this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
110 points (84.4% liked)

Technology

68441 readers
3675 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dsmk@lemmy.zip 48 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 years ago

They'd need a toggle for the feature on the rider side as well. Like "hide my gender"

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Wouldn't need it at all if rideshare drivers stopped sexually assaulting passengers

[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There are plenty of sexually aggressive riders too. It's not one sided. We can summarize it thus: people suck.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

True! Good point

[–] flumph@programming.dev 3 points 2 years ago

riders were the accused party 43% of the time in sexual assault incident reports

[–] dsmk@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dsmk@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure the nefarious purpose one isn't actually dealt with by this and is an extreme outlier

[–] flumph@programming.dev -4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

[–] bou@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@flumph if they allowed sorting the list by race, instead of by gender... would you understand how it's discrimination, then?

[–] flumph@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The protected category doesn't matter, I don't see how anyone is getting a leg up or being held back by the feature.

[–] bou@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

@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?

[–] dsmk@lemmy.zip -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] flumph@programming.dev 2 points 2 years ago

The option allows customers to prioritize drivers...

Nope, it doesn't. The feature is for drivers, not passengers.