Anyone listened to R4 Stert The Week this morning? The guy who purportedly coined the word was on, Cory Doctorow, plugging his book of the same name. Many examples caught my attention but one really amazed/infuriated me. Apparently UBER use algorithms which hike the price if you are a lone female with low phone battery in the rain and phoning from a dodgy area. This cannot be right? Discuss
Apparently UBER use algorithms which hike the price if you are a lone female with low phone battery in the rain and phoning from a dodgy area.
Source??
Yep. Listened to that whilst walking the dog. Assuming that what he said was true, it painted a grim picture of white how cut throat some online platforms can be. The nurse hiring platform that credit checks its users and pays lower rates to those with worse credit histories who are more in need was a stand out to me.
Are we surprised that our personal data that we have given away so flippantly is now being used to profit from us?
It was stated in the programme and given the current climate at the BBC I cannot believe that guests on this fairly high profile programme would be allowed to spout rubbish, or am I being naive? Ironically Amazon was highlighted for their dodgy practices, guess which retailler was top when I searched for his book?
Apparently UBER use algorithms which hike the price if you are a lone female with low phone battery in the rain and phoning from a dodgy area.
Source??
Cory Doctorow, mainly. I mean, he's absolutely not wrong, but dear god he's still dining out on this single idea he had - saw an article a couple of weeks ago where he applied it to Amazon. Like yeah, WE. KNOW. You've really hammered the point home; and I'm not sure why it's come to the fore again given he coined it what, 6-8 years ago?
See also Simon Sinek with "start with why". Good idea, summed up in a paragraph; not sure there's much more you can flog out of it mate, it's done.
I don't know, you think you've appreciated just how far from the original idealistic 'do no evil' of google the big tech co's have got, and they still manage to make my jaw drop
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/08/faecebook/#too-big-to-care
10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because; the fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue
...Despite its own automatic systems flagging the advertisers behind these scams, Meta does not terminate their account – rather, it charges them more money as a "disincentive." In other words, fraudulent ads are more profitable for Meta than non-scam ads.
...the anti-fraud team is only allowed to take measures that will reduce ad revenue by 0.15% ($135m) – even though Meta's own estimate is that scam ads generate $7 billion per year for the company
Back to Uber - it is usually about £30 for my semi-regular trip back from gigs. When it is raining, it is usually double that. The app claims that they are busier than normal, however I can still always get one straight away...
Back to Uber - it is usually about £30 for my semi-regular trip back from gigs. When it is raining, it is usually double that. The app claims that they are busier than normal, however I can still always get one straight away...
yes, but that could just mean they've perfectly balanced the demand/price curve (if it was any cheaper there would be more demand and you'd have to wait)
See also Simon Sinek with "start with why". Good idea, summed up in a paragraph; not sure there's much more you can flog out of it mate, it's done.
Haha, most Ted Talks would be better at about 1-2 minutes, eh.
Regardless of CD milking his big idea, it is really good that people are talking about this and that there's pushback in general.
Apparently UBER use algorithms which hike the price if you are a lone female with low phone battery in the rain and phoning from a dodgy area.
Uber deny this, evidence is inconclusve:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/uber-phone-surge-pricing/
yes, but that could just mean they've perfectly balanced the demand/price curve (if it was any cheaper there would be more demand and you'd have to wait)
Indeed - and I'd imagine drivers are falling over themselves to accept a £60 fare
You've really hammered the point home; and I'm not sure why it's come to the fore again given he coined it what, 6-8 years ago?
His book on the subject was published about a month ago, guessing that's why he was on R4 this morning
but dear god he's still dining out on this single idea he had
He's written a bunch of books, not all about this one idea, but about the potential for big tech to be a negative influence on life/environment/freedom. He may still be banging on about it, but I'd argue that's because people need to realise this and see it and the problem is worse now then when raised.
The book is available copywrite/DRM free too should you think he doesn't follow his own mantra.
I'll confess to enjoying a lot of what he's written, like black mirror, it's close enough that you can see a lot of the tech being a realistic portrayal of the near future.
I'll confess to enjoying a lot of what he's written
Yeah, I like his stuff too. Just near enough future that you can really see that things may well work out that way - see ''Unauthorised Bread' for example. But in general the books are optimistic in that they suggest that there will be a resistance, and it will use tech in a positive way. In his non-fiction works he's generally trying to encourage that resistance.
His book on the subject was published about a month ago, guessing that's why he was on R4 this morning
Ahhhh, that makes sense 👍 . Cause he has been talking about it online for a few years now; I hadn't realised the book was only now just coming out. And I've only come across his chat about enshittification - wasn't aware of his other stuff.
I shall go away and do some more research!
