Regulation for Technology Network Companies (TNCs)

Research and analysis for Civic Leadership minor at Portland State University

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I didn’t pick the music #thanksapple | By Erica | Facebook

61 views, 5 likes, 3 loves, 11 comments, 1 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Erica Raviart: I didn’t pick the music #thanksapple

Fond memories from actions past! Can't wait to rewrite #Prop22 history at the apellate court in just 10 days!

[mighettoraviart813]

When Union Bosses Overstep Their Bounds, Organized Workers Have Final Word

It was back in May of last year that I remember TWU negotiating with Uber and Lyft to back a Prop 22-like bill that sought to disallow collective action. Such legislation would strip drivers of any and all bargaining power. RDU organizers and their coalition partners quickly took to twitter challenging this union boss and demanding to know where the workers he represented were. It was a matter of days before support for the bill was retracted thanks to real drivers having spoken out.

[mighettoraviart813]

Dr. Veena Dubal's White Paper

In 2020, almost a decade after the advent of Uber and Lyft, the ride-hailing industry is facing a wave of militant self-organizing and claim

I've had the great pleasure of working with Dr. Veena Dubal over the past couple years since Prop 22 was announced. It was before we met that I first read her White Paper. It is her work that drew me to Rideshare Drivers United. When I met her a year later at Hastings College, she helped myself and about fifty other drivers embark on our Wage Claim Campaign. This eventually would result in over 5,000 drivers in California filing wage claims.

As we wait for the Labor Commission and now the Attorney General to resolve our case, Dr. Veena Dubal's White Paper is still as relevant as ever. Taxi drivers have been faced with bankruptcy and foreclosure without the safety nets described and no thanks to the global pandemic. Drivers still express concerns as to whether big unions can effectively represent and defend them. They wonder if their best interests will ever be negotiated. It seems that the companies, Uber and Lyft, have only been willing to negotiate a living wage for drivers if they agree to remain independent contractors indefinitely, as we've seen in Washington State.

Regardless, Uber and Lyft still control every aspect of the work. So-called independent contractors across these Technology Network Companies (TNCs) have little to no access to information about the 'contracts' they commit to. Drivers typically don't know where a ride will take them until the customer is sitting in their car. Should a driver wish to cancel based on undesirable terms, they're likely to suffer an awkward confrontation at the very least. Not only that, they face threats of deactivation if they don't achieve high 'acceptance rates'. So it seems Uber and Lyft drivers don't have much independence at all. They are forced to work during peak hours (late at night and during the wee hours of the morning) and during holidays for any chance at survival, given that there is no compensation for idle time.

Until the constitutionality of Prop 22 is determined at the state level, drivers continue to be faced with more and more pay cuts with no protections. Drivers continue to die at the wheel leaving families penniless without the benefit of Worker's Compensation. They are frivolously deactivated, often on the whim of a disgruntled passenger who may make false accusations when required to wear a mask. Drivers can't afford to properly maintain their vehicles saddled with fronting the expense of billionaires' fleet. Additionally, the state of California continues to be robbed of payroll taxes and unemployment insurance. Uber and Lyft continue to capitalize on the lack of regulation in TNCs, which continues to threaten the safety and livelihood of the general public.

[mighettoraviart813]

Prop 22 Described by Workers, Scholars, and Labor Legislators

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Postmates spent an unprecedented $220 million dollars to funnel propaganda into the homes and onto the apps of Californians. They used unethical practices to mislead and manipulate the public about the effects of this legislation. In this video, we see several members of Rideshare Drivers United (that's me on the right) and our partners at Gig Workers Collective speaking out about the disastrous consequences of this legislation. The bill passed and was immediately contested as unconstitutional. The appeal is still being fought in the California courts while hundreds of thousand of drivers continue to suffer the consequences of the economic injustices perpetrated by billionaire corporations.

[mighettoraviart813]

This social change song about the courage and tenacity that is necessary to inspire others and "rise up." I'm so moved, and I get chills every time I hear this song. I have often played it at caravans I have participated in. It represents unity, determination, selflessness, and strength. 

