| packaged together had some magic applied that eliminated ad
| breaks from the exact same feed as the OTA broadcast. The
| cable only channels like USA also had ads as well. I guess
| it's just another example if you tell a lie often enough
| people will accept it as truth
| bluGill wrote:
| Catv originally stood for 'community antenna' and was for
| those who lived in a valley where tv signals couldn't
| reach. The community built one antenna at the top and ran a
| cable down to everyone. Of course it was an obvious
| addition after that to add extra channels.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Interesting! That makes sense now. I thought it stood for
| CAble TV and always wondered why they used two letters
| instead of just CTV.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this doesn't ring true; TV has always been deeply linked with
| ads, it just seems that they moved to fractional ownership of
| a show via many advertisers vs. the (perhaps less intrusive)
| show sponsor where the advertising was woven into the plot.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I think I'm older than most HN commenters. I can't Google
| up a citation, but "no or fewer ads" was part of the pitch
| in the early-mid 1970s in my recollection. You are correct
| about TV and ads, so maybe I'm wrong.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the earliest days of getting people to pay for cable TV
| when OTA was free, the pitch was that you'd see fewer/no
| commercials.
|
| No, it was quality of reception, especially for people who
| were farther from (or had inconvenient terrain between them
| and) broadcast stations; literally the only thing on early
| capable was exactly the normal broadcast feed from the
| covered stations, which naturally included all the normal
| ads.
|
| _Premium_ add-on channels that charged on top of cable, of
| which I think HBO was the first, had being ad free among
| their selling points, but that was never part of the _basic_
| cable deal.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| That varied by region. When cable came to my town in the
| early 1980s, HBO and Cinemax were part of the local cable
| provider's basic package. That lasted until the next
| provider bought them out.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Oh, sure, definitely some providers did some things like
| that early on to drive growth, especially when they were
| trying to drive into the areas less dissatisfied with
| existing broadcast quality then the initial cable
| markets. (And even once it stopped, it was common to
| bundle premium channels into the basic cost _for a
| limited time_ for new customer acquisition.)
| charles_f wrote:
| I think when you give money for a service it's a reasonable
| expectation that the company you're giving the money to will
| respect your privacy, if only because selling your data is not
| a great outlook and could jeopardize the main revenue stream.
| I'm guess I'm proven wrong
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Without regulation, you have no protections against these
| corporate actions. If you're expecting or relying on
| corporations to act in good faith, you are going to be
| disappointed.
| tdeck wrote:
| Uber, famously a company that respects existing laws and
| regulations.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Just one more piece of regulation, that will fix it! Voting
| with your wallet is better. No one is forcing you to use
| Uber, get more creative and stop using men with guns to
| impose _< current hot take because I'm pissed>_ onto
| everyone else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Is there any recent example of one of these huge tech
| companies actually reducing advertising due to people
| "voting with their wallets"? Or even making any customer-
| favoring change whatsoever (ad-related or otherwise) as a
| result of voting with wallet? "Vote with your wallet"
| gets trotted out here all the time but it doesn't work.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Doesn't work for who? If you stop using their service
| then you're not subject to getting your data sold by them
| because that data simply won't exist. There is no
| inherent need to get tech companies to "stop advertising"
| on a societal level.
|
| It gets trotted on a lot here because the overarching
| narrative on HN is that regulation is an answer to
| everything when it's easier to just... not use the thing
| if you don't like it. Rather than creating a mountain of
| regulations that only big business can comply with, I
| think it's better to choose what you do with your money
| as a consumer.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Doesn't work for YOU, because Uber burned many billions
| across 15 years making sure they killed all their
| competitors.
|
| In most places, your options for a taxi service are Uber
| or go fuck yourself. That's how they're able to get away
| with their price gouging, privacy recklessness, and
| share-cropped labor.
|
| Free market dynamics only work if you are in a free
| market. We're not, there's one player, and they won the
| market by literally just cheating and breaking the law.
| Sorry, sorry, "disrupting".
