> While I do not disagree with the amount of data that Uber have, a company like Facebook and Google arguably know more about us than we do ourselves. Why should we distrust Uber more than any other company?
I believe the point of the article was that we should not distrust Uber more than any other company; we should distrust them all equally, i.e. assume they are all misusing or failing to secure our personal data until an audit by a trusted third party (an "information fiduciary") can prove otherwise.
> However, I do believe that companies with data like Uber should be held accountable to very high standards and any breach of privacy of said data would result in severe penalties. This is not just an Uber problem, this is a big data problem and one many companies have.
The problem is that there is no incentive for the companies to treat customer data responsibly, while there are substantial commercial incentives for them to misuse it, or at best to reduce the amount they spend on securing it to the absolute minimum possible that they can get away with. And since users are poorly informed and have little power, these incentives will continue to be misaligned until third parties exist with the market or legal muscle to create negative incentives around misusing information strong enough to outweigh the positive ones.
>I believe the point of the article was that we should not distrust Uber more than any other company
If that was their point, then the title they selected, "We Can't Trust Uber" does a pretty poor job at explaining that consumers should distrust companies like Uber, Google and Facebook equally. The title insinuates and singles out Uber solely, but then the article does mention other companies like Facebook and the power and data that they have. Seems the title was for click-bait purposes.
There definitely needs to be some kind of change on a regulatory level. I agree, the problem is these companies lack incentives to be responsible and treat data like a bank protecting its consumers money (a poor analogy given the GFC and all, but still).
I believe the point of the article was that we should not distrust Uber more than any other company; we should distrust them all equally, i.e. assume they are all misusing or failing to secure our personal data until an audit by a trusted third party (an "information fiduciary") can prove otherwise.
> However, I do believe that companies with data like Uber should be held accountable to very high standards and any breach of privacy of said data would result in severe penalties. This is not just an Uber problem, this is a big data problem and one many companies have.
The problem is that there is no incentive for the companies to treat customer data responsibly, while there are substantial commercial incentives for them to misuse it, or at best to reduce the amount they spend on securing it to the absolute minimum possible that they can get away with. And since users are poorly informed and have little power, these incentives will continue to be misaligned until third parties exist with the market or legal muscle to create negative incentives around misusing information strong enough to outweigh the positive ones.