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Why is every story on Uber Delhi driver raping a passenger getting instakilled?
698 points by plinkplonk on Dec 7, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 110 comments
Every story on this incident is getting killed moments after submission.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711146

Is this story off limits on HN (genuine question)? Or is it some kind of pro Uber voter ring?

Given the previous discussions on HN about what an Uber executive said about a journalist etc I find it difficult to believe that HN readership doesn't care about this case, so I thought I'd ask. Fwiw this is on top of the news in every newspaper and TV Channel in India. TechCrunch reported it too (in a weaselly fashion, but still).

EDIT: I am fine with a mod judgement saying "Such stories are irrelevant to HN. Flagged".

This was a genuine question. I am not an "outrage warrior" or anything (see my comment history), I just found the instakills odd from a "something is funny here. I wonder if someone is gaming HN voting" perspective, and thought I'd ask.

Edit2: I did send email to the mods and didn't get any reply (understandable, given it is Saturday night in the USA. I just don't like nasty people gaming systems, which was a possibility here. Hence the post. Mods, feel free to remove if you think this is inappropriate)




I've been traveling all day and didn't see this, or the emails, until now. These stories were killed by user flags, not moderators. I'll look at the details in a minute. In the meantime, I'm burying this post for what should be an obvious reason: procedural questions about story ranking, and HN support questions in general, are off-topic for HN. The site guidelines explicitly ask you not to post them here.

Edit: I looked at all the flagged stories. I don't think it was a ring. It looks to me like users who feel that the story is off-topic for HN. Perhaps they feel this way more strongly because they're Uber fans—hard to say—but flagging of outrage stories (i.e. high controversy-to-substance ratio) is well-established on HN.

In cases like this, when the community is deeply divided, each side has a reasonable argument, and a large number of users clearly want the story to be discussed here, we usually pick one URL and turn off the flags for that one. If I hadn't been offline, I would have done so earlier.

The problem now is that it's not clear what the best URL is. None of the articles look great. I unkilled the Techcrunch one, but the thread promptly turned into a discussion of its title. If someone can suggest a good choice of URL in the next few minutes, I'll do that again. Otherwise it will have to wait overnight.


I find it hard to imagine how a moderator of a forum like HN could be more responsible, responsive, humane and just than dang. Keep up the good work.


[OP here] I am completely on board with the topic being killed/buried. I posted on HN only because I couldn't raise any of the mods (via email)and I was concerned about a pro Uber downvoting ring. If this violated the HN TOS, my apologies to all concerned.

Now that the mods have looked at who was doing the flagging and are satisfied that it was genuine HN users and not a voting ring, all is good. THis topic has (rightly) been buried. It is still 'alive' for those who want to discuss this further (not sure it is a good idea)


This URL has most up to date information: http://firstpost.com/india/delhi-rape-live-driver-arrested-f...


Since there are many Uber drivers on HN, many of them would have a pro Uber bias and would flag any stories that affects Uber negatively. Is there anything HN could do to stop this voting ring?


I hope you don't think that a campaigner with as much experience as David Plouffe is going to neglect to hire a social media firm to handle Reddit and HN stories about Uber.

This is what (a small part of) Uber's venture capital is going towards: hiring people to downvote and bury critical posts. It would almost be negligent not to do so, at this point in the internet's development.


That is an interesting idea.

As long as HN's code has the ability to detect such co ordinated flag kills and alert the mods, all good (imo).

Just to be clear, I have no position on whether HN should or should not discuss such stories (I can see arguments for either side, and lots of grey areas). I'd be personally fine with a 'tech only' focus (say).

My question was about why these stories were getting killed moments after submission, since many discussions have happened about women in tech, diversity, company business model unethicalities etc, without triggering flag kills.


I might be misreading your response but just to reiterate: Asking if Uber has a reputation management firm to handle stuff like this is like asking if they have tax lawyers.

And a professional, expensive firm would certainly have enough clean accounts to do this undetectably if that was even necessary (no idea what detection ability HN has).

In my opinion that's the most plausible answer to why, but it's not the only one.


HN should discuss whatever it discusses.


HN and Reddit's ranking systems are based on the assumption that the people voting are the ones who are actual genuine readers of the site. And thus for a company to organize a campaign of down votes (which seems the only way to exercise control over such social media) would, I assume, be a violation of the ToS.

Violating the ToS is a violation of the right to access-- specifically, it is "unlawful access", and while I doubt you could get a prosecutor to press charges, it feels to me that this crosses the line.


