This is not what leadership at normal companies do.
A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.
The executive, Emil Michael, made the comments in a conversation he later said he believed was off the record. In a statement through Uber Monday evening, he said he regretted them and that they didn’t reflect his or the company’s views.
Go read the whole thing at Buzzfeed. It’s hard to pull out choice quotes from the story, but paragraphs eight and nine are particularly damning a it describes the plan:
Over dinner [at Manhattan's Waverly Inn, attended by such big-wigs as Arianna Huffington], he outlined the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine.
Michael was particularly focused on one journalist, Sarah Lacy, the editor of the Silicon Valley website PandoDaily, a sometimes combative voice inside the industry. Lacy recently accused Uber of “sexism and misogyny.”…
At the dinner, Michael expressed outrage at Lacy’s column…
He returned to the opposition research plan. Uber’s dirt-diggers, Michael said, could expose Lacy. They could, in particular, prove a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.…
So, of course, right after the story hit the Internet, Michael apologized and went on to say that those comments “do not reflect [his] actual views and have no relations to [Uber’s] views or approach.” Which makes sense because who among us haven’t created such elaborate retaliatory plans right there on the spot. Play-acting a Bond villain is a fun way to liven up any dinner party. Afterwards, I bet they did “Songs in the Style Of…” which is another fun improv game.
Even as absurdly unbelievable as that bit of damage control was, the previous actions of Uber should make you believe it even less. In the very same Buzzfeed article, during Uber’s attempt to show how they can be trusted, they broke their own policies. They demonstrated how no one is allowed to view customer data except for business purposes by accessing the data of Buzzfeed reporter and Uber customer Johana Bhuyian. And I will prove to you this is not a bomb by detonating it.
This, however, is not a one-off problem with Uber. This is a company that lives up to its name by believing it is better than you, or your petty concerns about fairness or safety or privacy. Straight from the beginning, when it was fighting taxicab regulations, through to paying drivers poverty wages while telling the press otherwise, to its infamous innovation of legalized price gouging (thus why it needed to fight those regulations) and sabotaging its competitors, to its indifference to the safety of their customers or financial well-being of its drivers, Uber only cares about its bottom line. Oh, and its reputation. It will go to any self-defeating length to protect its reputation. No surprise when you have a company that is founded by someone whose life's philosophy comes from Atlas Shrugged.
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