“Using data such as a person’s geolocation or their phone battery to determine how much to upcharge them for a good or service further exacerbates this issue of affordability for our affiliate members and for workers,” Fernandez said.
This person is in a shitty neighborhood and about to be trapped there. Quick! Let’s just up the price by 300%!
-Asshole Executives
In a functioning society it would already be illegal because of the discriminatory pricing.
In a functioning society those who even attempted this would be beaten to death. There would be no second chances.
Ehm yes sounds very functioning to me
I say torture them till they learn to be better. Inexplicable pain is what gets em
Unfortunately, “people who need to charge their phone” is not a protected class.
Maybe not, but Uber should know what they’re doing when they’re targeting people who use economy handsets and integrating additional information. They’re trying to select the vulnerable people which is against the spirit of it. But indeed.
Exploiting vulnerable people is as American as apple pie.
Perhaps not, but we can all agree that’s a form of predatory capitalism and it’s unethical. Not to mention a massive invasion of privacy.
Why is the OS even making that info available to them? That should require at the very least explicit consent (maybe a, like, “hey, dickhead, let us know how desperate you are so we can charge you more up the ass” alert)
I can imagine an engineer working on the OS going “we’ll expose battery info via this API. Responsible developers can then use this to, like, turn off battery intensive operations when the charge is low”. Something naive and optimistic like that
It’s an extremely rare vector for any sort of attack. I’m sure people didn’t consider the most evil of evil abusing it in these kind of scenarios.
RFKjr wants everyone smartwatch-monitored. Uber’s need-to-pee surchage of 320% forthcoming.
Uhh they could make their app waste your battery more and create free money?
Sounds pretty dumb to me.
Rule of thumb: If you think about something, the company already looked into it ;)
Yeah, Uber and Lyft both use a crapload of battery when it’s trying to sync me with a driver. I can see rideshare apps shuffling you around to different drivers until the battery is really low, only to swoop in at 15% to find you a driver at 3x the price. What are you gonna do, not take it?
What are you gonna do, not take it?
That’s exactly what I would do. I would just use public transit because my country isn’t a capitalist hellscape. But Uber and Lyft can’t even get licensed here because every driver needs a valid taxi license.
sobs in American
Easy fix - Store contacts for local cab companies. One of our local companies even has their own app.
Simple- we need a new app to spoof the battery level.