You make it sound like it's perfectly legitimate, while from my point of view, it's indistinguishable from astroturfing.


It's also an accusation made up out of whole cloth about a guy who started working at Uber months ago.


I notice you aren't claiming that it's false. And why is it relevant when he started working for Uber?


That's why we have comment sections ~!


News link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhi-cabbie-r...

Negligence: Quote"The woman had boarded the cab after booking it with Uber. We have found gross negligence on their part as they did not have even a GPS in the cab and the driver had not been verified."


My story with this link survived the culling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8710607


Nope, flagkilled.

Honestly this is starting to look absurd. HN readers consider this event interesting and worth discussing (as evidenced by this thread). There is an obvious effort to either censor or manipulate the system in order for the stories to stay off the front page. I would have expected more outrage.


  > HN readers consider this event interesting
  > and worth discussing (as evidenced by this
  > thread).
Correction - some readers consider this event interesting and worth discussing. As evidence elsewhere, other readers are flagging the story. One of the mods[0] has stated clearly[1] that it's being flag-killed.

  > There is an obvious effort to either censor
  > or manipulate the system ...
Nope - standard HN reader actions doing what the system is designed for.

========

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660


Its absurd to flag-kill stories with no upvotes. If something is taking up 10 spots on the front page and / or leading to shitty discussion...yeah go flag it up.

Clearly there were 600+ people who upvoted the topic of this thread, and a group of people who are censoring HN.

They're not flagging crap off the front page, they are censoring the NEW page.

I'm not sure how to conclude that's anything other than wrong...?? It may only take a couple of flags to kill a story but lets say it takes 5-6....who the hell are the 5-6 people trolling the NEW page killing stories?

At what hour on a weekend night? That's not a co-incidence. Its pretty absurd to think that's legitimate or healthy behaviour.

If the mods want to kill stuff...whatevr..."HN reader actions doing what the system is designed for" is a broken system.

Its basically a bunch of truthers an bullies having their way. I don't see how its fairly characterized as "guardian angels" looking out for the integrity of the site or its discussions.


I don't consider this interesting and worth discussing. It's an allegation (according to the one article I read). As we all know from the recent media coverage, allegations are cheap, and shouldn't be trusted automatically. I will continue flagging news stories like this that have little substance, unless there is an actual police investigation that results in a conviction.


> It's an allegation... As we all know from the recent media coverage, allegations are cheap, and shouldn't be trusted automatically.

No, it is more than mere hearsay according to the BBC, please see http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30368479

> A medical examination found she had been raped, police say. A man suspected of being the driver has been arrested.


That's a better story, then. None of the stories that were flagkilled were from BBC.


What? Uber doesn't even function without GPS...


Uber is a bunch of sketchballs and a bunch of sockpuppets flagging the story is totally within the realm of plausibility.


I can verify that they do pay very close attention to HN posts and when I previously disclosed some internal info they attempted to stomp it down very rapidly.


You're hinting at an abuse of the site that we should probably look into, so I'd appreciate it if you'd email hn@ycombinator.com with details.


I posted negative stories about them in r/Montreal, where they're trying to break into, and they got downvoted instantly


The funny (or scary) thing is that South Park predicted exactly this 100%: An Uber competitor hires a criminal to be a Uber (Timmy) driver to sexually assault the first female passenger it gets[0] and get it really bad press.

BTW, this also happen in taxi cabs, but somehow they don't make the front-page of hacker news[1][2][3], I wonder why that is.

[0]7:40 at http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e04-handicar

[1]http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl...

[2]http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/2370444/taxi-drive...

[3]http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/bail-refused-for-t...


>BTW, this also happen in taxi cabs, but somehow they don't make the front-page of hacker news[1][2][3], I wonder why that is

Woman speaking here. I've been using Uber/Lyft over taxis because of the driver verification system and also the tracking. I will always send my ride tracking link to whoever I am travelling towards if I am solo. I am sure that taxis have their drivers verified also, but taxis don't send me their driver's name and car license plate nor can I track the ride within the taxi service system itself. User is using technology to make the relationship between passenger and driver safer. If they fail on this, they need to be totally open and honest about it and discuss how to find better solutions. Drivers also get attacked by passengers - the safety measures go both ways.


I had a family member attacked by a cabbie. The driver was actually mere hours away from getting away with it too because a) The passenger had no record of the transaction and b) The cab service recycles their camera data every few days.

