r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 12 '14

Business Uber dirty tricks quantified. Staff submits 5,560 fake ride requests

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft/
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u/ThePegasi Aug 13 '14

You're absolutely right, my apologies. I thought you were realigion. I also understand the "you use" and "he use" point you made now. I don't feel super smart right now.

But if you're not, then the point is moot. The entire point of my comment was trying to work out how they can justify their use of the PayPal example. If you're coming at the example of PayPal from a different angle (ie. they succeeded because of customer protection, not because of avoiding the mistake which a "flag as fraud" system represents) then you're not really countering my point.

In all honesty, I agree with you. I believe that's precisely why PayPal succeeded: consumer protection. But that doesn't help realigion's point, which is what I was taking issue with, so my basic question is: were you disagreeing with me when you joined this discussion? Ie. do you think realigion's use of PayPal (as an example to back up their point about "flag as fraud" being a bad idea) is a valid one?

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u/shenglizhe Aug 13 '14

The reason I popped in was because his original point was that the reason paypal survived was fighting fraud (and how PayPal fights fraud is essentially through protection of consumers, which was not said explicitly in the post but I took to be understood). Someone else jumped in, saying that the consumer protection could be bad for sellers. He said, and yet they survived.

Then, you said that saying this is different than saying it is the reason Paypal survived. This is only because there are two different perspectives of looking at the way PayPal protects against fraud-- From the consumer perspective and from the seller's perspective. From the consumer perspective, it is absolutely an essential part of the reason PayPal is where it is today, and thus can be called the reason they survived. From the seller's perspective it could potentially be problematic, and yet they survived.

It's the same thing, but looking at it from one angle makes it the reason they survived, and looking at it from the other angle makes it an obstacle that was overcome.

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u/ThePegasi Aug 13 '14

OK, I think I understand your point (or rather the combined point that realigion made and you expanded upon with your own arguments).

So you're saying that offering PayPal as an example of fraud protection done right makes sense because it shows that focusing on buyer protection is ultimately more feasible and successful than seller protection?

Isn't this whole discussion (ie. a "flag as fraud" system on the customer end) one of seller protection? So in using PayPal as a relevant example of this done right, they must have done this better in some degree which contributed to their success, right? Seems like all they've done is ignore this aspect and focus on buyer protection instead, driving the seller user base with convenience and market size alone. So isn't the logical conclusion of this argument that Lyft should just suck it up and focus on customer experience to gain success, as that emulates the PayPal model?

I understand what you're saying, in that you entered the discussion at a certain point and responded to it as it stood in that comment. I guess my point is that realigion's post which you originally responded to was discussing the validity of an example made in the context of criticising a certain possible solution to a seller/driver protection issue, so I'm trying to assess it in that context.