Uber is turning data about trips and takeout into insights for marketers

So many times on this website, people say, "I will pay for the service to get rid of advertising." You pay for this service and rides aren't getting any cheaper. It is naive to think any company isn't finding ways to monetize your behavior, whether you're paying them or not.

I have misguided friends working with payment processors (think companies like VISA, mastercard, etc.) to build models that run across all transactions to extract the purchasing behaviors of individuals, uncover correlations between accounts for marketing purposes, and predictively model future purchases and life events. Surveillance is inescapable at this point. How long until AI shops for us based on past purchases or we live in a world where mass individualized price discrimination is the norm? How to avoid that future? Sometimes I forget privacy is a basic right, as society often requires that we sign it away.

It sounds like Uber is literally selling data; as opposed to when Facebook is accused of more metaphorically "selling data" (allowing advertisers to target their ads).

The business life-cycle:

  - Ascension

    - solve problem

    - proof of concept / MVP

    - investment

    - roll-out in home market

    - polished product

    - more investment, global roll-out

    - disruption of existing industry

    - non-autonomous growth by acquisition of other players

    - land-grab growth

      - lots of hiring
 
      - fancy offices, founders and stockholders make out like bandits

    - market domination

    - data hoarding as part of the 'moat'

    - continued innovation: go to 'step 1', otherwise...

  - Milk the cow

    - eventual competition
 
      - market share reduction

      - eroding margins

    - first reorganizations, lay-offs

    - founders replaced with financial managers

    - Data hoarding phase ends, data is sold *<- you are here*

  - Decline

    - reduced sales

    - shrinking profits

    - downsizing

  - terminal phase

    - lawsuits

    - patent portfolio and other IP used as strategic weapon

    - brand and IP acquisition by other players, not necessarily the same party
      acquiring both

I’m pretty surprised they haven’t been doing that for years already tbh.

The Uber app keeps pushing notifications to advertise fast food. This is so annoying since you need alerts enabled for when your ride is on its way. As I am a very infrequent customer I just uninstall the app, and reinstall it if I need a ride.

Uber really are the piranhas of the corporate world.

I can't imagine any depth they wouldn't dive to, in order to get a morsel to feed on.

I'm surprised they weren't already doing this. Maybe they wanted to give it some time to see if there were other ways to monetize it before opening up the aggregates for sale.

I'm not surprised. It won't hesitate to turn more unethical than any other company.

Uber support in India is the most robotic and useless I have ever seen with any vendor. I gave up after fighting for months, just to utilize my wallet amount in other country or get refund. Both were impossible.

Cool so not only do the prices of the food not drop (because Uber's crazy fees to the restaurant), but we also get to suffer through (more) ads, and they will now be targeted? And Uber makes even more off it all while making no improvements to the user and/or provider experience?

I just realized taxis still exist and most restaurants offer their own delivery service (or pick-up!)

It's been real Uber. GL HF

There should be a law forcing ride hailing apps to give anonymized ride data to local governments so that they can plan public transport better. If they sell it to marketers they must be able to do this technically.

duh

I'm quite surprised this was not already being done. But yes, ALL services will do their best to maximize value and make the service worse for you. One way in which they do this is to sell your data to marketers.

Will gladly start using and paying for local car services instead.

Back in the day in my country, if your neighbor or taxi driver was informing the authorities of your habits and travels, this was considered a dangerously hostile action. If no willing informant could be found, there were torture basements to get it. It's what kept the government in power for so long. E.g. travel data makes it easy to identify nascent political groups.

Thankfully corporations have proven themselves so trustworthy and benevolent, we don't think twice about giving them the data they used to have to torture out of us. Likewise the governments, that we know are among the buyers [1], are just as beloved and uncontroversial, unlike in the old days.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/14/23759585/odni-spy-report-...

Honestly, I'm surprised this is news. As in, I assumed they were already doing it, because that's what companies do in 2025.

Imagine a World where legacy taxis are no more. Yup, it's gonna get way worse.

At this point im just going to move to Shetland, live in a hut and spend the next 30 years making wooden boats. It's the only way to be free of this nonsense.

Advertising is a virus that seeks to invade every ecosystem.

Another reason to use Waymo (for now).

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As long as it is to advertise in their own platform sounds great. I'd rather have nice restaurant suggestions on top than McDonald's and Dominoes or whoever paid the most every day. Using Uber eats is like some app from the past with ads as global banners that are the same for all users. If you're going to throw me ads at least use my history to try and do something useful.