The way I see it, there is no guarantee of safety in either situation. You never know if your driver is a criminal or crazy. But services like Uber seem considerably more safe: There is extreme record keeping, user ratings, and no direct money changing hands.


South Park wasn't "predicting" this, they were engaging in their usual sophisticated commentary on news stories of the day. Various pundits, who shall go unnamed here, have made a big deal of the threat of sexual assault by Uber drivers, which, you so correctly, have pointed out is a real issue for Taxi Drivers as well (just without the clear audit log)


I'm fairly certain the reason this one made it to the front page of HN is because it happened in an Uber car.


> An Uber competitor hires a criminal to be a Uber (Timmy) driver to sexually assault the first female passenger it gets

Really? How very bizarre to come up with weird concepts like sexual assault for hire and sexual assault as a publicity stunt, then call it humor. Shame on them.

Edit: OK, pretty sure I just got down voted for pointing out that sexual assualt isn't at all funny. Oh hn...


South Park is a better show than you give it credit. They frequently explore serious issues in earnest and I have often felt the gravity of the message outweighs the humor in its presentation.


They've done bits that I have liked, a lot that I didn't care for but can just respectfully not be a fan of, but if this episode is really as described above (link won't let me watch it) it sounds kind of sick.


Which description are you referring to? I don't think anyone described that bit as humor. In the show it was used to portray how vile commercial sabotage can be, even to the consumer. The grave realization is that while the chosen situation seems hyperbolistic, it isn't—it's a real concrete possibility.


> In the show it was used to portray how vile commercial sabotage can be, even to the consumer.

Regardless about how you feel about Uber or its competitors, I do not believe they actually endorse rape or are capable of hatching a plot to plan a real life rape to occur as a publicity stunt. This is what was described in this thread. And I found it disgusting, even if it were satire.

But I guess some folks on HN don't really take this kind of thing seriously.


You've lost me. Nobody described the South Park episode that way. Honestly I think you just want to be mad about something and you found a trigger.


The part I quoted says exactly that. I think you're just not very used to finding overt references to sexual assault offensive, since this site is full of 22 year old kids etc. with very little life experience. I hope you have a daughter some day.


clickable links:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711196

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711178

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711146

note: Yes, as OP mentioned, clickable links are all dead anyways.


Now all...dead

(not sure if that was the obvious intention)


I always just comment with links as clickables (if someone else hasn't already) to save everyone else the keystrokes.. in this case, they're all dead. Unfortunately, HN only links hyperlinks from comments.


No worries, just clarifying in case folks didn't understand.


The fact that they're all dead is why this was submitted.


Strange, I just posted this tech crunch article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711409

and it got several upvotes and was on the front page, but now it was removed from the home page

not sure how the home page rankings work, but it was on the home page for a while and getting up votes


An article can be flagged. If it has been flagged by too many people, it will be "flag-killed." Guess certain people don't like the article and want to suppress it.


'flagkilled' means that user flags killed those stories.


[flagkilled] Uber Confirms It Is Assisting Police in India Following an Alleged Rape (techcrunch.com) [1]

This only has 1 upvote. Why would it have N^F flags?

"Flagkilled" must be something else or who knows?

[1] Link is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222


Oh, I see. I didn't have showdead on before, so I didn't see that tag. Thanks.


I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but the Uber driver has been jailed for rape before, and so a background check (which is mandated by law for all cab drivers, but Uber doesn't do) would have uncovered this.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/arrested-uber-driver-was-...


I'm going to guess that it is a keyword filter issue.

Every story you link to includes "r a p e" but your submission is missing the e.


I want to know how this story got 42 up votes in under 10 minutes?


That tends to happen with meta posts, especially those implying potential wrongdoing on the site. People just upvote them quickly.


This makes sense. It still seems suspicious to me.


If we're all going to post about vote conspiracies, maybe let's hypothesize that it was pushed by Lyft PR.


Unlikely. This type of incident would probably be considered negative PR for Lyft as well as Uber. Taxi bodies, Uber/Lyft customers, and those seeking to unearth stuff like this are probably the most motivated for this story.


...and bam. 600+ points after 3 hours, and suddenly it's on page 9. Nothing to see here. Move along.


Yes, we buried the meta post as off-topic. It's not a borderline call.

As usual, we didn't close the thread to comments, so ongoing discussion can continue.


It's still very discoverable via news.ycombinator.com/best


Can submissions be killed by votes? I always thought that was only by moderator action or automated filtering (eg. hellbanned users).