Everything has a market price that can go up or down. On demand pricing is coming to all areas of life in time if the capitalists get their way - why wouldn't they? .
Higher-end 10 speed bike parts value drops then goes higher as they get rarer.
Then it's Uber fares. Later it's your work time, or fuel, food and water.
Don't like how capitalism is working out? Could be tough.. the tech and algorithms are against you. How much do you need facebook or amazon? The sooner we find alternatives the better.
It did happen before computers. It is just easier - the democratisation of bad practice.
I knew of a hire boat company who allowed rich people to hire their luxury launch and then park it pretty much where they liked on the Thames. They would stick the boat in the best spot for the customer. The river police would turn up and say they had to move. The boat crew refused. The police gave them a fine. The boat crew smiled and stayed where they were. At the end of the day, the cost of all the fines were simply added to the customers price, perhaps adding several hundred pounds to the £5-£10K hire charge.
Everyone was happy, well, at least the customer and boat company were.
it is usually about £30 for my semi-regular trip back from gigs. When it is raining, it is usually double that.
TBF - charging people more when they'll want to pay more is transparently Uber's whole model. It's slightly different from charging women more. Normal taxis have the same rates when it's dry and when it's raining - order one of them!
TBF - charging people more when they'll want to pay more is transparently Uber's whole model.
I think the point of enshittification is not (just) that capitalism involves paying for things, it's that it's leading to the deliberate degradation of products and services in order to rake off even more profit. It's the airport lounge problem: if your airport works and is a pleasant place to be, why would anyone pay £25 a pop in order to hide out in the lounge? But if you deliberately make the airport shit for the masses, they'll be queueing out the door for the lounge. And lo and behold, that's what we have.
Or spotify: they make money when you pay each month, or when you listen to ads; and they lose money when actual proper music is played. QED: make hundreds of thousands of shit "music" tracks, previously through fixed-fee session musicians, now through genAI, and populate thousands of playlists with these things.
Am i too trusting. I think Apple would tell me if Uber could see the battery charge level.
I assume gender is disclosed when you sign up for Uber
Genuinely who is surprised by this?
It's the logical conclusion of free-market capitalist economics, where else would it end? There's a legal obligation on company directors to promote the maximisation of the share price, safely couched within a broad definition of "success". Technology is simply shortening the journey time to that destination in the absence of meaningful regulation.
I work for a multinational organisation which falls over itself to throw money at 3rd parties to solve our problems. Almost without exception this ends in disappointment as work is over-promised and under-delivered amid the 3rd party extracting as much value as they can from the arrangement. Everyone involved is a profit-motivated organisation. Yet still, people are temporarily shocked by the result before engaging with the next 3rd party and expecting a completely different outcome.
What's the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Also, wrt to your company, at what point do your shareholders (if you have them) realise that this type of situation/behaviour is consistantly robbing them of EPS and start kicking up a fuss?
Am i too trusting. I think Apple would tell me if Uber could see the battery charge level.
Yes, I'm afraid you are. This is a quote from Keith Chen, Uber's former head of economic research:
We do though, you know, in the Uber data, see a lot of really, really interesting patterns. So, for example, a data scientist named Peter at Uber discovered somewhat accidentally this really, really kind of interesting fact. And that is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not you are going to be sensitive to surge — in other words, whether or not you are going to kind of say, oh, I'll give it a 10 to 15 minutes to see if surge goes away — is how much battery you have left on your cellphone.
[…]
When your cellphone is like down to like below 5% battery and that little icon on the iPhone turns red, you know, then people start saying, well, I better get home, like, because I don't quite know how I'm going to get home otherwise. And we absolutely don't use that to kind of like push you a higher surge price, but it's an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behavior.
Am i too trusting. I think Apple would tell me if Uber could see the battery charge level.
I think Apple are pretty good about sharing specific data - as in, they default to more limited sharing than Android. But who knows?!
Also, wrt to your company, at what point do your shareholders (if you have them) realise that this type of situation/behaviour is consistantly robbing them of EPS and start kicking up a fuss?
Have we ever seen it happen yet? I guess if it ever does, we'll know - but until then, the endless share price increases presumably keep them quiet.
And actually, that's probably the root cause of much of this - the idea that your share price must constantly be increasing; that it's not good enough to make £x million in profit every quarter; next quarter you need to make more profit, otherwise you're doomed.
WTF is wrong with a company just finding a level of solid, robust revenue and profit, and sticking to that? What's this endless obsession with growth - which then leads to finding ways to cutting corners and reducing products in order to juice the figures?
It's a 5 year cycle: kick up fuss -> replace senior leadership -> embrace new senior leadership -> receive the same message wrapped in updated lexicon -> disappointment in results -> kick up fuss
The world moves on.