[mighettoraviart813]

Part 1 of a 3-hour radio documentary about why workers in America are so precarious and susceptible to a crisis like Covid-19.

Managers and executives are using obscure laws to weaken employee benefits, and politicians haven’t stopped them.

Sam Harnett and KQED explain the erosion of our labor laws in the United States since The New Deal. Safety nets created legislatively to protect us after The Great Depression have been gutted and replaced by temp agencies and app-based work. While my role in this project is a little embarrassing (fine... vulnerable), I'm proud to've shared my story to such an educational series about labor rights.

[mighettoraviart813]

Opposing Views on Prop 22

Proposition 22 was a source of heated debate when it was announced in 2019 with people from all sides of the bipartisan fence weighing in. Even some of the most staunch Republican drivers, who subscribe to the belief that so-called independence from company control, knew that Prop 22 gave too much control over wages, or lack thereof. The $225 million that went into promoting the ballot measure to appear in 2020 was largely spent on lobbying and promotion that was misleading at best. One wonders if "With Prop 22, Californians can undo a big mistake," was one such investment.

It's been pretty quiet around the red tablecloth since the bill has passed and while the constitutionality of Proposition 22 is being debated within the California court system, at least on social media. Although, drivers in the Facebook groups are pretty vocal about the fact that Prop 22 has resulted in even lower wages for them. Many drivers are now admitting that they were deceived by Prop 22 and they're hopeful that the case being waged by the Labor Commission will result in a favorable outcome for them.

It seems that the real author of the 'mistake' piece would prefer to go unnamed, while the Griswold makes his position clear unapologetically and in our faces. He uses multiple sources to back his claims and is both truthful and entertaining.

I was hard pressed to find a current article or post that was either recent or well written. I guess Uber and Lyft have found themselves in a financially comatose state since they've fallen on this expensive banana peel, as Griswold puts it.

Griswold, A. (2022, April 16). The antitrust case against the gig economy. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://oversharing.substack.com/p/the-antitrust-case-against-the-gig 

Washington Examiner. (2020, November 2). With Prop 22, Californians can undo a big mistake. Washington Examiner. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/with-prop-22-californians-can-undo-a-big-mistake 

[13thpythagoras]

With Prop 22, Californians can undo a big mistake

Since it went into effect at the beginning of this year, California Assembly Bill 5 has threatened millions of jobs ranging from truck driving to freelance journalism, and it has killed thousands of them. But at least some of the gig workers affected by this odious legislation, those who earn their…

^This has been my opinion on prop 22. I thought we were going for like, single payer healthcare? Wait what suddenly that is a dead horse? 

Suddenly amidst tens of millions of jobs being lost this year, we want to tie more healthcare to job security? No thank you LOL

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Lyft could just delete me from their platform as a driver with no notice or reason and there also goes my health insurance? Stressful. No thank you. Already stressful enough that they wield that power - and yet as a driver so do I so who would I be to complain? This is why it is so much safer to simply buy your own shit yourself. If you get fired, why should you suddenly worry that some random thing that’s horrifyingly overpriced will become inaccessible to you. Medical error is the 3rd leading killer of Americans so why is our healthcare also the most expensive damn thing we buy? Maybe we need to admit our justice system and healthcare system are broken as fuck before we go putting cancer into the economy with prop 5.

Meanwhile gig workers pay double the tax rate of employees (40 vs 20%) and the government loves that don’t they? I thought the game was to tax the wealthy, not working class gig workers. Your Doordash delivery guy yes pays 40% income taxes of the tips you share with them in-app. That means he keeps 60 cents for every dollar you tip him, and that’s due to the government. If even the senate wanted to make an internal rule that they be taxed at the same rate of employees or capital gains that investors pay (20%) then their lives would be different in a big way. It would be more than enough for them to afford their own healthcare on the open market - but preferably they would keep that cash as single payer gets funded by legalized cannabis revenues. 

In a perfect world. 

[theivansharris]

When you find out There’s another Agency that wants to book, the photographer, for a Second “Modeling Opportunity”.