I'm assuming 'flagkilled' means enough users flagged these articles. If the moderators actively killed all these articles (some are to newspapers with millions of readers, and not link farms or whatever) that would be .. interesting, but ok.

I think HN mods are nice people and are probably unaware. I did send them emails, but I didn't get a reply (which is understandable given this is Saturday night in the USA). I suspect either a pro uber voting ring or a software bug.


Ah, I didn't see the "flagkilled" tag when I looked, before I turned showdead on.


Apparently, it is OK to care about profits and not customers these days. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/opinion/joe-nocera-uber-vs...


As far as I'm concerned, that's a perfect example of a story unsuitable for HN. There's nothing there to satisfy anyone's intellectual curiosity. It's just a volatile mixture of rubbernecking, outrage, gender issues, schadenfreude over a controversial company, and having it be about a tech startup to give it just a tiny bit of supposed HN relevance.

(I flagged the one copy of this I saw on the front page, and it's certainly not because of liking Uber).


I just reread the HN guidelines (it had been a while), and was surprised that flagging stories is apparently intended to be used more liberally than I had thought. The relevant sentence is:

If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.

I had been considering story flagging to be used for abuses like blatant spam or flaming, but not merely to express one's personal judgement of whether something is on-topic ("anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"). Obviously, different people's intellectual curiosities are satisfied by different things, and I had thought that story upvoting was the means to express that judgement.


But they've also said (IIRC) that if you flag inappropriately, they may remove your flag privs.

So if you flag, but they disagree....


I have heard that rumor as well. Interestingly, HN's description of story flagging sounds nearly identical to Reddit's (informal) description of downvoting (presumably referring to both stories and comments):

If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.

Of course, HN doesn't have downvoting for stories (unless that's a feature I have yet to unlock), while reddit has downvoting as well as reporting (with options for spam, vote manipulation, personal information, sexualizing minors, breaking reddit, and other). I had been operating under the assumption that HN flagging was analogous to reddit reporting, but it would appear that HN flagging is intended to be more analogous to reddit downvoting.

http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette


Here is a link to the discussion on HN about a renter's home on AirBnB getting trashed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813956 I don't see anyone raising any of the issues you've pointed out here. Perhaps the rules of moderation have changed. Would the AirBnB story be judged similarly if posted today?

> ... volatile mixture of rubbernecking and outrage ... That doesn't even make sense. Gender issues and schadenfreude, I at least understand what you mean. There might be a rush to judgement here.

My worry here is that subverting established process is all well and good... until someone gets raped. So I'll be watching to see if Uber's background check process failed. If so why?


It's entirely relevant. First, it's related to Uber's international expansion, which I believed was covered on HN very recently. That story was pretty weak of "intellectual curiosity". This kind of story could doom them in certain markets. It also relates to how Uber's business practice of keeping drivers at arms length when compared to taxis may impact the quality of the experience (this is a crazy extreme example).


It also relates to how Uber's business practice of keeping drivers at arms length when compared to taxis may impact the quality of the experience (this is a crazy extreme example).

I don't see why, do you think taxi drivers don't rape their customers? Just last month a taxi driver raped, robbed and threw two people over a cliff[1].

This story shows that Uber hires dangerous people, but not that they're any worse than taxis.

I dislike Uber businesses practices, and I don't use the service, but this particular story is just tabloid content.

[1] http://m.ibnlive.com/news/taxi-driver-rapes-delhibased-woman...


Now that Uber has been banned in India, I think the story has turned to be very relevant.


Let's see... Having your personal info recorded because of a startup's security flaw is 100% suitable content for HN, but getting raped because of a startup's security flaw is "rubbernecking" a "gender issue".

People like you should be banned from banning HN stories.


I was going to post the following (below -----), but I read the stories and they mainly focus on the signup process for Uber. While I still mostly feel like my original post, it is troublesome to hear that Uber employs people with no background check or verification into a job which, if you think about it, entails a trust-relationship not unlike that of a doctor or cleaning lady/man: someone in in an intimate setting who you entrust to care for you. For a doctor it's obvious, a cleaner enters your home, where you trust they don't steal sneakily or assault you. And for a taxi driver who drives you home at night, you expect when you hire through a large company that you're in the hands of a professional you can trust. Not a person who went through background checks/verification/training as much as if you took a random stranger and put them in a car.

