[ivraatiems]

I will try to help you understand. Two years ago, Peter Sims asked: "Can we trust Uber?"[24]. The answer is no.

There's just way too much awful stuff going on at Uber to ignore all of it or claim everyone's distaste is political. (It's also silly to suggest that all of the media and/or Silicon Valley have the same set of ulterior motives.)

Here's just a sampling of Uber's misconduct. Some of these items cross categories, but I've tried to roughly divide them up.

* Culture problems: The sexual harassment described by your "disgruntled employee" has been backed up and verified by others.[1][19] Its culture has been described as a constant battle between warring factions with managers openly backstabbing and abusing other managers and employees.[7] It hires executives who have ongoing harassment claims against them, then forces same executives to resign unceremoniously.[17] Its culture has been purposefully designed to cause employees to work against each other.[18] It blcoks employees from chatting on anonymous apps.[21]

* Corporate governance problems: It behaves anti-competitively in ways that are dubiously legal in order to sabotage competition.[2] It is also alleged to steal from other companies.[3] Its executives have suggested 'digging up dirt' on journalists in order to silence them, spurring a Congressional inquiry.[8] It offered drivers money to show them paystubs from competitors.[12] It also tries to prevent drivers from driving for any other company, even though it insists said drivers are 'contract employees.'[14] It has been and is being sued by numerous state governments over its business practices.[22]

* Exploiting users and ignoring privacy: It tracks/tracked one-night stands.[9] It collects users' location data in the background when the app is off.[10] It has been subject to FTC complaints over its tracking behaviors.[11] It lures drivers in with promises of big fares, then changes those fares arbitrarily to screw said drivers over and save riders money.[13] It is alleged to have mislead users by showing 'phantom cars' on its app.[16]

* Outright and attempted law-breaking: Uber breaks laws all around the world to enrich itself, including allegedly trying to deceive government officials across the world.[4] It refused to acquire a mandatory permit from the government until faced with public pressure.[5] It refuses to treat its drivers as true employees, even though legally they are considered such in many jurisdictions, and only complies when faced with court orders.[6][20] It attempted to investigate the plaintiffs in a class-action suit against it via methods that may have been illegal.[15]

All of this together helps explain why even Peter Thiel, himself not a particularly sterling gentleman, considers Uber "the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley."[23] I am gleefully awaiting Uber's downfall, as you say, because it is a legitimately evil company. Big companies aren't inherently evil. Uber is a big company which happens to be evil. If even a couple of the items in each category are true, Uber is engaging in a variety of illegal and morally unacceptable practices. I don't see how you can suggest, in the face of this much evidence to the contrary, that all of this is purely political.

And by the way? There's much more where this came from. This is just a smattering I could find in 20 minutes.

[1] https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-23/alphabet-... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-... [5] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/uber-rethinks-defiance-... [6] https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-deemed-employ... [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace... [8] http://www.franken.senate.gov/files/letter/141119UberLetter.... [9] http://www.marketplace.org/2014/11/18/business/final-note/ub... [10] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/uber-background-location-d... [11] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-... [12] http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/01/27/24830634/uber-is-... [13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/som... [14] http://www.recode.net/2016/11/28/13768756/uber-driver-deacti... [15] http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi... [16] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/30/uber-deni... [17] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/technology/uber-sexual-ha... [18] https://qz.com/918582/uber-is-designed-so-that-for-one-emplo... [19] https://medium.com/@contactkeala/sexism-at-uber-from-female-... [20] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37802386 [21] http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-blocks-anonymous-chat-ap... [22] http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/12/09/biz-break-san-francisc... [23] http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/18/technology/uber-unethical-pe... [24] https://thoughts.siliconguild.com/can-we-trust-uber-c0e793de...

[allenz]

I would discount what Peter Thiel says about Uber, because he is a significant investor in Lyft via the Founders Fund:

http://foundersfund.com/company/lyft/

[ivraatiems]

That's fair, and to be fair, Lyft does some scummy stuff, too.

But while he might have ulterior motives, I'm not sure he's wrong.