You know, I was thinking, Since Prop22 passed (Thanks to me being featured in that catching a Lyft video) its Over for everyone. Im here now. 😂😂😂😂 #TheyCreatedAnUpstandingModelCitizen #Model #Citizen #Watches #apparel #Brand #Selftape #Audition #Models #BackgroundActor #SippingTeaInTheBackground (at South Park (San Diego)) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHjmrolDVuQ/?igshid=12ypfmlftt5wu

[mighettoraviart813]

Proud bad actor...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Boy, gig companies sure hire disastrously sloppy lawyers

In the run-up to the 2020 election, “gig work” companies, led by Uber and Lyft, firehosed $225m to back the passage of Proposition 22, a law that would permanently allow them to misclassify employees as contractors, not entitled to benefits or workplace protections.

More than a decade after Citizens United — the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for unlimited dark money in US election spending — it’s sometimes hard to get a sense of scale. Is $225m a lot of money to spend on a California ballot initiative?

Uh, yeah. Uber and Lyft’s spending on that single question exceeded nearly all the spending on all the 2020 state electoral campaigns, combined. It was a big flex, and it paid off. After the passage of Prop 22, companies like Pavilions mass-fired their union staff and replaced them with gig workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22

Given both the high stakes and the high pricetag for Prop 22, you’d think that the lawyers who drafted it would have been very careful to ensure that the law itself was valid. I mean, it’d be hilarious if the companies spent $225m bigfooting their way to a custom-wrought California law only to have it invalidated because it violated the state constitution, you know?

Here’s something hilarious: Prop 22 was unconstitutional. It took so much power away from the legislature that a state court found that it required a constitutional amendment to be valid. The California Superior court voided Prop 22 in its entirety and $225m in dark money went up in smoke. You love to see it.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-20/prop-22-unconstitutional

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Prop 22 was supposed to be model legislation, like the laws banning municipal broadband that ALEC pushed through statehouses across the country. In fact, Lyft, Uber and their allies had already committed $100m to dark-money campaign spending for a similar provision in Massachusetts for the 2022 elections.

You’ll never guess what happened next. With just months to go until the election, the Massachusetts surpreme court unanimously ruled that the worker misclassification initiative is so badly drafted that it can’t appear on the ballot.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-14/massachusetts-justices-strike-down-gig-backed-ballot-initiative

The ballot initiative included a provision that let the gig companies off the hook for car wrecks, no matter how culpable they were, but the summary provided to voters failed to mention this. The court found the summary so misleading that they tore the whole thing up.

This is a baffling error. Look, I’m as gaffe-prone as anyone, but I’m not a lawyer. In 20 years of advocacy work, I’ve always worked in teams with lawyers who serve as the red team for my weird ideas, gaming out all the ways that they can go wrong.

Like, one time when I beat a giant corporation that tried sued me on idiotic grounds and lost big, I wanted to use the phrase “not even wrong” to describe their outlandish legal theory. The lawyer involved made me take that out: “You don’t want anything that anyone can interpret as your admission that they’re right, even if you mean the opposite.” She was right. I was wrong. I took it out.

When the stakes are higher — for example, in legislative work, or high stake litigation, or treaty drafting — whole teams of lawyers go over every word, getting into fierce arguments about whether or how it could be adversely interpreted. The idea is to make something drum-tight, because it would suck to get through all of this and then lose due to an unforced error in the drafting.

I can’t even imagine how you go ahead with a $100m ballot initiative campaign without gaming out the way it’ll play in court. I mean, sure, your boss is going to freak out if you fairly describe the ballot initiative’s lopsided language in the voter guide summary, but the lawyer’s job is to explain that failing to do so could wreck the whole thing.

It’s possible — likely, even — that the leadership in gig work companies are so high on their own supply that they can’t conceive of losing, and ignore their legal advice. It’s also possible that these lawyers have caught the profession’s most debilitating disease: compulsive bullying, which manifests in competitive sadism:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#devils

Seen in this light, lawyers’ addiction to sadistic overreach when representing massive, bullying clients is a feature, not a bug. Time and again, it produces operatic comeuppances that save us all from giant companies’ nefarious plans.