So to that extent I'd say Uber has a lot of work to do in its signup process. But beyond that, it still feels like an incident that doesn't justify a post on HN. I wonder what the process is like for regular taxi companies in India and if it's much different. Did you guys remember the Polish woman who was raped earlier this year in a non-uber Indian taxi?

------ original post below -------

As horrible as this is, it's a non-story for me. That's not to say the rape isn't horrible. But we need relevance, we can't just report any horrible fact. About 17k children die each day, it doesn't make sense to fill HN with that daily unless there is some direct relevance. If we didn't have a 'relevance filter', I nor anyone else would visit this particular community anymore.

Now what's the relevance here? Uber? And...?

Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone (pretty much 100% guaranteed one of them did in the past decades). Should that be a story we talk about on HN, just because it's bad and because it's a tech company and no other reason? Of course not. So why should it be a story that a non-employee freelance driver rapes someone in a country of over 1 billion people?

Look if this story had a sociological context about gender relations in India that was interesting for HN, sure. I'd love to read about that. My girlfriend was just in India this summer for social work and we chat about this every now and then. If it was a story about gender-violent policies at Uber, sure, that'd be interesting. If this was a story about how Uber attracts disproportionately higher rates of criminal drivers, sure. But there's none of that.

So I don't see the relevance, and without any kind of trend, evidence of bad policies or whatever, it's just a single incident. Shit happens, and without context this is a story that smears a company. I'm no fan of Uber, but there's a lot better things to focus on IF this was an incident.

Anyway I'd be happy to hear otherwise, I could totally be missing something.


"Imagine an employee from Microsoft raped someone "

This is somewhat iffy logic. If Microsoft's purported USP was "our OS is way safer than the alternatives" (this is, partly, how Uber positions itself in India[1], which is smart, given the horrible "rape in moving vehicles/by taxi drivers etc" history in India) and then it turned out that Windows was much easier for cybercriminals to hack into and steal your credit cards (than say OSX, which made no such claim) that would be worth discussing on a site about OS es.

Or maybe not. Hence the question.

[1] Uber Delhi used to have this in their marketing copy (emphasis mine) "Uber is New Delhi's best way to request a safe, reliable, affordable ride"


Yeah fair enough, although it does seem as if they just went with the 'standard' message, by your analogy 'windows is a safe and reliable OS to make payments', as opposed to 'windows is out now, enjoy the safest way to make payments ever conceived'. If you then get hacked after the first message ('it's just safe and reliable'), and it's a single case of 1 person being hacked due to a single 3rd party app not behaving like it should without permission from Microsoft, I don't know if it's worth discussing. As another member said, it feels like a tabloid story that's only interesting because Uber has a $40b valuation and rape is a justifiably concerning topic in general. But it doesn't seem like anything systemic is going on here.

I've never used Uber and am not too familiar with their marketing, but I'm not aware of them ever pushing hardcore the notion that they're the safest concerning the trustworthiness of the driver. I don't even think that's a marketing variable, even in a place with a history of rape in moving vehicles that you mentioned. (reliability of the driver concerning trip duration, professionalism etc, sure, but whether you can trust him not to hurt you?).

I think the core question is whether they really missed out on something in the screening process. If not, it kind of feels like this is a lone incident in a country of 1 billion people, one of few such cases (2 or 3 now?) after tens of millions of rides.


"country of a billion people". Oh please, not that tired cliche again. Police verification of employees is standard in India, even for software jobs. Uber as usual seems to be cutting corners, playing fast and loose, operating outside the law. The drivers aren't really 'employees' just 'licensed driving partners' and so Uber has no responisibility.

If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people") everybody would rightly be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix. But hey some third world country half a world away and it is just people being unreasonable.

And this "numbers" logic is fallacious. Why is the police shooting of an African American causing such ripples in a "country of 300 million people" with millions of police/citizen encounters. Surely the proportion ending in unarmed citizens being shot for no good reason are really really low? Then why all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged?

Yeesh. Some people.


> If this had happened in the USA (" a country of 300 million people") everybody would rightly be looking into how Uber operates and what to fix. But hey some third world country half a world away and it is just people being unreasonable.

Blah, stop putting words in my mouth. I'm from such a 'third world country', and my gf just returned from her work in India. Let's also ignore the multiple times someone was charged with rape over there in the US (I don't live there, you know). I'm certainly not saying nobody cares because it's India. I'm saying it appears like a single case related to uber in a country of 1 billion (where rape happens every hour) after millions of rides.

