So what I dislike about this is that the driver is the one choosing. If the customer was placing their preference, and then Lyft agrees to attempt to place them with their preference (for a surcharge of course, priority service shouldn’t be free) that would be something I could get behind. Letting drivers flat refuse service to someone based solely on their gender sounds like opening the doors to discrimination suits.
Lyft now lets drivers prioritize matches with women and nonbinary riders
Submitted 9 months ago by Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23869996/lyft-women-plus-connect-women-nonbinary-drivers-riders
Comments
iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world 9 months ago
philodendron@lemdro.id 9 months ago
Conceptually, sure. But I imagine it’d be a potential lawsuit over workplace discrimination. Especially if the female drivers are being paid more for the same service.
alp@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Female workers make more in a number or jobs, especially pretty or flirtatious women make much more in jobs that have tips
malloc@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This idea of feeling safe is causing us to regress as a society. This “feature” is just discrimination wrapped in a nice sounding name — “Women Plus Connect” and UI.
We used to be able to identify the predators in our communities and do some sort of action: jail them, shame them, beat them up, whatever. Now we are using fear of them to perpetuate discrimination and AVOID them.
flumph@programming.dev 9 months ago
The actual numbers speak for themselves and the clear motivation for this feature.
About 91% of the victims of rape were riders and about 7% of the victims were drivers. Women made up 81% of the victims while men comprised about 15%
Uber releases safety data: 998 sexual assault incidents including 141 rape reports in 2020
Women Plus were 85% of the victims. This is despite the “ways” Uber has implemented to increase safety.
5BC2E7@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s half of the story the breakdown of drivers and riders would make it look even worse (i am assuming most drivers are actually male)
dsmk@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Since users choose their gender in the app, this has some potential to be used for more nefarious purposes, no?
Not a big fan of discriminatory options like this, btw.
otter@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
They’d need a toggle for the feature on the rider side as well. Like “hide my gender”
glimse@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Wouldn’t need it at all if rideshare drivers stopped sexually assaulting passengers
db2@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
There are plenty of sexually aggressive riders too. It’s not one sided. We can summarize it thus: people suck.
dsmk@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Can’t really comment on that as in my city (not US) to drive for these companies you need a license, background checks, etc, which seems to stop a lot of bad stuff. Not saying it doesn’t happen - you can’t never completely stop it - but there are ways to reduce it.
Anyway, they could just allow customers to select their preferred gender, would make anyone that wants to use such option happy, and we wouldn’t even have to talk about discrimination.
AnonTwo@kbin.social 9 months ago
I'd assume if you get legal action thrown at you though, it'd be a lot harder to deny if you also were picking a gender to get specific drivers.
dsmk@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Legal action for picking the “wrong” option in an app? Also, “I’m gender fluid, your honor”, so good luck proving anything.
By “nefarious purposes” I meant serious stuff. Some deranged fuck decides to kill and there’s not much you can do after they point a gun or put a knife to the driver’s neck. It’s too late by then.
I don’t know, I understand their intention, but it seems to have some flaws.
flumph@programming.dev 9 months ago
Explain how sorting the list of available passengers by gender is discrimination? It’s being rolled out in huge metropolitan markets so there will be enough drivers for everyone to get one.
bou@kbin.social 9 months ago
@flumph if they allowed sorting the list by race, instead of by gender... would you understand how it's discrimination, then?
dsmk@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
The option allows customers to prioritize drivers from two of their 3 gender groups: “female” and “non-binary”. One group is left out and if you happen to be in that group, you’ll end up doing less trips, making less money.
I wouldn’t be happy with a setting to prioritize “male”, so you can see why I’m not happy with a setting that prioritizes “female” and “non-binary”. You either give the customer the option to prioritize any gender or you don’t.
Since they can’t verify one’s gender, the potential for abuse is there. A customer could prioritise these groups if they wanted to target them and the driver could also pick one of these genders if they wanted to have people of said gender in their car.
ChrislyBear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So as a driver I have now a filter for better rape and murder victims? Nice!
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I assume they’ll probably check with the gender people put on their drivers licenses or something.
dsmk@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Are they checking the customers too? If not, it seems to be an easy way for some weirdos to go around targetting genders they don’t like.
cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
They can’t really check that you’re non binary, that’s not a sex that appears on most (any?) drivers licenses/ID.
