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by ianamartin 3355 days ago
The press is creaming their pants over the Uber scandals for the same reason they creamed their collective pants over Trump. It gets clicks. But the coverage for Uber is mostly positive in sentiment.

The stories about sexism at Uber are couched in the overall story about a great company doing great things, led by a great leader, and this is a setback that needs to be dealt with.

Look at any of the recent stories about Theranos. It's a bad company doing bad things, and Holmes is probably a criminal.

And if you don't think that irresponsibly deploying unlicensed driverless cars is as bad as outsourcing your tests because you aren't quite there yet with your technology, I beg you to reconsider.

One of those is worse than the other. To my knowledge so far, Holmes is not responsible for acts that genuinely put people's lives in danger. Uber is.

1 comments

Are you serious?

You think a glorified taxi company has put more peoples' lives in danger than a company that knowingly sold, deployed, and signed off on an health instrument and lab work that simply did not work?

An instrument and lab work that people relied on to accurately assess the contents of their blood?

An instrument and lab work that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said "did not comply with certificate requirements and performance standards"

and deemed a:

"immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety"

The reason that the stories about Theranos are about a "bad company doing bad things and Holmes is probably a criminal" is because they are exactly that!

Uber is a taxi company that most people enjoy using, has not fraudulently screwed people over, has at least on a surface level removed a level of racism (my roommate no longer has to ask me to flag a cab down for him btw), and can be linked to a reduction in drunk driving. Yes, their CEO is a douche, and they have a horrible company culture, but they are not systemically screwing people over like Theranos was.