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by untog 3479 days ago
You don't know until someone investigates, obviously. But if you have to choose between an app that definitely does that and an app that might do it, it makes sense to use the one that might in the meantime.

There's an opportunity for Lyft to be "Uber, but for not scummy business practises" here, but I suppose most users don't really care. Austin would have been a good test of that, but Lyft withdrew along with Uber.
2 comments
joatmon-snoo 3479 days ago
Lyft, sadly, doesn't seem to have the talent it needs to pull this off. Although they're still worth something, it just doesn't seem like Lyft will be able to eke it out unless something really game-changing happens to Uber.

I've been a longtime Lyft user because of the stories that surfaced a few years ago about Uber considering blackmailing reporters and politicians with their ride data, but the last time I had to use the app, Lyft for some reason just wasn't working - their auth service seemed to be broken. I ended up downloading Uber and signing up because I had to get somewhere in a hurry and didn't have the time to look up another rideshare service. Their text notifications about driver arrivals are also always off, on the order of up to a minute or two (I don't know if Uber is better, but I would assume it is.)

FWIW, I'd also sunk something like $300 into Lyft rides just two weeks before that for business travel, and I didn't experience a problem once.

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jka 3479 days ago
Lyft engineer here, so bear in mind any bias, but we take account and data privacy very seriously, and have a data privacy team which focuses on these kind of issues.

From where I stand, we have great engineering and product talent. Perception is tricky - I see that we're very agile with (sometimes far) fewer resources, from the view I have.

I'd be glad to dig into the auth issues you ran into if you're able to ping privately with a few more details.

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subdane 3479 days ago
There's also the "god view" scandal which Uber definitely did get sued for (there haven't been similar lawsuits against Lyft) https://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-settles-godview
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