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Uber Ex-CEO Travis Kalanick speaks at a Vanity Fair summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 19, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
Ride-hailing pioneer Uber may be stemming losses and increasing bookings. But the company is still embroiled in bad PR and lawsuits on several fronts. Those distractions, combined with a vacuum in management there, leave Uber at serious risk of losing business to competitors such as Lyft.
On Friday, Uber’s former director of product design, Ethan Eismann, wrote in a public thread on Twitter that Uber’s latest strategic changes indicate the company is becoming more “humanistic” and less purely “rational.”
Eismann suggests that the changes put Uber in a position to make a net-positive impact on society, finally.
But will these moves be too little too late? Or can Uber make an ethical comeback?
Uber and its investors have always talked up how much good the company does in the world, like giving people access to safe rides home, especially people who taxis ignored, or providing flexible work to drivers.