<story><title>Rides of Glory – Uber Blog (2012)</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20140827195715/http://blog.uber.com/ridesofglory</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmcclure</author><text>I gotta say, I&amp;#x27;m not really seeing the creepy &amp;#x2F; cringey &amp;#x2F; evil &amp;#x2F; whatever-else here...&lt;p&gt;Anyone (especially the HN crowd) should know they have the data, and if you think they&amp;#x27;re not carefully analyzing it behind the scenes (like every other tech company who has your data), I&amp;#x27;ve got things to sell you. I personally think a tiny peek like this into the data, much like the usage posts that OKCupid, YouPorn, and others give, is neat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>striking</author><text>The problem here (for me personally, at least) is that Uber is not in the business of selling dates&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;encounters&amp;quot; and that people don&amp;#x27;t expect a ridesharing company to go right for the sexual data. Even OKCupid is straddling the line here with &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.okcupid.com&amp;#x2F;index.php&amp;#x2F;we-experiment-on-human-bei...&lt;/a&gt; noting that:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  To test this, we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match.)
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
That&amp;#x27;s really not something people like having done to them. And the &amp;quot;HN crowd&amp;quot; shouldn&amp;#x27;t have an expectation of privacy and decency in data? Of course they&amp;#x27;re analyzing data, but it&amp;#x27;s really the viewpoint from which they do it that is unsettling. OKCupid says &amp;quot;no, duh, we&amp;#x27;re unethical. Deal with it.&amp;quot; Uber says &amp;quot;Check it out! We drew a line between social security checks and prostitution!&amp;quot; (as waterlesscloud notes at &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8644138&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=8644138&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;p&gt;There are a million more beneficial ways that people could be using the data. Fighting hunger, poverty, illiteracy, etc., to me, is a &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; use of Big Data. Looking at sexual habits (when you&amp;#x27;re not selling sex) or openly manipulating people to get data is, to me, a &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; use.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rides of Glory – Uber Blog (2012)</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20140827195715/http://blog.uber.com/ridesofglory</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmcclure</author><text>I gotta say, I&amp;#x27;m not really seeing the creepy &amp;#x2F; cringey &amp;#x2F; evil &amp;#x2F; whatever-else here...&lt;p&gt;Anyone (especially the HN crowd) should know they have the data, and if you think they&amp;#x27;re not carefully analyzing it behind the scenes (like every other tech company who has your data), I&amp;#x27;ve got things to sell you. I personally think a tiny peek like this into the data, much like the usage posts that OKCupid, YouPorn, and others give, is neat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>physcab</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a difference between this type of post and a post by OkCupid. OkCupid is a dating platform and their blog posts are net-positives for their users. What should I say in my first opening message? What do I wear in a picture to attract a mate?&lt;p&gt;By contrast, it&amp;#x27;s simply not professional and reeks of juvenile behavior for Uber to be writing a post like this. Just because you have data and have these thoughts, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean you have to do the analysis and show the world. It doesn&amp;#x27;t help their users, it&amp;#x27;s not even that interesting, and it&amp;#x27;s not relevant to their value proposition as a business.</text></comment>