{"id":200221,"date":"2021-06-05T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/05\/today-in-hack-journalism-3\/"},"modified":"2021-06-05T19:29:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T00:29:00","slug":"today-in-hack-journalism-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/05\/today-in-hack-journalism-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Hack Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i> has an article about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/05\/28\/technology\/nyc-uber-lyft-the-drivers-cooperative.html\">how some drivers are trying to form a cooperative to compete with Uber and Lyft<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of obstacles that this effort faces, but this paragraph is full of fail:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drivers.coop\/\">The Drivers Cooperative<\/a>,  which opened for business in New York this week, is the most recent  attempt. The group, founded by a former Uber employee, a labor organizer  and a black-car driver, began issuing ownership shares to drivers in  early May and will start offering rides through its app on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">The cooperative has recruited around 2,500 drivers so far and intends to  take a smaller commission than Uber or Lyft and charge riders a lower  fare. It is an ambitious plan to challenge the ride-hailing giants, and  it faces the same hurdles that tend to block other emerging players in  the industry: Few have <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">the technical prowess<\/span><\/b>, the venture capital  dollars or the supply of readily available drivers to subvert an  established company like Uber. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Clearly there are network effects, Uber and Lyft have a pool of drivers as well as customers who use theri apps, and both of the gypsy cab company firms have sufficient VC money to operate for years at a loss.&nbsp; (In fact neither appears to have a path to profitability)<\/p>\n<p>However, the claim that operating a ride share firm requires any significant technical prowess is false, and does not withstand 5 minutes of examination.<\/p>\n<p>The creation of apps with review capabilities has been old school for over a decade.<\/p>\n<p>Claiming that there is a need for specialized &#8220;technical prowess&#8221;, is a humbug, and it pisses me off.<\/p>\n<p>The innovation of Uber and Lyft were never technical, but regulatory.<\/p>\n<p>Their innovation was that the two firms found a way to break the law and bulldoze authorities into acquiescence, not any technical innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times has an article about how how some drivers are trying to form a cooperative to compete with Uber and Lyft. There are a lot of obstacles that this effort faces, but this paragraph is full of fail: \u2026\u2026\u2026 The Drivers Cooperative, which opened for business in New York this week, is &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[987,1284,974,982,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fail","category-gig-economy","category-hack-journalism","category-stupid","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}