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| VIEW EVENT INFORMATION: New York Times |
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Uber Responds To The New York Times Article About How It Psychologically Manipulates drivers |
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About the organization New York Times:
Type: Business
Sub-Types: Press, Newspaper, News, Online Press, Online News, Website, Application Software, Telecommunication, Telecommunication Software |
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Notable Organizations: New York Times, Techcrunch
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| Uber is on the defensive after the New York Times claimed that it manipulates drivers using techniques from behavioral science in order to reduce costs and increase corporate growth. The company did not refute that it uses psychological incentives, but instead focused its response on a claim in the April 2 article that “faster pickup times for riders require a greater percentage to be idling unpaid.”
“This is simply not true—and had the Times asked us whether it was, we would have explained the reality of what happens when Uber grows in a city: riders enjoy lower pick-up times and drivers benefit from less downtime between trips,” Uber’s director of policy research, Betsy Masiello, wrote in a blog post.
In order to avoid long wait times for customers and surge pricing (which automatically kicks in when demand for rides is higher than usual in an area), Uber has to make sure enough of its drivers are working—and does so using techniques that are sometimes ethically questionable, the New York Times said.
The article claimed that Uber “engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth—an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioral science.” |
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