this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Since users choose their gender in the app, this has some potential to be used for more nefarious purposes, no?
Not a big fan of discriminatory options like this, btw.
They'd need a toggle for the feature on the rider side as well. Like "hide my gender"
Wouldn't need it at all if rideshare drivers stopped sexually assaulting passengers
There are plenty of sexually aggressive riders too. It's not one sided. We can summarize it thus: people suck.
Perhaps this whole "random people using their regular car to give rides to total strangers" thing was a bad idea...
What if instead the rides were given in specially modified cars that can include some security features for both parties? And in order to pay for this, perhaps there could be some kind of central company that owned the cars and simply hired the drivers?
That's just crazy talk. Next you'll tell us there should be really big municipally-run cars that a whole bunch of people can ride at once which makes multiple stops. Insanity!
On one hand, yes. On the other hand, have you known many companies that have successfully weeded out creeps that work there?
True! Good point
Can't really comment on that as in my city (not US) to drive for these companies you need a license. To get the license, they perform background checks, check your criminal record, ask for medical approval, etc, every time you have to renew it, and all this seems to stop a lot of bad stuff. Not saying it doesn't happen - you can't never completely stop it - but there are ways to reduce it.
Anyway, they could just allow customers to select their preferred gender, would make anyone that wants to use such option happy, and we wouldn't even have to talk about discrimination.
I'd assume if you get legal action thrown at you though, it'd be a lot harder to deny if you also were picking a gender to get specific drivers.
Legal action for picking the "wrong" option in an app? Also, "I'm gender fluid, your honor", so good luck proving anything.
By "nefarious purposes" I meant serious stuff. Some deranged fuck decides to kill (edit: a certain gender) and there's not much you can do after they point a gun or put a knife to the driver's neck. It's too late by then.
I don't know, I understand their intention, but it seems to have some flaws.
I'm pretty sure the nefarious purpose one isn't actually dealt with by this and is an extreme outlier
Explain how sorting the list of available passengers by gender is discrimination? It's being rolled out in huge metropolitan markets so there will be enough drivers for everyone to get one.
@flumph if they allowed sorting the list by race, instead of by gender... would you understand how it's discrimination, then?
The protected category doesn't matter, I don't see how anyone is getting a leg up or being held back by the feature.
@flumph so, if there was a button that allowed drivers to prioritize white passengers, but there wasn't one to prioritize black passengers, that wouldn't be discriminatory to you?
The option allows customers to prioritize drivers from two of their 3 gender groups: "female" and "non-binary". One group is left out and if you happen to be in that group, you'll end up doing less trips, making less money.
I wouldn't be happy with a setting to prioritize "male", so you can see why I'm not happy with a setting that prioritizes "female" and "non-binary". You either give the customer the option to prioritize any gender or you don't.
Since they can't verify one's gender, the potential for abuse is there. A customer could prioritise these groups if they wanted to target them and the driver could also pick one of these genders if they wanted to have people of said gender in their car.
Nope, it doesn't. The feature is for drivers, not passengers.