Examples of competitors sharing data about bad customers across several industries:<p>- competitor banks share information about people who bounce checks<p>- competitor insurance companies share data about customers with fraudulent claims<p>- competitor casinos share photos of card counters<p>Probably many others I can't think of.<p>EDIT to reply: thanks for the customers' returns example. I found a story explaining the shared database: <a href="https://www.elliott.org/case-dismissed-2/the-retail-equation-protects-merchants-against-serial-returners/" rel="nofollow">https://www.elliott.org/case-dismissed-2/the-retail-equation...</a>
A noble effort, but I'm certainly concerned about the use of a background check company. This is anecdotal, but I've missed out on a job before due to misreporting from a background check company. The amount of hoops I had to go through to prevent the mistake from happening again took years - and of course, the opportunity for that job was long gone by then.<p>Really, the only proper way to do a background check is via your local law enforcement. These companies should not be relied on. Ever. Even if they're right a majority of time, the cases where they're wrong are too damaging to be considered trivial.
I wonder if they'll start sharing data on banned passengers. I think this is a much more interesting and nuanced social issue.<p>A recent viral video this week showed a woman assaulting an Uber driver, she livestreamed on IG to try to justify her actions and in the process said that she would only be using Lyft, then lyft tweeted that they pre-emptively banned her.<p>If FAANG joined together to make a shared blocked users list, they could effectively make a digital caste system subject to little current government oversight.
Airlines do similar things for anything safety related. Having safer airlines is good for business and there's no sense in hoarding that information.
Despite the unethical and immoral behavior of Uber executive leadership, from the outside, Uber seems to have a better safety profile than Lyft. They added safety features to the app, such as emergency service requests, long before Lyft did. Both companies probably did it in response to sexual assaults that both companies enabled, but Uber took quicker action.<p>I've seen some truly horrifying behavior from Lyft in terms of safety that makes me cautious of wanting to use the app, despite liking Lyft's public presence better. I suspect it's in the interest of growth and gaining market share to have things like lax-er driver background checks so they get more drivers. In the end it ends up hurting them a lot more, and can lead to terrible things for riders.
Do you remember the time Wells Fargo set such high sales targets for its employees that unless they committed fraud, they could not meet it; and then fired those who did not commit fraud and thus fell short of sales targets; and then many of those fired employees found out that they have been essentially blacklisted throughout the entire banking industry, because Wells Fargo had added negative remarks about them to their U5 to justify the firing instead of telling the truth that they were fired because they refused to commit fraud? I sure remember.<p>The problem with these sorts of backchannel data sharing is that unlike things like credit reports, individuals have little to no access to see what is in their file and dispute it.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-faces-scrutiny-for-black-marks-on-ex-employee-files.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-f...</a>
If only there were a commercial passenger permitting system that already existed, ensuring that drivers who should not be carrying passengers were denied operating license regardless of the business they work with.<p>(For those not familiar, we do already have this in the US, but Uber/Lyft wanted their drivers <i>not</i> to be commercially-licensed, so now they have to reimplement the DMV.)
This is obviously a good thing from a safety standpoint, but I worry we are increasingly becoming a one strike society. Where one instance of bad behavior locks you out of significant parts of the infrastructure. Moreoever this happens in a "court" with no documented laws/appeals process.
Why is this necessary? If people are convicted of sexual assault, it's on the public record. Otherwise, even though some accusations that are not brought to court may have merit, Uber or Lyft should not be the ones to arbitrate on that.<p><a href="https://www.theroot.com/uber-bans-passenger-for-life-after-she-threatens-to-acc-1794107854?utm_source=theroot_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow" rel="nofollow">https://www.theroot.com/uber-bans-passenger-for-life-after-s...</a>
Honestly, I don't think this goes far enough. If you're misbehaving enough to get banned from Uber, you probably shouldn't be holding any other gig work poisition either! This should protect customer safety, by ensuring that once someone is proven problematic, they can simply be removed as a gig laborer, no matter how that looks. Perhaps this could be expanded to traditional employment, as well. This should protect companies from bad employee behavior permanently, and improve society thereby.
Uber and Lyft aren't big fans of having drivers accused of sexual assault or theft. I'm sure you could come up with a nefarious take, but it's really just a way of filtering out bad actors before they hurt riders.