Remember “Free Basics?” This was Facebook’s bid to make “Facebook” synonymous with “internet” for people living in poor countries in the Global South. The idea was that Facebook would bribe the local ISPs and wireless companies to impose data-caps, but exempt Facebook and the internet services it favored.

The company claimed that this was just an act of charity, a bid to make the internet universally accessible to poor people. Critics claimed that it was “poor internet for poor people.” The evidence backed the critics — zero-rating programs like Internet Basics didn’t (and don’t) improve internet access:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/countries-zero-rating-have-more-expensive-wireless-broadband-countries-without-it

Facebook fought an especially vicious campaign in India, where local activists with deep technological backgrounds led a nationwide uprising against Free Basics, prompting the national telecoms regulator to put out a consultation paper seeking public comment on whether to allow the program.

Facebook cooked up a seemingly unbeatable plan: whenever people in India opened Facebook on their devices, they were prompted to send a form-letter to the telecoms regulator supporting Facebook’s position. It worked: Facebook got millions of comments in its favor.

But it failed. Due to sloppy drafting, Facebook’s boilerplate didn’t actually address any of the points raised in the consultation paper. The regulator threw them all out, saying “Consultation papers are not opinion polls. We expect the stakeholders who participate to provide meaningful input.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20160102182135/https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/consultation-paper-is-not-an-opinion-poll-trai-chairman/article8050019.ece

Facebook could have drafted comments that were responsive to the consultation paper, but it didn’t. Instead, it astroturfed millions of people into sending puffed-up, nonresponsive nonsense to the regulator. Somehow, amidst all the comma-fucking that characterizes a normal legal drafting process, Facebook managed to blow it.

It’s been six years since the Facebook Free Basics debacle, and I still don’t know how it is that they managed to squander such a giant advantage. I mean, I’m glad they did, but just as with Prop 22 and the Massachusetts ballot question, I can’t figure out how the world’s most powerful companies keep slipping on their own banana-peels.

[Image ID: A rusted wreck with Massachusetts custom plates reading ‘DERP’ and an Uber bumper-decal.]

[mighettoraviart813]

Rideshare "Creates Wealth Inequality on a Global Scale"

Dom Smith has been a longtime Uber driver and organizer with the grassroots union-building organization, Rideshare Drivers United (RDU), for over three years. "Rideshare is designed to take advantage of current labor laws and market. It's a UN crime against humanity." He corrects himself as being, "too radical," but is he?

As I continue my discussion with my longtime friend and fellow Director of the Board at RDU, I'm learning that Dom has probably spent hours in his car seething with frustration, as he struggles to make ends meet. While I share in this ritual, as I waited for rides, or drove to a passenger sometimes 30 minutes away, I realize that Dom has been thinking about this much more practically than I have.

When asked how he would change Rideshare, Dom has some pretty logical ideas about TNC's as a utility. "We need to make it publicly owned like PG&E, so that it has oversight. It has to be regulated in such a manner that it cannot be used to basically deprive people of their labor rights or their humanity. It's bad. People should never have to live out of their cars. People should never have to face any form of destitution. It's not the American dream."

He later says that Uber and Lyft were not innovative. He explains that they simply inserted themselves into an industry that already existed and used loopholes to usurp labor law. "We should give taxis the tech," in a system where, "we become the investors."

In the city where Uber and Lyft were born, San Francisco taxi drivers paid upwards of $250,000 for their medallions, or the right to do business in the region. Since Uber and Lyft came to town, taxi drivers have found themselves bankrupt, foreclosed upon, and some of them were forced into Rideshare after it's wreaked havoc on their livelihoods.

Dom argues that if we allow TNC's to deprive workers of labor rights, what's to stop technology apps to spread into other fields, like nursing? He makes a valid point that has been raised by legislators and labor attorneys. We even saw it happen with grocery workers in recent years.

While it's not clear how TNC's will come to be regulated within local, state, and federal guidelines, what is definite is that billionaires are continue to capitalize on the inexpedience of our legal system at the expense of workers around the world.

