[marky1991]

What is your justification for that?

If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?

[brookst]

You mean a cake brokerage or something?

These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.

A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.

Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]

So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.

1. https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?... (Page 20)

[bombcar]

> same platforms allowed racial selections

Nobody seems to care that dating platforms (and porn I guess) are entirely built around racial selections, among others.

[EGreg]

My libertarian view on discrimination (independent of the Civil Rights Act) is this:

If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.

If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”

PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.

[marky1991]

Yes, I think the argument that "discrimination is fine so long as it doesn't result in complete shutout of a vendor/customer" is reasonable. But that argument didn't fly for the cake controversy case, so society doesn't seem to agree.

[bc569a80a344f9c]

In your cake shop example, the more accurate version would be some gay couples only agreeing to buy wedding cakes from cake shops with gay bakers.

On account of it's the customer choosing the service provider, albeit with the help of filters provided by an aggregator, instead of service providers denying service to customers based on their belonging to a class.

edit: I missed that you can, as a woman driver, also filter out male riders.

[rkomorn]

The preference can also be set by women drivers not to accept men as riders, so I don't think your example fully covers it either.

[marky1991]

Why does it change whether it's discrimination or not depending on who does it?

I don't see how the distinction is material.

[commandlinefan]

> If an employer

Actually, in this case, the rider _is_ a (temporary) employer.