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| what alternatives in ride sharing / streaming / whatever
| are you suggesting I vote for with my money that doesn't
| do this? They all follow the same playbook.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Not giving them money is a start, and for alternatives
| I'd recommend finding another taxi service. Either the
| traditional yellow cabs or another private company/single
| owner-operator ones (like the ones that drive black
| SUVs/cars)
|
| For streaming, I'm not sure since I don't watch much, and
| YT+adblocker is sufficient for me. Again, not giving them
| money is enough of a signal if you don't find the product
| good.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| What if the service costs more to deliver than the market is
| willing to pay (e.g., search engines and social media)? I
| think it's reasonable to have advertising-supported services,
| it just needs to be clear up front. I don't mind dropping
| Netflix, Hulu, or other streaming services for Blu-Ray
| ripping and Plex if it gets too expensive, even with ads.
| awad wrote:
| While totally unaware of the underlying economics, I do
| find it interesting how the major LLM providers found a way
| to get a non-trivial portion of consumers to actually pay
| for the consumer service. Of course, ads are still coming,
| but it was objectively impressive to go from 20+ years of
| "search is free" to "search is free, but capped, unless you
| pay us."
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| LLM use is not a simple search. I pay for it to either
| aid me or autonomously do work with document authoring,
| software development, and market research. It's not
| apples-to-apples when comparing.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| if you looked at the underlying = economics - even a
| quick review - you'd see that paying customers is a
| relatively trivial portion. This is much closer to the
| dotcom race to maximum eyeballs; figure out the money
| part later.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >What if the service costs more to deliver than the market
| is willing to pay
|
| What if I don't have enough money to buy something and I
| want it anyway!
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| I don't think G-Suite customers are excluded from Google's ad
| tracking network. Microsoft enterprise? Neither. All you can
| ask if that they don't show you ads. And even that is
| temporary
| barbazoo wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > It uses LiveRamp's clean room technology, which lets
| companies aggregate their data in a privacy-safe environment,
| without sharing or seeing each other's raw or personally
| identifiable customer information.
|
| It's apparently not that they directly sell your PII at
| least.
| neom wrote:
| Uber ride app has ads in it now on top of data collection,
| service fees, etc, uber eats also sells sponsored placement,
| and then the fees and prices now... like what the actual fuck
| is this? https://s.h4x.club/9Zun85Lj - these people have lost
| their minds, y'all really gonna drive the business down to 10
| loyal customers who you milk to hell and high water? Weird
| strategy.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Target just started hitting me with completely third party
| ads right after you press pay in their app.
|
| They have also advertised for the Starbucks in thr Target
| stores long before when you go to pickup something.
| neom wrote:
| As someone who has spent their whole career in growth and
| awareness for business building, I see why people hate ads
| so much now - personally I love running ads, trying to
| place a good ad in a good spot for someone who will
| genuinely appreciate it, it can be very rewarding... but
| late stage capitalism, aka fervent consumerism, has driven
| business into a real bad place, it's a shame because
| business and commerce is pretty fun, better than conquering
| via killing anyways.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is why I don't pay to remove ads on YouTube, nor I give
| Amazon the pleasure to see more from my money than what I need
| to pay for prime deliveries.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are you saying you are purchasing a minimum of $25 to get
| those prime deliveries, or are you some how thinking you can
| pay for Prime deliveries while not also paying for Prive
| Video??
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am paying for the deliveries, the fact that Prime Video
| is part of the deal is something nice, but not what I care
| about, even less so after Amazon decided to force ads to
| people that were already paying in first place.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| We have to be real, there's no way anyone is currently paying
| the real cost of having McDonalds delivered right now...
| tanseydavid wrote:
| They just need a subscription model at Mickey Dee's. They can
| make up for the inefficiency with volume </sarc>.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| that and a shitty little delivery robot
| dewey wrote:
| When people say they are going to pay for an ad free product
| they very often underestimate how much the service would cost
| them. This is often a price higher than what they would be
| willing to pay.
| scbzzzzz wrote:
| I respectfully disagree my friend. When Investors , board,
| wall street is chasing second order and third order delta
| increase in a stock enshitification is bound to happen. If
| there is a board that wants return higher than previous year
| and when you can't optimize costs by improving tech, You find
| new avenues like showing 2 ads, showing 3 ads. Increasing
| subscription price or cheekly modifing terms of service and
| selling your data to 3rd party data brokers. it has nothing
| to do with subscription cost.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Okay.
|
| They're going to sell to marketers for ads I don't watch?