Genuinely who is surprised by this?
That Uber charge women with a low phone battery more? Me. Call me very naive if you like but this astounds me and makes me feel a little queasy.
That Uber charge women with a low phone battery more? Me. Call me very naive if you like but this astounds me and makes me feel a little queasy.
It's completely repellent, but I am unsurprised by it.
I have never used Uber, nor am I ever likely to - all the less so now for knowing this.
Rapacious capitalism has always been a thing, as has demand management - also known as price gouging. What's missing here is the will for the government to step in and stop it. FFS why are we paying these Americans to run a taxi company? Why isn't there a UK govt version of Uber that isn't under commercial pressure to do this kind of shite?
WTF is wrong with a company just finding a level of solid, robust revenue and profit, and sticking to that? What's this endless obsession with growth - which then leads to finding ways to cutting corners and reducing products in order to juice the figures?
For much of the enshittification culprits, the answer is venture capital. They get rich by betting on 50 companies, expecting 49 of them to fail hard, and 1 to become Meta/Uber/whatever. Having 25 fail, and 25 become $10M businesses employing 100 people isnt the return they are looking for, and probably isnt even wise with the winner take all economics of the internet. Those 25 solid small buinssess will probably just be bought by another VC's mooshot bet anyway.
Many of the founders in that VC portfolio will have preferred a slow and steady approach but get forced / cajoled / bribed anyway.
Am i too trusting. I think Apple would tell me if Uber could see the battery charge level.
Both Android and iOS apps are able to access your battery status without asking your permission
This is a quote from Keith Chen, Uber's former head of economic research:
We do though, you know, in the Uber data, see a lot of really, really interesting patterns. So, for example, a data scientist named Peter at Uber discovered somewhat accidentally this really, really kind of interesting fact. And that is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not you are going to be sensitive to surge — in other words, whether or not you are going to kind of say, oh, I'll give it a 10 to 15 minutes to see if surge goes away — is how much battery you have left on your cellphone.
[…]
When your cellphone is like down to like below 5% battery and that little icon on the iPhone turns red, you know, then people start saying, well, I better get home, like, because I don't quite know how I'm going to get home otherwise. And we absolutely don't use that to kind of like push you a higher surge price, but it's an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behavior.
Ken, like y'know, needs to kind of learn to say in maybe something like 10 words what, y'know maybe I don't know he is saying in possible something like 100 sort of words.
Both Android and iOS apps are able to access your battery status without asking your permission
Ah. how do you know that?
I struggle with long forum threads but
Can I put forward this forum, with ads, as an example. It's soooooo laggy, and I keep getting adverts for strap-ons with autoplay audio that mixes into what I am listening-to
TFYA
I work in tech. You can see some cross platform (ie both android and ios) docs for the battery api here: https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/battery/
contrast with location where you need to add permission messages: https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/location/#configuration-in-app-config
Like yeah, WE. KNOW.
You do. I do. You’d be surprised how many people are unaware that data mined from you can and is used to deliberately deliver you a worse service and a higher price.
I think Apple are pretty good about sharing specific data
But Apple also take around £20bn/yr from Google to make sure Google is their default search engine, according to the books Author. Google CGAF what it does with your data.
Or spotify: they make money when you pay each month, or when you listen to ads; and they lose money when actual proper music is played. QED: make hundreds of thousands of shit "music" tracks, previously through fixed-fee session musicians, now through genAI, and populate thousands of playlists with these things.
In the case of Drake, it’s in the billions.
Are we surprised that our personal data that we have given away so flippantly is now being used to profit from us?
Yet some on this very forum laugh at you when you try to maintain online privacy. We're well into Find Out territory here.
Yeah, battery is available for apps, so, for example, they can pause uploads or downloads waiting for the phone to have more charge rather than running it down.
I work in tech. You can see some cross platform (ie both android and ios) docs for the battery api here:
👍 Good knowledge!
It's amazing isn't it - and I guess it's an integral part of enshittification* - the extent to which things that haven't been explicitly excluded will be used by some tech arsehole as a way to make more money. I'd guess the reason permission isn't needed for battery life is because nobody at Google thought that it would be used in that kind of way; so Uber saw it as a big opportunity.
Yet some on this very forum laugh at you when you try to maintain online privacy. We're well into Find Out territory here.
A bunch of my information appeared in the dark web apparently. Courtesy of the MOD being unable to keep it secure.
I am a few quid better off as a result, but have to be very aware of a few things to make sure I'm not getting phissed or scammed.
The irony of people who one one hand criticise the government and the apparatus of the state for being unable to organise a piss up in a brewery, but when it comes to surrendering data think 'you have nothing to be concerned about'.
Unless I've needed an Uber XL, I don't think I've ever stated how many people are getting in the car with me.