> Then why all the hoopla? Why are people so outraged?

Because it's SYSTEMIC, that's my point. It literally, not kidding, literally happens every single day and enough is enough, and it is a consequence partially of some identifiable issues in the police system that they're responsible to fix (and haven't been doing for decades). That's why such a story is interesting. Why is it not interesting if a white person is shot by the police? Because arguably it's not systemic, it's not based on a certain culture, on certain policies. For example if you go to a police station to train them on cultural sensitivity often the first question is 'what do you think if you see am 18yo black kid in a nice car?'. They'll virtually all say 'drug dealer'. And the white kid? They'll virtually all say 'rich daddy'. And they're brutally honest in this. That's literally racial discrimination, as a citizen is seen and treated differently SOLELY based on the color of their skin and such racial profiling it's pervasive in American (police) culture. It's a small example of how systemic the problem is.

But here I DON'T see that as of yet. It looks like a genuine incident that Uber couldn't have done much against. If they screened the driver, he probably wouldn't have been filtered out unless he was going around telling everyone of his rapist tendencies. There's no gender-violent culture or policies we can specifically identify at Uber that should be rooted out but isn't, contrary to howwe can EASILY identify race-biased culture and policies in the American police system that should be rooted out but isn't.

I'm all for extra screening of taxi drivers by the way and think Uber should be doing this and doing it better. No argument from me there. And while I've never used Uber, unlikely I ever will, didn't flag this story, don't like uber, I don't think it's fair to bring this story as if Uber took some huge missteps and caused this rape. It appears to me like an incident.


The interesting thing for me is how Uber frame their method of evaluating drivers as better than taxi industry regulation.

Obviously a single incident in itself doesn't mean anything but if there is significant percentage of incidents it would indicate that the vetting needs to be changed.

It reminds me of the airbnb story about an apartment getting trashed that got a lot of attention here a couple of years back. It ended up spurring airbnb to launch a range of changes to make the service safer for users. If we had buried that then the changes may never have happened.


That's true, that sparked the $1m insurance policy iirc.


You are applying a wildly divergent double standard in how you consider startup security failures. If Uber had a security flaw in their signup form that leaked personal info, no question zero people would be disputing its relevance to HN. But a rape happens because of security flaws in the driver signup process, all of a sudden an army of scholars on the ethics of HN posts emerges defending censorship. Very disturbing.


You're implying I or others wouldn't care about rape, but would care about leaking personal info? That's a bit offensive actually and really needs to be backed up with a lot more than just an assumption.

To address your analogy. If a security flaw in the form leaks personal info and privacy of tens of millions of people is compromised as a direct result (like has happened), that's a bit different from an indirect result in a screening process that affects a single person. Consider that statement beyond the fact that this seems like an incident, as I'm not trying to make a numerical comparison between the two examples here. What I mean is that one is a direct consequence, while the other is not. That is, I wonder if there is any screening process that could have prevented this, if there was any one thing they forgot to do that directly caused this event.

Using your analogy, if the security form leaked only a single piece of information and the leak was due to say a third party (like the driver in this case, say it'd be a problem in the Chrome browser) that Uber should have noticed in development, it wouldn't be a big deal and beyond the technicality of the particular security flaw, it's not relevant. I wouldn't flag it, but I'd easily see why others would.

Anyway I don't want to push this analogy much further as frankly I don't feel comfortable with it, I certainly don't want to belittle this rape and compare it to something non-trivial like a security form. Apologies in advance if anyone felt that way about this post.

To get to the actual point: what is uber's responsibility? I think that's the key question here. It's a bit of a tricky one. Uber kind of sits between two positions. The first is that it's 'just the facilitator', and can't be fully responsible for 3rd party drivers. Of course it'll claim to aim to feel responsible, but in the end uber drivers aren't like real employees. Uber kind of feels like more of a freelancer on odesk type of place, at least to me, where Odesk would have limited responsibility. On the other hand, they also try to position themselves as a quality brand, as distinctly Uber, as a company with its own drivers, not random freelancers on its platform. It's clear they have responsibility, but how much?

Anyway, perhaps that's not the correct question. A more specific question would be: what kind of screening process could they have had that prevented this?