Dickerson, M. (2022, January 6). Vons, pavilions to fire "essential workers," replace drivers with Independent Contractors. Knock LA. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://knock-la.com/vons-fires-delivery-drivers-prop-22-e899ee24ffd0/ 

Harnett, S. (2018, October 15). Cities made millions selling taxi medallions, now drivers are paying the price. NPR. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2018/10/15/656595597/cities-made-millions-selling-taxi-medallions-now-drivers-are-paying-the-price 

Truong, K., & Gaus, A. (2022, August 30). San Francisco, birthplace of ride-hailing, becomes the center of its decline . The San Francisco Standard. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://sfstandard.com/technology/san-francisco-birthplace-of-ridehailing-becomes-the-center-of-its-decline/ 

[mighettoraviart813]

Stalling the Legal System: Uber Detours Drivers

Uber and Lyft have manipulated the United States legal system sinking billions of dollars into lobbying, publicity, and thousands of lawsuits. It's often wondered by drivers, organizers, labor attorneys, and scholars: what would the industry look like if these resources were used to create an equitable and safe space for drivers and passengers alike? 

In 2019 in California, drivers were elated to find that Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) had passed codifying a Supreme Court Decision known as Dynamex, making it the law of the land. AB5 all but guaranteed rideshare drivers rights to a minimum wage and benefits like unemployment insurance, paid time off, and workman's compensation. It basically said that if and industry's workers couldn't meet three basic criteria, they were to be classified as employees. As an app-based worker, if I didn't have access to basic information that aided in my independence and agency over the work, then I was to be treated like an employee. Also, if I didn't do work that was critical to the day-to-day operations of the work (for example a plumber performing his work at a school), then I was an employee. Lastly, unless I engage in independent trade or profession, I am an employee. To those of us advocating for AB5, it was pretty obvious that we were employees and how much this bill stood to help us. 

We'd barely put out our celebratory cigars when what would become Proposition 22 was announced at the Sheraton just blocks away from the State Capitol in Sacramento. A record breaking $220 million dollars would be spent over the next year to mislead voters with campaign phrases like "Save Rideshare," and "Keep Uber Flexible," being funneled onto every social media and streaming outlet. They had bad actors, moms, and people of color in advertisements depicting people who wanted to be able to make their own schedule. Real drivers knew the only way to make a living at that point was to work every holiday and from 7pm to 9am. We'd suffered so many pay cuts by this time that the turnover in the industry was 96% and accidents and suicides were becoming more prevalent. More and more reports of driver and rider assaults were being made, and the companies took no responsibility as merely "a technology provider," not an employer. Families were left without a father and no hope of any kind of worker's compensation.

I suppose you can guess the outcome of Prop 22 in 2020, and we're still waiting for its appeal to be decided two years later. Five thousand drivers have filed wage claims in an attempt to recover a minimum wage living beyond expenses and the overtime and sick pay afforded to any other worker in the country since the 1930's. Uber and lift continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to employ stall tactics within the legal system, exhausting resources within the California Attorney General and Labor Commissioner's offices. In the meantime, more workers are pushed into poverty, and executives and lawyers live in mansions with multi million dollar salaries.

References

Bill text. Bill Text - AB-5 Worker status: employees and independent contractors. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5 Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). ABC Test.

Legal Information Institute. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abc_test

[mighettoraviart813]

Uber and Lyft Regulation as a Matter of Social Justice

Since the inception of the rideshare industry, Uber and Lyft have flagrantly trampled city, state, and federal law. By ignoring transportation regulation and labor law, they have exploited workers, polluted cities, and increased traffic congestion. Drivers nationally and worldwide are struggling to survive. Drivers are reduced to living in their cars at the behest of billionaires whose algorithms by design, prod for more and more work at less and less pay. Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) took advantage of the lack of regulation and enforcement in the tech industry and have wreaked havoc on worker protections and safety standards. 

"On a cold winter evening in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp couldn't get a ride. That's when the idea for Uber was born." According to Uber, the first vehicle was dispatched less than two years later in 2010. It was a momentous and revolutionary day for the transportation industry. By 2013, over a billion rides had been dispatched worldwide and by 2018 that figure jumped to over ten billion. By 2019, Uber had made what was called a "trainwreck," Initial Public Offering (IPO), closing at less than it's projected value that day and making billionaires of a couple dozen shareholders and a handful of underwriters. They had successfully built a marketshare on the backs of workers and at the expense of taxi drivers. The sky was the limit. 