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| The key concept is that maximising the monetisation of each
| user is the ultimate goal. Once that is understood, Uber's
| behaviour makes sense as a subgoal of that bigger goal
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup. The most surprising thing about this announcement is that
| they haven't been doing it, already...
| mattlutze wrote:
| The prevailing implementation of capitalism compels all
| companies to continue developing revenue streams to increase
| their overall "worth."
|
| Any company that has unique or rare data is compelled to do
| things with it. Those that don't either can't figure out how or
| explicitly reject the reward function of contemporary
| capitalism. We should really expect those deviations to be the
| exception.
| benced wrote:
| "You pay for this service and rides aren't getting any cheaper"
| - you can't just say things. You could very well be right but
| you need to actually look at their margin profile over time to
| know if this is true.
|
| To give an industry that's a counterexample to the "they add
| ads and don't make things cheaper", look at groceries. It's a
| terrible, single-digit percentage margin business but they sell
| everything from placement in catalogue to whether the product
| is in a convenient spot on the shelf. That's a clear case where
| ads make it _cheaper_ for consumers.
| monerozcash wrote:
| Yeah, in competitive markets this would inherently cause some
| downward pressure on prices.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| > look at groceries. It's a terrible, single-digit percentage
| margin business but they sell everything from placement in
| catalogue to whether the product is in a convenient spot on
| the shelf. That's a clear case where ads make it _cheaper_
| for consumers.
|
| I don't follow... it certainly improves the grocer's margins,
| but how does that do anything at all for the consumer?
| alpineman wrote:
| Sometimes I believe they aren't monetizing me. With Kagi I feel
| quite confident, for example. It depends how prominently they
| put 'no monetization/ads' as part of their marketing. Uber
| doesn't do that, to be fair, and never have done.
| gnatman wrote:
| I'm pretty surprised they haven't been doing that for years
| already tbh.
| zx8080 wrote:
| Who said they did not? It's probably not public, that's all.
| smeej wrote:
| That was my thought too. "Starts"?? I assumed they had been
| selling aggregated data about user trips the whole time.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This data is extremely extremely valuable, so my guess is
| that they were sitting on it until they were sure this was
| the best business decision. Also they already have their own
| ads so they have certainly been using this data internally
| all along.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Marketing lead-generation and sales conversion is what every
| company does with their customer list eventually (sign of a
| failing business model.) Whether it is internal revenue
| generation, or a 3rd party... this is what most large web
| companies trade with Marketers.
|
| I would be more surprised if they kept peoples privacy, as even
| your credit card company sells the purchase data. =3
| nerdponx wrote:
| I'm surprised they weren't already doing this. Maybe they wanted
| to give it some time to see if there were other ways to monetize
| it before opening up the aggregates for sale.
| vasco wrote:
| As long as it is to advertise in their own platform sounds great.
| I'd rather have nice restaurant suggestions on top than
| McDonald's and Dominoes or whoever paid the most every day. Using
| Uber eats is like some app from the past with ads as global
| banners that are the same for all users. If you're going to throw
| me ads at least use my history to try and do something useful.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Just so we are clear about how advertising works, you will
| still just see suggestions from who paid the most every day.
| The data just informs the marketing teams whether they should
| pay more for your eyeballs specifically.
| esafak wrote:
| Not necessarily. It depends on the ad type; cost per
| impression vs click. The latter incentivizes relevance.
| keehee wrote:
| That something useful is turning you into a data cow and making
| money off of it while returning zero value to you.
|
| Seriously you want people to use your travel and movement and
| choice data to make a suggestion list of restaurants for you to
| order from? How helpless are you?
| crazygringo wrote:
| ...yes?
|
| I like good recommendations better than bad recommendations.
| The value I get is better recommendations.
|
| Like, I literally update the categories of things I'm
| interested in, in my Google profile, so I get less useless
| ads.
|
| People complain about bad and useless recommendations and
| irrelevant ads all the time. Personalization is how you get
| better ones.
| keehee wrote:
| Just wanted to verify how far you are willing to go to get
| a list generated for you that's probably not even that
| unique from the other Y number of people who love being
| suggested obvious information.
|
| How many combinations of the restaurants around you do you
| think exist and are needed to provide that information?
