Uber: Hellish Lack of Restraint

As I have written before, I use Uber.  However, with every new scandal it gets hard and harder to patron a company that appears to have (or to have had) no sense of restraint.  Uber has received a pass time and time again from regulators--subverting existing laws and gleefully playing in the spaces where the law has yet to go.  

The new Hell program at the center of a WSJ report today is a great example of Uber's invincibility complex.  As the Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Greg Bensinger describe, Hell allowed for Uber to internally track both Uber and Lyft drivers so that Uber could provide extra incentives to get drivers to toggle back to Uber if they stray.   This is similar to the very creepy Greyball program that was reported on in the NYT in March.  Greyball allowed Uber to track regulators so that when they wanted a car, none would be available.  

Uber appears to be the tech company that privacy and tech law scholars fear: a behemoth that has become so essential to daily life that it is largely impervious to public pressure.  While campaigns like #deleteuber may influence some customers to leave the platform, we have yet to see Uber truly change.  This leaves regulation as the only solution to the many market failures Uber creates.