So how do they know they are a lone female?
But Apple also take around £20bn/yr from Google to make sure Google is their default search engine, according to the books Author. Google CGAF what it does with your data.
You do have a choice of default search, and have done for quite some time. I don’t use Google as default search, I do occasionally use the Google app. My default search is DuckDuckGo and has been for a number of years. I also use the OrNET Browser app, which has full VPN.
It's not so easy to be under the radar, but it's not too hard either
It's amazing isn't it - and I guess it's an integral part of enshittification* - the extent to which things that haven't been explicitly excluded will be used by some tech arsehole as a way to make more money. I'd guess the reason permission isn't needed for battery life is because nobody at Google thought that it would be used in that kind of way; so Uber saw it as a big opportunity.
TBH even if battery was a permission gated api, there would be some bollocks about 'we need this to provide you with a great service' and 99% of people would just say 'ok'.
Not to defend Uber, who rightfully earned the title of the 'worst brogrammers in SV'. But this might not have been as intentionally nefarious as it seems (as in load of tech bros sitting in a meeting room with a list of 'people most likely to anxiously accept a surge price rather than wait').
When you are at the kind of scale that Uber are (and have been at for a long time), you'll have lots of algorithms automatically trying to attempt to optimise for a variety of things. Theres lots of approaches to this, but one is to identitify cohorts (eg women, not that the algo knows the significance of this!), and then to conduct experiments offering different prices according to a variety of parameters (such as battery status).
The algo will be able to determine a 'scenario' (g=F && b < 10) where surge pricing is likely to be accepted and then roll that out over the wider network, then continue to test and evaluate.
I've over simplified for explanation, but hopefully it makes sense. There's a certain 'algorithmic banality' to all this, it doesnt require some gilet twirling villan. Once algorithmic dynamic pricing meets a databroking dragnet (Uber knows your phone contract, your marital status, everything you've ever put online and lots of other stuff it statistically infers), stuff like this will just emerge. It's not just about showing you adverts for the garden shed you already bought
So how do they know they are a lone female?
This is what people don't get about data collection and combination... lots of disparate data points can be used to assume things about you that you wouldn't expect. Remember the stories of Amazon guessing correctly women are pregnant before they know themselves? They'll be lots of that. But if you don't buy into that (because you still think that companies only know what you directly tell them) then there's the fact that both drivers and customers can state they prefer do deal with females... pretty easy to work things out from that:
Remember the stories of Amazon guessing correctly women are pregnant before they know themselves?
Actually it was Target.
The Target story was about a teen pregnancy, and AFAIK was not true. All hearsay plumped up into a story that has stuck around like an urban myth. The Amazon stories on the other hand are multiple and real.
The Target story was about a teen pregnancy, and AFAIK was not true.
Nope. The Target story was about them using customer purchasing data to know when their female customers were pregnant and send them special offers in their voucher books.
We've all heard of allegations of phones and smart speakers listening to our conversations, because people swear they haven't searched for something and all they did was talk to someone about the thing. However, the other person might have searched for it, and they know you met them and spent time at the same location.
When this happens it's fun to try and work out how they know - because smart phones and speakers definitely are not listening to you directly, this has been proven multiple times.
No, they are just listening for trigger phrases and will then snap into active listening. So they are _kinda_ listening to you all the time and, I'll bet with the right warrent, they could be listening actively all the time.
Interview with the author. Good listen.
We've all heard of allegations of phones and smart speakers listening to our conversations,
It's one of the many reason why the MOD and others get borderline hysterical about personal electronic devices.
PEDs are a leaky sieve of data and information, not only for what's contained in a single device but also the risk due to the proximity to other devices.
The exploitation we were educated on by nerds was based on hostile actors, imagine what the companies who own the tech can access after we've given them permission.
However, the other person might have searched for it, and they know you met them and spent time at the same location.
I personally don't see much difference between a speaker listening and a device tracking me and my acquaintances. It is all still invasive data.
From a mental health point of view, I also dislike the micro-targeting of adverts.
If you start worrying about something and google it, you are then bombarded by adverts all over the place, youtube, tv, podcasts, social media, news sites, its inescapable, even with ad blockers. You couldn't design a better system to give the most of the population anxiety.
I personally don't see much difference between a speaker listening and a device tracking me and my acquaintances. It is all still invasive data.
Sure. What did you agree to when you signed up to use the service, by the way?
Anyone who claims they read and understand all the small print in service agreements and contracts we are faced with in modern life, is just plain lying.
We depend on legislation and governance to protect us from unfair contracts and to protect our privacy, unfortunately with governments in the pockets of the tech bros, that just isn't happening any where near the required level.
Since companies were allowed to settle out of court...