Peter Nowak: User backlash as Uber billionaire gives Trump a lift

Populism may have helped both Donald Trump and Uber's chief executive get where they are now, but the public is growing weary of their antics.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A brash American billionaire fights with the press, repeatedly runs afoul of rule makers and boasts about how desirable he is to women.

Sounds like Donald Trump, right? Sure, but it’s also an apt description of Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, who ironically finds himself in hot water after the US president’s chaos-inducing travel ban on several Middle East countries last weekend.

Within hours of the executive order being signed, #DeleteUber started trending on social media in reaction to an ill-advised tweet from the company. With protests breaking out at New York’s JFK airport and taxi drivers striking to show solidarity, Uber announced on Twitter that it was suspending surge pricing in the area. The move was immediately perceived as a strike-breaker, with observers accusing Uber of sending its drivers to perform a service that regular cabbies were refusing to do.

The company quickly denied it but its motives continued to generate suspicion given that the pricing reduction reportedly affected only passengers leaving the airport and not those travelling to it. Applying the cut both ways would have been a good way for Uber to signal its support, so the omission was telling of the company’s real position, critics charged.

Mr Kalanick has not given detractors much reason to think otherwise. He has agreed to serve on Mr Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of business executives who will meet frequently to advise the president.

Most tellingly for critics, Uber’s chief executive also reportedly told employees he “would partner with anyone in the world as long as they’re about making transportation in cities better”. It’s a pragmatic position for a company to take, to be sure, but the moral and ethical risk of such a stance is rather obvious.

Put it all together and the #DeleteUber movement comes as no surprise. Thousands of users posted images online of account deletions over the weekend.

In contrast, Uber’s main ride-sharing competitor in the United States – Lyft – soared to the top of the Apple app store over the weekend thanks to its condemnation of the immigration ban and a US$1 million pledge to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr Kalanick was left to do more damage control, promising to bring up the immigration issue with Mr Trump when next they meet. He also promised a $3m defence fund to help pay legal and immigration costs for drivers affected by the ban.

Critics are unmoved, probably because Mr Kalanick and his company – like Mr Trump – have a history of seemingly doing whatever they want, the public optics be damned.

There was that time where an Uber executive publicly suggested a fund for digging up dirt on journalists, or the fake story the company tried to plant with LA Weekly about how great it was.

Then there was that GQ magazine profile in which Mr Kalanick bragged about how he could call up women on demand thanks to his newfound fame and power, or the marketing campaign in France that offered to connect customers with "hot chick" drivers.

Then, of course, there’s the bull-in-a-china-shop approach Uber has taken with transport regulators. Determined to dominate the ride-sharing business on a global scale, the company has built scale quickly by expanding into cities around the world regardless of whether it was allowed to or not.

Numerous cities and countries have been forced into rushing decisions on whether or not to allow such services without a chance to properly study their impacts. For Uber, it has been the ultimate expression of the technology industry’s adoption of the credo that it is better to ask forgiveness than request permission.

Even if the #DeleteUber movement peters out, it’s the first sign that at least some users are getting a little tired of the company’s shenanigans. The mini-protest also highlights how risky it is for a company to wade anywhere near political issues.

Populist support has taken Mr Trump and Mr Kalanick this far, but they are both going to have to watch their steps more closely now. One other similarity they have is that they’re both clearly sitting on a burgeoning backlash.

The tech week’s winner and loser

Winner of the Week: Microsoft. The venerable software company continues its comeback, hitting a market value of US$500 billion for the first time since 2000 after posting strong quarterly results.

Loser of the Week: Fitbit. The fitness tracker maker is cutting another 100 jobs following disappointing fourth-quarter results and the continuing flattening of the wearables market.

Peter Nowak is a veteran technology writer and author of Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of the Species