| Certainly need Uber guzzling down Terabytes of data to rank
| the local Chiles over the local Applebees.
|
| Lets be honest, restaurant suggestions aren't a real
| problem anyone has.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Lets be honest, restaurant suggestions aren't a real
| problem anyone has._
|
| I suspect you don't live in New York City, or another
| city with a thriving restaurant scene where new places
| open and old places close all the time and you can't keep
| track of them all in your head.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I get your point, but the problem here for me is that
| most of the available information about said restaurants
| (ads and social media reception) and just noise, there's
| no actual signal there about whether I'd actually like to
| eat at a restaurant.
| keehee2 wrote:
| Lol I do live in Nyc in Brooklyn (between Bedford Ave and
| Rogers Ave on Martense St, I've also lived in Carroll
| Gardens, East Village, Crown Heights, Upper West Side)
| and there are plenty of blogs and people with a vocal
| enough opinion in Nyc to not need to hand off my
| restaurant searches to Uber of all companies.
|
| If you have problems with restaurant rankings in Nyc
| you're not living right.
| crazygringo wrote:
| "you're not living right."
|
| Oh really?
|
| Sometimes you just need a quick decision, whether you're
| going somewhere with friends at the last second, or yes
| ordering delivery and just want something that will be
| one of the better options. Because there isn't 1 Chinese
| place in your delivery radius, there are 20.
|
| Believe me, I read restaurant blogs and talk to people
| too. But that's more for stuff I plan in advance, not
| last-minute decisions in a neighborhood I don't visit
| often.
|
| So maybe don't be so quick to judge that others aren't
| "living right", how about?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > People complain about bad and useless recommendations and
| irrelevant ads all the time.
|
| I've never heard any complaint about that except from
| people who work in adtech.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I see it literally all the time on HN, how useless and
| spammy and low-quality ads on the internet are.
|
| In contrast to high-quality ads that are e.g. for a movie
| you _actually_ want to see.
| knollimar wrote:
| Good recommendations are places where you maximize payment
| [to people willing to pay], not best experience.
|
| It's going to be a conflict of interest like most ads. It's
| not optimized for you but toward you
| goopypoop wrote:
| How often do you act on these recommendations?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Why would the recommendations be "good"? I assume you mean
| "good" here to mean good for you or in your interests. That
| isn't how ads are sold, they're sold to the highest bidder
| loeg wrote:
| A rational advertiser is willing to bid more for someone
| is more likely to purchase (i.e., for whom the ad would
| be "good").
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Rationality requires an actual estimate of the
| incrementality of your visit. As someone who has worked
| in the incrementality estimation function of adtech, for
| a measurment vendor to the likes of YoutTube, TikTok,
| Meta, etc., I promise you: the advertisers and the
| publishers have no fucking clue because the masurement
| companies, in their competition with one another for the
| business of these internet titans, juice their estimates
| to make them more attractive.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Trying to convince me to buy things isn't always good for
| me, though. It's good if the thing is useful or I already
| needed one and just need to know about brands, but a lot
| of advertising is trying to drive up consumption in more
| general ways that might cost me money unnecessarily.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| The "value" you get is recommendations generated by some
| combination of:
|
| -opaque optimization function over which you have no
| control and is not tailored to you (but yay you can sort by
| a few predetermined fields)
|
| -willingness of the recommended to outbid one another for
| your attention
|
| -companies who have paid some baseline pay-to-play vig
|
| If you want real recommendations, talk to someone who isn't
| profiting off of you.
| landgenoot wrote:
| I don't think the problem is these kind of suggestions.
|
| Are people suddenly moving more between corp A and corp B?
| Must be something going on, let's buy the stock.
|
| Suddenly multiple Ubers are dropping off people at a
| residential building during the night? They probably know
| each other. Let's flag that as a potential risk.
| jadyoyster wrote:
| There should be a law forcing ride hailing apps to give
| anonymized ride data to local governments so that they can plan
| public transport better. If they sell it to marketers they must
| be able to do this technically.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Anonymizing data is incredibly difficult to do:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-...
