AI6YR BenCNN:‘I’m done’: Rideshare drivers on the brink of quitting over higher gas prices
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/04/01/business/uber-lyft-doordash-drivers-gas
*** Uber/Lyft have moved all the risk/expenses to the drivers, who are the ones that suffer, while the corporation retains most of the profits... it's fundamental to their business model, basically forcing the drivers into the "company town" kind of model where they can barely get ahead.
cpm@ai6yr
it was in their intial SEC filing
in plain text
Uber would become profitable when *ALL* trips/journeys were in Ubers
Right There!
No Transit
No bicycles
No walking
No nothing
*All*
&
folks said:
"Wow! An App based thing!
How disruptive!
How future!"
these shitheels offer *nothing*
nothing at all.
Uber is *100%* grift
is now
always was
from inception
@ai6yr
Side note:
The very week Uber was 'rubber stamped' to do biz in my (our) Univ town,
I was hit by an Uber driver "on my bike"
zipping around
'grabb'n that cash! (heavily subsidized by investor $$)'
we had 3 healthy taxi companies
all gone within a few months.
Nothing like unregulated wildcat cabs with gov license to operate to bury them.
&
That's what it was always about.
But! It's an app!
that's good!
Right?
Cory Doctorow laid it out nicely
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-big-lie-that-keeps-the-uber-bezzle-alive-8d6e8c0ccde7
14mission@cpm @ai6yr @pluralistic I really don't get why cities are so enthusiastic to displace taxis with Ub*r.
George B@14mission @cpm @ai6yr @pluralistic
The app does work way better than anything those taxi companies had before but it could have been stuck in front of a normal company instead of a scam
@gbargoud @cpm @ai6yr @pluralistic Agreed.
I take traditional taxis when it's practical (like when you fly into a place, they're all waiting for fares at the airport). When you're going from random place A to random place B, the app does work a lot better than calling around.
Traditional taxis need to get organized and have an app of their own.
Or does such a thing exist, and I just don't know?
I take traditional taxis when it's practical (like when you fly into a place, they're all waiting for fares at the airport). When you're going from random place A to random place B, the app does work a lot better than calling around.
Traditional taxis need to get organized and have an app of their own.
Or does such a thing exist, and I just don't know?
@14mission @cpm @ai6yr @pluralistic
Here in NYC there's curb: https://www.gocurb.com/
I think it's available in some other areas too but it needs a bit of polish and a lot of advertisement
@14mission @cpm @ai6yr @pluralistic
But for me, the only time I take a cab is for the last few miles when visiting family in the suburbs because none of them live within walking distance of a train station and the buses by them are completely useless.
That is a situation where app based hailing is so much better than any other one and I don't think there is any way the cab companies in the area will coordinate to all the same app
@14mission
it's an app!
new!
shiny!
technology!
it's the future!
I boggled at the council hearing where Uber's request to operate was rubber stamped with no pushback at all
my guess is it was Uber's promise they would solve all woes and all gov had to do is nothing.
@14mission
Nope
initials
with nickname 'Chip'
early days
needed username(s)
&
cpm was ez
&
for me?
fun
was using cp/m at the time
just kind of stuck
was super-annoyed when internic rejected my nic handle
@14mission
no idea
I know the big uber promise utterly destroyed over a decade's work of transit advocacy, , , , by intent.
locally?
transit got ruined by lockdown
now, 'short-bus' on-demand (someday) service running on lyft's (uber also-ran) app
for those of us with app allergies, declining cognitive capacity, no $$ for smart-phones, etc?
too bad
useless
@14mission
funny
i think back to the "Housing Now!" days of the late 1980s
under Bush-1
"you're poor?
black?
female?
with kids?
no resources?
Then to hell with you!"
Oddly
the bleeding-heart conservative Jack Kemp,
Bushyboi's sec of housing & urban development was actually kinda solid, which is strange
Lemme put it this way
no one who came along since was any better, mostly far worse.
Yes
Looking at you King Bill & Barack