You said this: > But a rape happens because of security flaws in the driver signup process

But I wonder what exactly that flaw was. Sure there's a chance he did this before and was registered somewhere and a background check would let that fact surface, but I think it's unlikely. Most rapists aren't the cliche-criminal, it's usually an uncle, a boss, a friend. It's likely none of these people, nor likely the driver, would carry stereotypical characteristics of a person you'd want to reject in the hiring process. Meanwhile, Uber does have his identity on file and records of the trip, so it's likely he'll be caught just as quickly as an employee of any other company. As such I still wonder if this isn't just an incident unrelated to company policy like the case of the rape of a Polish woman earlier this year in India in a regular taxi.

Anyway I have no clue about what kind of screening they do and what kind of screening is typical for drivers at a taxi company. If anyone is privy to this info let me know! In any case I think it's a clear signal Uber should improve its screening process so that we'll never hear from a case where someone was raped in a taxi by someone with a record of having done so before, as that means it may have been preventable with better screening.


The issue here is not whether Uber could have screened better, but whether that very question should be flagged for removal from public view by senior HN users, or open to investigation and debate.

I think you realized partway into this how vile a corner you were painting yourself into with your "it only affected a single person" line of reasoning. But to follow your logic, which assumes that rape and the leaking of personal info are of the same magnitude of error, Uber's error would only be worth non-censorship if "tens of millions" of women were raped.

Whether or not this was truly due to a flaw in Uber's screening process or an unavoidable crime is certainly a valid question. All the more reason not to censor it.


You're missing the point. The point is not that it's 'only bad if it happens often'.

The point is that if it happens to tens of millions of people, it's systemic. If it's a single case, it's an incident UNLESS there is evidence that it's a direct consequence of certain policies.

And if it's an incident unrelated to Uber's policies, I don't think it's relevant, personally. That's the point. That doesn't make it 'not bad', it just makes it 'not-relevant' for a tech-focused community. To filter out irrelevant topics is not censorship, it's focus.

Now you have said yourself the issue is not that Uber could have screened better, so does that mean indeed that it's an incident? That's the focal point of my issue here. I'm not for flagging or censorship. If I think it's relevant, I'm all for keeping it. If the story was about 1 person being raped and it was because of Uber policies, or an interesting story on gender relations in India, or the history of trust in taxi companies, I'd love to read that. Hell, if 0 people were raped but Uber policies were such that it could happen anytime soon, I'd want to read that, too. But this has none of that as of yet, it feels like an incident, therefore not relevant and therefore I don't care to see it.

As for the flagging, I've never flagged in my life and don't feel strongly this should have been flagged either. But you're implying there was an investigation that was censored. To me it feels as if there was no such investigation, but rather instead, a tabloid-like article on an incident with a rape by a freelance driver of a $40b company that everyone happens to be talking about. If it really is an incident, not systemic, not caused by Uber policies and just tabloid material, then it doesn't seem like the worst idea to down vote it to remove its visibility. I don't know exactly how HN works, apparently through flagging which is like a mega-downvote I guess? I just don't particularly see the problem.

> Whether or not this was truly due to a flaw in Uber's screening process or an unavoidable crime is certainly a valid question. All the more reason not to censor it.

So help me do answer it :) This thread hasn't been removed, has it? (I wonder by the way who flagged the other threads. One member said it was because the title used the word ra ping instead of ra pe, implying the others might've been auto-flagged, which would certainly be strange to me as you can't presuppose anything about the validity of the article from the word alone)


Earlier you said this rape incident "feels like an incident that doesn't justify a post on HN".

Now you are backtracking by saying "This thread hasn't been removed, has it?", welcoming discussion, and you "don't feel strongly this should have been flagged".

Glad you changed your position. It's the right one.


What? You keep ignoring my points and making a silly one in return.

I'm STILL saying it doesn't feel like this incident justifies a HN post. Why? Because it's an incident. And you ignore my points on that and just seem to want to win the point that this 'shouldn't have been flagged', while I've never flagged a thread in my life. You're arguing against someone else here, not me.

Feel free to go back and read my post and see if you disagree and think there's something systemic going on. (it's an interesting question. Look for example at the police brutality topic in the US, it's generally not interesting to most to hear about a white person getting shot, and a story like that without any interesting angle doesn't have a place on HN, because it tends to be an incident rather than when it happens against minorities, e.g. black minorities, as that is usually systemic, which is interesting and is justified imo. That's kind of how I look at this story, and I still feel it's an incident.)

Doesn't mean I'll flag it though, again please don't bring that up again. Tell that to someone who actually flagged this thing.