|
| > _New York City has released data of 173m individual taxi
| trips - but inadvertently made it "trivial" to find the
| personally identifiable information of every driver in the
| dataset._
| afarah1 wrote:
| Interesting read, thanks. The related article shows that even
| more robust anonymization techniques may still be
| insufficient (in the case of the taxi rides, spatial-temporal
| analysis could still lead to de-anonymization). More reason
| to reduce data collection. Unfortunately the trend is the
| opposite for governments all around the world.
| wtallis wrote:
| That example only demonstrates leaked information of the
| _drivers_ , not the passengers/customers. And the
| "anonymized" driver and license data wouldn't need to be
| released in any form at all to produce a dataset useful for
| public transportation planning purposes: approximate time of
| day and approximate location are sufficient to estimate
| demand, and there's no need to keep track of _who_ is making
| which trips.
| jadyoyster wrote:
| Exactly, all you need to start is "a significant amount of
| people from this area want to go to those areas".
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| It's really not unless of course you are dis-incentivized to
| provide anonymous data. The ground is thick with prior art
| and existing solutions.
|
| https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-
| topics/d...
| wtallis wrote:
| Well, there _are_ pitfalls, and it 's easy for an
| "anonymization" scheme to leak more detail than it would
| seem at first glance. But I agree that motive plays a big
| role. If your purpose in sharing data is to _make money off
| it_ , then you'll be trying to share as much data as
| possible, and will try to convince yourself that your
| anonymization is "good enough".
|
| If you're sharing data for a specific purpose, then it's
| much easier to limit the data sharing to suit that purpose:
| omit irrelevant data, aggregate where possible, and
| anonymize individual data points only when you actually
| need to share that level of detail.
| keehee wrote:
| Will gladly start using and paying for local car services
| instead.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Do those still exist?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yes.
| hgfguj467 wrote:
| They're called taxi cabs. You'll see "taxi" printed on the
| vehicle. If they have a light on the top of the vehicle that's
| lit, you can just wave at it, arm raised and it'll pick you up.
|
| Pretty amazing really. They'll even uturn if they are on the
| other side of the road.
| keehee2 wrote:
| Ah but there was an Uber before Uber called private car
| services or gypsy cabs.
|
| Flatbush Ave and Church Ave in Brooklyn also have a good
| amount of $1 buses and $1 cabs going up and down the avenue.
| This is on top of the MTA busses and subway in the area.
| xnx wrote:
| Another reason to use Waymo (for now).
| like_any_other wrote:
| Back in the day in my country, if your neighbor or taxi driver
| was informing the authorities of your habits and travels, this
| was considered a dangerously hostile action. If no willing
| informant could be found, there were torture basements to get it.
| It's what kept the government in power for so long. E.g. travel
| data makes it easy to identify nascent political groups.
|
| Thankfully corporations have proven themselves so trustworthy and
| benevolent, we don't think twice about giving them the data they
| used to have to torture out of us. Likewise the governments, that
| we know are among the buyers [1], are just as beloved and
| uncontroversial, unlike in the old days.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/14/23759585/odni-spy-
| report-...
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Welcome to the Panopticon.
| techterrier wrote:
| At this point im just going to move to Shetland, live in a hut
| and spend the next 30 years making wooden boats. It's the only
| way to be free of this nonsense.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or not use these services? I've never used Uber once in my
| life.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, this is just one particular service, have you not
| read the other articles on how private companies are mass
| tracking license plate information/location and selling it?
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm quite surprised this was not already being done. But yes, ALL
| services will do their best to maximize value and make the
| service worse for you. One way in which they do this is to sell
| your data to marketers.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Advertising is a virus that seeks to invade every ecosystem.
| zkmon wrote:
| I'm not surprised. It won't hesitate to turn more unethical than
| any other company.
|
| Uber support in India is the most robotic and useless I have ever
| seen with any vendor. I gave up after fighting for months, just
| to utilize my wallet amount in other country or get refund. Both
| were impossible.
| harvey9 wrote:
| The Uber app keeps pushing notifications to advertise fast food.
| This is so annoying since you need alerts enabled for when your
| ride is on its way. As I am a very infrequent customer I just
| uninstall the app, and reinstall it if I need a ride.
| Marsymars wrote:
| You don't actually need alerts enabled for your ride - I just
| get ready, order my ride, then have a seat in a chair where I
| can see the road and do some reading. When my ride shows up I
| leave the house.