Just a matter of months before this historic day, I had reached over 1,000 rides as a driver for Lyft and shortly thereafter experienced the first of many pay cuts. When I first started driving, I received eighty percent of what my passengers paid and there was full transparency of the breakdown. If the rider experienced surge pricing, I was the principal beneficiary. These surges were precipitated by high demand and offered to drivers as an incentive to work peak hours, late at night. Both the surge and the transparency were short lived. A screeching halt to my income hit just before Christmas that year, devastating my bank account. I was among hundreds of thousands of drivers in California to experience this drastic cut in income, despite the fact that I was a five star service provider who was subsidizing the cost of the TNC fleet. A year after that, my car was rendered useless when my clutch went out, and I was again tasked with fronting the cost to continue my employment. This to the tune of $1,500 for the necessary repairs. It took several months and $250/week to lease a vehicle through their convenient rental program. Of course, the cost of gas, cleaning, and other maintenance was additional.

When the pandemic took its hold, we were left vulnerable and without any of the protections provided decades ago by The New Deal. Safety nets like the unemployment system we know today were not afforded to app-based workers. As so-called independent contractors, drivers are not eligible for sick pay, social security benefits, unemployment insurance, or the right to unionize or collectively bargain with our employer for better working conditions. It took months for the companies to negotiate a bailout with the Trump Administration for any relief for millions of drivers nationwide. My partner and I spent many months organizing, lobbying, and petitioning for relief. We were without consistent housing and flipped between living in our tent and at Air Bnb's for over two years.

Absent proper regulation, TNCs are capitalizing on the 'wild west' of economic and social justice in tech. They are exploiting migrant workers and others with limited resources. They are shirking state payroll taxes, evading federal laws, and an alarming few are becoming enriched by millions of workers who are being forced into poverty. This is a pervasive issue and a stain on civil liberties that needs to be addressed. If only our government acted with the expedience that opportunists like Travis Kalanick did when they seized the day over a decade ago.

References

Cohan, W. D. (2019, May 17). Guess who got rich off uber's train-wreck I.P.O.? Vanity Fair. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/guess-who-got-rich-off-ubers-train-wreck-ipo#:~:text=Nearly%2070%20percent%20of%20this,of%20America%20made%20%2410%20million. 

History.com Editors. (2009, October 29). New deal. History.com. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal 

The history of Uber - Uber's timeline. Uber Newsroom. (2018, May 2). Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.uber.com/newsroom/history/ 

[lifewithchronicpain]

Gig workers think they work for themselves. They don’t

App-based ride-hailing and delivery companies increasingly are using algorithms to...

One evening last October, Alex Tonsky started to feel like the Lyft app was working against him. He had been driving for hours, trying to boost his meager earnings that week. Later that night, he ended up in downtown Oakland, about 15 minutes from where he lived.

Tonsky turned on an in-app setting called destination mode, which supposedly matched him with rides closer to his destination of choice — in this case, home. He also used an additional feature in the setting to designate the time he wanted to arrive at home. Tonsky thought this feature would be straightforward to use and help him fit rides into his schedule. Instead, he became an unwitting player in an elaborate game — one that seems to favor app-based ride-hailing and delivery companies’ control over where and when their workers work.

Lyft kept matching Tonsky with rides in the opposite direction — toward San Francisco — which, with no guaranteed fares back to Oakland, could cause him to lose money. Lyft wouldn’t show Tonsky the destination of the trip requests until he accepted them. When he saw they were putting him farther from his home, he canceled them — five in a row. Then he gave up. Because Lyft suspends drivers for canceling too many rides, these cancellations put him at risk of losing his job.

“It almost felt like they were doing it on purpose,” he told me in an interview after the incident.

What Tonsky didn’t realize was that destination mode could match him with rides that ended in the opposite direction from where he wanted to be, provided the ride gave him enough time to get there by his designated time preference. Lyft says as much midway down on a “help” page on its website. But that information isn’t on the mobile app when drivers decide to turn the setting on. (Read more at link)