Regardless of how Uber did it, these kind of drivers should be removed from the platform. This happened to me more than once. It’s quite frustrating as an example you want to get to airport and a driver has accepted your request, but you can see in the app the vehicle doesn’t move. One time this happened for all requests on Uber when I wanted to go to airport early morning and had to switch to Bolt
But wouldn't you want a human to be involved in this process?
Let's say you run a legitimate SaaS company, and a cloud provider suspends your account due to an allegation of fraud. Wouldn't you prefer a human is involved?
To me that seems pretty reasonable when people's livelihood is at stake.
The article says human review was used for the final decisions. The accounts were temporarily suspended during the investigation.
Investigations take time because you need to allow time for the person to respond with their side of the story and then to have human reviewers investigate, which can take multiple rounds.
Having human review is as simple as having one person watch a dashboard of accounts flagged for fraud and then press the suspend-account button after skimming it. I fully expect that’s what they switched to after getting hit with this.
> To me that seems pretty reasonable when people's livelihood is at stake.
What about the riders who are on the receiving end of fraudulent drivers in the best case, abusive or dangerous drivers in the worst case? It is possible to go to far in trying to protect workers for things that impact paying customers. Thinking of it only as big bad companies versus innocent workers misses the real problems.
Not saying they shouldn't be banned. But a human should look into it. Seems reasonable?
Drivers should be able to appeal and in that case a human should manually review before making the suspension permanent. Most probably that’s how it happens right now, but article doesn’t say anything about how the appeals are processed.
Bolt washed their hands, and refereed me to the their customer agreements:
"Bolt says it is in no way responsible for performance of the transport contract between you and the transport provider."
"Their liability section goes further in Clause 6.1 says Bolt does not guarantee the quality or freedom from defects of the transport service. It says losses connected with the transport contract, including accidents, are not Bolt's responsibility."
F#%&uck Bolt, Uber and all the corrupt politicians who allow these innovative disruption "businesses"
Try getting a taxi in a country as a tourist where uber doesn’t operate and I bet 99% of the time you would get scammed or charged twice or three times as the normal cost of the ride
I've made it work for me when the legit cabs had a long wait - I offered an off meter fare and I got instant service.
I once calculated the fare using a taxi fare site and the verbal off meter rate was lower than the estimated one. I gave him the higher rate.
Off meter isn't so black or white, that said I always prefer uber or similar regional cabs.
Here is the statement from the Dutch data protection authority:
Uber made fully automated decisions regarding drivers. In cases of suspected fraud or excessively low customer ratings, driver accounts were automatically temporarily deactivated or, in the case of persistently low ratings, permanently deactivated. As a result, their income from Uber ceased during the deactivation period.
Uber thereby violated the ban on fully automated decision-making under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The AP also found that Uber failed to adequately inform drivers about the automated decision-making. Uber has since ceased the violations.
Article 22.1: The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
Article 13.2f: In addition to the information referred to in paragraph 1, the controller shall, at the time when personal data are obtained, provide the data subject with the following further information necessary to ensure fair and transparent processing: [...] the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject.
Uber may want to reconsider operating in the Netherlands- would be surprised if they get this much in profit from this region. Unfortunately for them these laws are EU wide.
The law Uber broke. I can’t believe they found it that difficult to follow something as simple as that.
The real issue is if uber comes away from this thinking they can do a rubber stamp review, because the point of the law was clearly to stop unjustifiable decisions automatically being made(protecting both parties), as uber will still be on the hook for unjustified suspensions but redress will need to go through the court making it worse for all involved.
Dutch Uber drivers aren’t employees [1].
[1] https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/27/uber-drivers-freelancers-emplo...
The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
If Uber processes data, and makes decisions based on that data in a purely automated way that significantly affects people, it is not allowed. That's all there is to it.
There's no special right for American companies to ignore our rules and when they get fined for breaking them, that's just rule of law.
Maybe there's been enough regulatory capture that big corps can ignore laws on the other side of the pond, but for now, we are still a society of law and justice.
>“Uber has committed serious infringements” by deactivating driver accounts without warning or human involvement, the organization’s deputy chair Monique Verdier said in a statement.
>“From one moment to the next they no longer had any income … A computer should not make decisions on its own that have (such) major consequences.”
If you manage to extract usable info from that quote kudos. To me it looks like regulator going berserk in reading the unholy mess that is GDPR.
Given this kind of ambiguity, it seems like we need some kind of, like, procedure by which it’s decided whether Uber violated the law as written, and if so, what the consequences should be - maybe the sort of thing where we’d get experts in the law together in a room to investigate and debate the merits of each side’s argument and determine which stands up to scrutiny or not. Maybe we could have third disinterested legal expert hear both sides and make a decision. That’s really the only way to clear this whole thing up, I think.
That's because American tech doesn't pay its fair share of taxes to the EU compared to its revenue.
Disclaimer: I briefly worked for Uber and quit in disgust
The people at Uber are ubersmart, so they can figure it out. If they can't, they don't know how to run their business in line with the law and should be fired.
I swear this is like a restaurant chain complaining that they shouldn't be required to follow foodservice regulations because of how much money it costs them at scale.
Anyway, if they're so large and special then they can hire a bunch of people. Large scale should make it easier.