| davey48016 wrote:
| This is why I use Lyft, and only install Uber when I'm
| traveling to a country where Lyft doesn't operate.
| cptnntsoobv wrote:
| This abuse of notifications (and the user) is quite prevalent,
| unfortunately.
|
| In the case of the Uber app you should be able to turn these
| off (they are conveniently enabled by default, of course!).
|
| On the iphone it's Setting -> Communication -> Marketing
| Preferences -> Push notifications.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Honestly, I'm surprised this is news. As in, I assumed they were
| already doing it, because that's what companies do in 2025.
| loeg wrote:
| It sounds like Uber is literally _selling data_ ; as opposed to
| when Facebook is accused of more metaphorically "selling data"
| (allowing advertisers to target their ads).
| advisedwang wrote:
| Article says:
|
| > It uses LiveRamp's clean room technology, which lets
| companies aggregate their data in a privacy-safe environment,
| without sharing or seeing each other's raw or personally
| identifiable customer information.
|
| > A hotel brand could use Uber Intelligence to help identify
| which restaurants or entertainment venues it might want to
| partner with for its loyalty program, for example.
|
| Not much details on that "Clean room" but it sounds like the
| third parties get an environment where they can join their data
| to ubers and then run aggregate queries, but not actually see
| individual customer records. I'm not sure how I feel about
| that.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > I'm not sure how I feel about that.
|
| Consider what will happen every time there is a trade-off to
| be made between making/keeping the data more useful to the
| companies involved, and actually upholding the anonymity of
| the data subjects.
|
| Anonymization is nearly impossible to get right even when
| you're trying really hard, and this is more likely to be a
| fig leaf to be able to do things that are illegal by
| sufficiently obfuscating them.
|
| I hope that if EU customer data is included in this, the EU
| will have the balls to actually enforce GDPR. Uber is one of
| the few tech company cases where 2-4% of overall revenue
| would actually hurt, rather than being a small "tax" on the
| extra profit made through the illegal use of data.
| nerdponx wrote:
| A lot of other companies are in the business of selling data,
| too. It's not like Uber is uniquely evil for doing this. I'd
| argue that selling aggregated metrics is comparatively
| innocuous compared to what Meta does with fingerprinting,
| shadow profiles, etc. and also compared to what credit card
| companies, banks, credit rating agencies, ISPs, etc. can do.
| zouhair wrote:
| Imagine a World where legacy taxis are no more. Yup, it's gonna
| get way worse.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| The only thing legacy taxis add that Uber's don't is being able
| to hail them from the street.
|
| Other than getting in a taxi line at the airport, I've never
| been able to use street hailing as a practical way to get
| around. There just have never been enough taxis in the places
| that I've lived.
| lacoolj wrote:
| Cool so not only do the prices of the food not drop (because
| Uber's crazy fees to the restaurant), but we also get to suffer
| through (more) ads, and they will now be targeted? And Uber makes
| even more off it all while making no improvements to the user
| and/or provider experience?
|
| I just realized taxis still exist and most restaurants offer
| their own delivery service (or pick-up!)
|
| It's been real Uber. GL HF
| throw58903 wrote:
| I have misguided friends working with payment processors (think
| companies like VISA, mastercard, etc.) to build models that run
| across all transactions to extract the purchasing behaviors of
| individuals, uncover correlations between accounts for marketing
| purposes, and predictively model future purchases and life
| events. Surveillance is inescapable at this point. How long until
| AI shops for us based on past purchases or we live in a world
| where mass individualized price discrimination is the norm? How
| to avoid that future? Sometimes I forget privacy is a basic
| right, as society often requires that we sign it away.
| kkukshtel wrote:
| duh
| Animats wrote:
| Can you buy Uber's "Ride of Glory" data? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/uber-crunches-
| user...
| jmward01 wrote:
| The core issue here is one of companies lying about the service
| and the price. TOS should not be allowed to hide price at time of
| checkout, which they effectively are doing by allowing selling
| personal data. So the fix is simple. if they are going to make
| additional money on you after the service ends and that is
| considered part of the payment then it should be clearly
| displayed as part of the cost and NOT allowed in the TOS. This
| should be required by law. If you are making money off of me and
| I don't know it it should be a crime. You stole from me.
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