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Uber is now using your trip data to create restaurant guides - is this going a bit too far?
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Lilly Kenyon (lilly)
Ride Guru
RideGuru market data & operations expert
Lilly has been involved with the taxi and rideshare industry for 6 years. Over the years Lilly has led the many operational aspects of growing TaxiFareFinder.com and building Ride.Guru. Through marketing efforts and rideshare data management, Lilly has developed relationships with various taxi and rideshare companies across the globe. Furthermore, Lilly leads the support team for both TaxiFareFinder and RideGuru and has years of experience answering the toughest rideshare and taxi questions!
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Comments
Interesting. I don't hate the idea, but I worry that it will end up just promoting already-popular places, at the expense of new joints that might be really good. This type of thing makes it hard for new restaurants to break in.
If they only use volume of users, there will be issues. This means:
1) Larger restaurants with more capacity will naturally be more recommended. PF Changs and other touristy restaurants will rock it consistently.
2) Restaurants near popular destinations will always be ranked higher. The McDonald next to Empire State Building will be the hottest restaurants in midtown. In fact, any highrise or a large office building will add to the popularity of the restaurant.
3) Restaurants that are popular for any reason will be ranked higher. It may have nothing to do with food or service quality. It can be a place that was featured on a movie, a celebrity got shot there, etc.
4) Restaurant having private functions will be considered "popular." I may be recommended to go to a restaurant that is having a private function, wedding, etc. just because there are many getting dropped off. Oh, how pissed I would be if I got takent here and got denied at the door.
It'll be purely based on popularity and there is so much more to it than that...
And now they have taken this one step further, tracking users even when you are not using the app!
http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a815827/uber-is-now-tracking-you-all-the-time/
This I'm not ok with.
WAT. and they aren't even discrete about it either when they mention creating restaurant guides, etc.
At least Apple hides its intentions to take over the world and do some massive crowd analysis.
So what do I do? Just kill Uber app from the background?
Use this guide to turn off Uber's background activity on your phone!
https://ride.guru/content/newsroom/steps-to-turn-off-ubers-background-activity-on-your-phone-and-protect-your-location-information
I feel like there are LOTS of other ways to use their massive data to use than this restaurant guide.
Plus, there is a major flaw to this
"Uber determines their ranking for each of these based on popularity of drop-offs at the restaurants overall and at specific times of day, what kind of ride users selected to get there and more."
...but that only measures 1) frequency of visits by others and 2) when people are visiting. Are you kidding me? How do they expect to be able to make relevant recommendations?