I see a lot of reactions down there, but we have no idea how much negative feedback and what kind was left about the driver right? Can you imagine if only a few unfair complaints could get drivers out of the system?
Just One valid complaint of harassment/abuse should be more than enough for any system to remove a driver. The problem shouldn't be number of complaints. We seem to equate quantity with veracity in a lot of system designs, but those are absolutely different things. On the one side we see complaints that shouldn't need volume/quantity to make a difference to prevent further harassment, and on the other side we see brigading tactics where volume is easy to bot/sheeple and has no necessary basis in veracity.
Quantity !== Veracity
Quantity is a metric that is easy to program and to understand for systems design, so we use it as an easy stand in, but we need to get better at finding Quality, not Quantity.
Validity of a complaint is also a hard problem to solve as it's mostly one's word against another. Crafting a well-worded negative review isn't difficult and there's been enough anecdotal stories from systems such as Yelp where a customer will threaten to leave a horrible review on a business if they don't cater to their every whim that using one valid-looking review to remove a driver would also be seen as unfair.
The number of negative reviews serve as a way to help strengthen the signal that a driver is truly "bad" in some way. Of course, the quality of those reviews should also be taken into account.
It's absolutely a hard problem, but I think it's one that we _need_ to solve. Quantity is too easy a solution, too easily gives us a false sense of security, and we've let that be a default for too long, collectively having just about stopped there.
So yes, I don't have any easy answers. I think this a problem for our industry, and probably one we need to collectively solve sooner than later, giving how antagonists are using our systems against us.
I think some form of government-backed authentication is inevitable for the commercial web... digital drivers licenses. Maybe that'll finally get us off social security numbers too.
Not something I want to see or use, but I think it's the only way to go about review-backed sites like Yelp or Uber. It's impossible to generally validate statements, but at least a persistent identity lets services decide whether to trust the person.
What about having a "black box" in the vehicle that records audio and deletes itself within an hour of the ride if either party doesn't flag the ride to Uber/Didi?
This is about flagging unacceptable behavior and removing bad drivers way before someone is murdered. In the Didi cases, the drivers had already had multiple reports against them. The reports weren't taken seriously because they were basically hearsay.
Anyway, why even bring that up if the solution is just to store the ride audio for a bit longer.
For the past 3 years, every yellow cab I have ridden has had an always-on camera.
I like it. If I wanted privacy I would call a friend or drive myself... cabs are for convenience. Security footage protects both drivers and riders from abuse, which translates to lower costs and greater availability.
Cab companies like Uber already track routes and riders, that's the valuable and privacy-sensitive information... security footage? Doesn't add much.
In someone else’s car with a perfect stranger? I truly don’t care about privacy in that situation, and having an expectation of privacy there is delusional. In my car, I want the option for as much privacy as being surrounded by windows in a public space allows, but the whole point is that this would not be my car.
If I was one of these drivers damn right I'd have CCTV cameras in my car. It's not just malicious reviews they have to worry about, potentially they have to worry about malicious complaints to the police too.
I wish I did have a good solution. It's absolutely a hard problem to solve, but it does seem like a problem (if not _the_ problem of our times) that we _need_ to solve as systems designers, before things get worse.
Isn't that a very slippery slope? Maybe it should be enough to trigger extra monitoring/background check, especially since the driver has a lot of power over the customer, but just fire the driver without any due process?
What's preventing anyone who doesn't like you from getting you fired?
In this exercise, we're creating the process (the system is the process). I'm pointing out that establishing "due" is the hard part. We keep defaulting to "quantity of complaints" as if it were a due process, instead of actually establishing due processes. I'm asking all of us, as an industry, as a peer group, to question this default. If it is a slippery slope, we're already caught on it.
Yes, establishing due process is hard, but "X% of respondents complain" has never been a due process (it hurts people when it takes too many complaints to fix the thing [and sometimes with things like harassment and murder One is already too many complaints], and it hurts people when it is easy to get X% from a mob). We need to get out of the mindset that just because computers are great at tabulating quantity and numbers are "objective" that doesn't make that the right process, and certainly doesn't make that the due process.
Absolutely, too, we should include workflow steps like "extra monitoring/background checks" in our processes. Often those get ignored because they likely require people/labor and when designing systems we don't always want to include those elements.
I can't believe that you wrote this comment trully believing that one negative advice is enough to take down someone. Should one negative review kill a movie? Or a restaurant? Or a company?
Well, they managed to murder someone - I'm not sure the fact that it was or wasn't closely observed makes such a difference.
There can be a fair argument as at what stage would it be necessary to remove the driver, but I think the main thrust of the issue is that to the clients, it is promoted as a taxi service and to the drivers, it is promoted as a dating service.
EDIT: This is literally what happened:
"As Huang Jieli—the woman who had served as Hitch’s general manager until she was demoted last week—said in an interview in 2015: “Like a coffee shop, or a bar, a private car can become a half-open, half-private social space. It’s a very sexy application scenario.” And in another interview (link in Chinese) in 2017, she said “the biggest motivation for our drivers is to share a trip with a passenger.”"
I agree that the problem isn't "the company should or could have done something to detect and eject the murderer-to-be", there's always going to be a few individuals with extreme behaviour, and in any given instance it might be tricky to prevent that, even if companies or organisations are aware of the risks and acting in good faith to minimise them.
I agree with your characterisation of the problem:
> to the clients, it is promoted as a taxi service and to the drivers, it is promoted as a dating service.
The company is misrepresenting what the nature of the interactions between drivers and clients in its marketplace. This misrepresentation predictably increases the risk to women who use the service --- it should not be surprising that a service that allows drivers to see photos and share tags of clients before they agree to take rides structurally and predictably offers more opportunities for abuse. This is frankly pretty foul. I hope the company continues to get hammered for it.
For example, suppose didi was an online dating service, and clearly and unambiguously advertised itself as a dating service to all parties involved. How many women would choose to go on a first date with someone they'd never met before by getting a ride in their car? You're obviously going to be far, far more at risk and unable to get away if the person turns out to be abusive than if you meet in a more public location.
> The service had a feature on the app that let drivers tag passengers with phrases like “long legs” and “hot as hell.” All Hitch drivers were able to read the tags, which have since been removed from the app, and they were also able to specify a preference for female or male passengers,
