The Atlantic

Uber Did What!?

A field guide to the company's ongoing PR nightmare
Source: Screenshot from the Uber app

A lot of people seem to hate Uber. But the paradoxical thing about the ride-sharing giant’s notoriety is that it’s both unfair and totally justified.

Taxi companies have long railed against Uber for disrupting their industry—but people flocked to ride-sharing for its convenience and reliability. (In other words, taxis were dominating a sector that was theirs to lose.) Misinformation has, at times, cemented the company’s bad reputation.

Then again, Uber has messed up—deeply and repeatedly—for years now. Even for a company that’s infamously scandalous, 2017 has been a banner year. Which means that, these days, every new revelation seems like more bad news for Uber—even when it’s maybe not so straightforward.

The controversies have been coming at such a regular clip this year that it’s almost comical—to some observers, anyway. Clickhole, the parody news site, published this joke headline last week: “Getting Out Ahead Of This One: Uber Has Apologized In Advance If Anyone Finds Out About Something Called ‘Project Judas.’”(Uber has been a frequent target of satire in the past: “New Uber Update Allows Users To File Lawsuit Against Company Directly In App,” The Onion in 2016.)

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of
The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Most Consequential Recent First Lady
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The most consequential first lady of modern times was Melania Trump. I know, I know. We are supposed to believe it was Hillary Clinton, with her unbaked cookies
The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult

Related Books & Audiobooks