I think this case is far fetched, the ride share company has your info which makes the legal case against you a slam dunk.
NumerousGeorg@geddit.social 9 months ago
Would be better if driver meant customer here. Or if either customer or driver could disallow matching with male binary people (or whoever they find offensive)
Pratai@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Great news for all the would-be predator Lyft drivers out there!
alienanimals@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Discrimination is never a good thing. Separate but “equal” is never a good thing.
5BC2E7@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I guess that if I ever use lyft I would describe myself as whichever classification gives you more privilege. In this case I would go with non binary woman
snooggums@kbin.social 9 months ago
Wow, this thread is a bunch of people spouting an updated version of the "men in women's bathrooms is gonna lead to rape" bullshit.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Step 0: Be the sort of scum that would assault a lyft driver Step 1: Set your identity to non binary as a rider Step 2: Dress in a way to appear non-binary, even a little bit. Honestly just painting your nails purple and wearing thick glasses is probably enough to not raise suspicion. Most people wont try and question this and interrogate you over it. If they do, filter them off and be a normal rider. Step 3: If they don’;t question it, congrats, Lyft has no just done the work of assisting you with finding your next victim, great job Lyft!
snooggums@kbin.social 9 months ago
So people who haven't been doing that already are going to suddenly go out of their way using steps that will show obvious intent during future prosecution?
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“Already” It’s a new feature, so no one is doing it already.
mojo@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Wow good way to make the women feel incredibly unsafe and easily targeted.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I look forward to seeing the same people suing over bathroom access doing the mental gymnastics to sue over this.
tfw_no_toiletpaper@feddit.de 9 months ago
Wasn’t there a BoJack horseman episode almost exactly like this lmao
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, this will end up just as well I’m assuming
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 9 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Choosing this will “increase their chances of matching with women and nonbinary drivers,” according to this blog post from Lyft.
If someone goes through the steps to change their gender in the app, we are going to assume that is how they identify,” Audrey Liu, Executive Vice President/Head of Design at Lyft, said in a statement.
“Inclusivity is a core value at Lyft and we are committed to creating a community in which riders and drivers feel as though they are included and belong.”
Lyft says this feature has been highly requested and will give women and nonbinary people more control over both the driving and riding experience.
Currently, that demographic accounts for less than a quarter of Lyft drivers, which is comparable with the rest of the rideshare industry, according to a report by Gridwise.
Those in launch cities can download the latest version of the Lyft app starting tomorrow, Sept. 13th to access the feature.
The original article contains 478 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
fsmacolyte@lemmy.world 9 months ago
John Wayne Gacy is really unhappy with this feature.
geekworking@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Male drivers get your discrimination lawsuits ready for your lost income.
nix@merv.news 9 months ago
Did you even read the article? How would women drivers deciding they want more women and nb passengers cause male drivers to lose income…
How is this the most upvoted comment
qooqie@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Next they should add white people to be able to get only white drivers to make them comfortable! /s It’s obviously sexist and not a real solution to their issues
Sniper@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They should add a feature to be able to avoid Muslim drivers too
cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I posted a description of how this causes bias here and here
When I run the numbers I do see this system as creating a financial bias in favour of women+.
flumph@programming.dev 9 months ago
Your comment makes no sense given the details provided in the article. The toggle runs a gender-based sort on available passengers when a driver indicates they’re ready to pick up a new passenger.
At no point does the pool of available passengers for male drivers decrease.
cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
It is zero sum, giving preference to one group in the list requires changing preferences to another groups.
Imagine you’re at Walmart queued for checkout. You form a first-in-first-out line and the first checkout available takes you. With this women+ system there’s a person sending women+ to the express checkout (>20% of total capacity) unless there are no women in line, in which case the express serves men now. At busy times both checkouts serve customers, but the women+ lines are always at least as busy as the other lines.
Obviously the algorithm for location and time based matching with ratings is different than queuing at walmart, but the principal is the same. If you have a system where A >= B it is possible to fall on the equal region, but at low traffic times or in less ride dense areas this is objectively unequal.
It is objectively always better to be in the women+ group than outside of it.
sadreality@kbin.social 9 months ago
Back of the bus, shitlords!