I can't tell whether I should agree with you, because I rationally have similar conclusions, or disagree because it's possible you are simply a planted post meant to derail discussion. Mission accomplished either way, I guess.


I think it says something to ux.


I hope you are consistent in flagging every 'gender issue' (women in tech, say) and 'controversial company'(say Apple or Google) story on HN. Yes, sarcasm.

EDIT: gender issues and 'controversial company' discussions on HN happen all the time. Maybe they shouldn't, and maybe that is a good focus to have. As long as such a policy is consistently enforced.


edit- sorry ignore this.


This could result in Uber's implosion in India. What were they thinking when they had an unverified driver? Heck even local taxicab providers use drivers with extensive background checks and police verification (atleast in Bangalore).

No point in using Uber if they sink to such levels. The only reason they could've gone with such a driver would've been economic.


could be domains that are being linked. some domains get auto-killed.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960

My story got killed too


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711510


And it's off the front page. How'd that happen?


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660


Very interesting


This now appears to be deleted/dead.


because not on topic for HN

rapes occur all the time, not relevant if someone just happens to be employed by Uber

if a Microsoft employee beat his wife should that be on HN? no. nor would it if he instead worked at a Texaco gas station


Uber markets itself as a safer and more convinient mode of transport. Uber driver did not beat his wife, he raped a cystomer. That is breach of trust.

The right analogy would be.. If a Microsoft employee hacks your Windows computer and steals your data, it should be a front page story.


> If a Microsoft employee hacks your Windows computer and steals your data

That's a good point. I wonder though what we can actually discuss here.

Consider this, if a MS employee hacked you using say, company access to your hotmail account that only MS employees have, a system by design ripe for abuse, and therefore fixable by MS and therefore a MS responsibility, then that's relevant.

But if a MS employee hacked you on the job without anything special that makes him a MS employee (he could've been working for DELL, Apple or hell he could've been unemployed) and just happened to be a MS employee that hacked you, what's the relevance? It's just an incident that MS has no real responsibility for.

Even less responsibility if said employee wasn't an employee, but just a 3rd party freelancer.

I think it begs the question: 'what didn't uber do that they should have?'. Why are they at fault, why is this news? It sucks, yes, but as I posted earlier here, 17k kids under 5 will die today, and tomorrow, as they did yesterday. There needs to be some context, an angle on gender relations in india, a gender-violent culture at Uber, bad policies in keeping track of rides so abuse can go unpunished, for example. But I don't see it.

We've heard that the screening process is weak and I'll believe that. But I genuinely wonder what part of the screening process is missing that could've prevented this. I'm all for screening out repeat offenders for jobs like this (where a client entrusts a caretaker, like for doctors, police or indeed taxi drivers) but this feels like an incident that's only posted because it's good tabloid material considering Uber is now a $40 billion company with a possible rape case after tens of millions of rides.


> rapes occur all the time, not relevant if someone just happens to be employed by Uber

This isn't a story about someone who "just happens to be employed by Uber" committing a rape. This is a story about a woman who used the Uber app to find a ride and was raped by her driver (who is not actually employed by Uber).


False parallel.

What if Microsoft's products or services sexually assaulted people? Yes, there would be an outcry.


Completely different. The Microsoft employee beating his wife would be analogous to an Uber driver beating his wife, neither of which has anything to do with their company's products or services and neither of which would be interesting to HN users. The point here is that this is a case of a driver raping a passenger, which immediately challenges the safety of Uber's model. This is now a component of Uber's perception, much like Elon Musk's blog posts are of Tesla's, and those make it to the front page of HN all the time.


Please don't post "meta" stories to HN. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you have concerns.


Is there a better way available for the community to discuss or inquire about issues like this (serious question)? Emailing hn@ (of course) seems very many to one. I'd hope that the thought wouldn't be "The community is no place to discuss peculiar community activity", even if that means shoving it off to someplace else still on the site where those who believe its relevant can discuss.


This is why I left Wikipedia. This post if a manifestation of our community which is the purpose of this website. If the purpose is something else, I will leave.


FWIW, this very submission is technically against the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.


From that same page:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.


Technically, your comment is also against the HN guidelines. And so is mine (the very one you're reading right now). I think none of us are adding anything to the discussion.


While a comment is, strictly speaking, something submitted, the guidelines page seems to use "submission" to refer specifically to story submissions (note the headers "In Submissions" and "In Comments"). If my interpretation is correct, then my first comment, your reply, and this comment are not in violation, although yours is factually incorrect. :)




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