Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp <comment><USER2> "Later that day, Tripp heard from the sheriff's department in Storey County, Nev. Tesla's security department had passed a tip to police. An anonymous caller had contacted the company to say Tripp was planning a mass shooting at the Gigafactory."

Think of how this could have played out under different circumstances. We've already had numerous "swatting" incidents where innocent bystanders were hurt or killed.

The more I see Musk doing stupid pseudo-celebrity stuff like appearing on a kiddy Youtube channel to "review memes", the more I think he's eventually going to go the swatting route one day. He's extremely thin-skinned and responds on Twitter to even the slightest perceived slight.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how we're jumping to the conclusion that Musk is responsible for this. No one seems to be claiming the "anonymous call" was made up, as far as I can tell. For all we know Tripp made the call himself to make himself look like more a victim. It's no less plausible than suggesting Musk made the call himself, or had someone make it on his behalf.

<comment><USER4> The sheriff debunked it, and then Tesla tried to get the sheriff to hype up the event. The sheriff declined, and then Tesla (according to the sheriff) leaked it to the press.

[https://twitter.com/willCIR/status/1105906726782435328](https://twitter.com/willCIR/status/1105906726782435328)

<comment><USER5> In Iowa they would have faced criminal blacklisting charges under Iowa Code 730.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bloomberg conveniently left out the reason why "Tripp has since changed lawyers". It's because he published on Twitter a trove of confidential internal Tesla documents. Once he did that his lawyer knew they had no case anymore. Tripp only deleted the documents after his lawyer was able to get in touch with him. This showed that he did in fact access internal Tesla systems and he did in fact exfiltrate this information. But somehow Bloomberg paints Tesla in a negative light, as they always do.

This is what's left of the fallout:

"B advised that the Tweets by Mr. Tripp yesterday were issued by him on his own accord. Mr. Tripp has clearly been impacted emotionally by what $TSLA has done to him.He is very concerned about being gagged & wants to protect the public, more than his own personal interest. ++"

[https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/103013836984050073...](https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/1030138369840500736)

"It is accurate that we no longer rep M.Tripp in any matter.Nor do we have a need for any connection whatsoever with his attys in his Nev civil action.There wont be further comment on this.We still rep K.Hansen with re to his SEC submission & do have confidence in his submission"

[https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/107295281670310297...](https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/1072952816703102976)

"Also Mr. Tripp's Twitter account WAS NOT suspended/removed by twitter this AM. He himself voluntarily terminated his twitter account on advice of myself, so that there will not b any more confusion re if he has published anything or not. There is enough confusion re $TSLA already"

[https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/103013943327684608...](https://twitter.com/StuartMeissner/status/1030139433276846081)

<comment><USER7> > Bloomberg conveniently left out the reason why "Tripp has since changed > lawyers". It's because he published on Twitter a trove of confidential > internal Tesla documents. Once he did that his lawyer knew they had no case > anymore. Tripp only deleted the documents after his lawyer was able to get > in touch with him. This showed that he did in fact access internal Tesla > systems and he did in fact exfiltrate this information. But somehow > Bloomberg paints Tesla in a negative light, as they always do.

Whistleblower complaints are for obvious reasons typically based on exfiltrated documents. There may be liability against the whistleblower for that, but generally that does not impair the merits of the case against the company (except to the extent the company can use threats of legal action over the documents to keep the whistleblower quiet). And in some cases there are specific legal safeguards for whistleblowers whose complaints are based on confidential documents, especially in the case of public companies: [https://www.zuckermanlaw.com/court-rules-whistleblowers- can-...](https://www.zuckermanlaw.com/court-rules-whistleblowers-can-use- confidential-company-documents-expose-fraud/)

<comment><USER8> Agreed, and these kinds of criticisms always get me eye-rolling. "On the one hand, Megacorp committed <atrocious environment/safety violations>. But on the other hand, Whistleblower stole internal documents proving them. So, you have to accept, there's wrongdoing on _both_ sides."

<comment><USER9> A succinct description of false equivalence. Quite nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This should be getting alot more attention. Even if Musk gets away with these things right now, this article raises awareness of what's truly going on, raising the likelihood that future victims will be much more believable, similar to the way the dam eventually burst with Uber.

<comment><USER11> He gets away because people's attention span is short and they trust good PR and things that reinforce their opinions. So they will take the undeniably good stuff (SpaceX + Tesla successes), then assume everything else that's tacked onto them is also real, any other claim Musk makes on Twitter are real, and the bad press is just enemies and haters.

Also his position and money make him more or less legally untouchable even if his image would be permanently tarnished. This goes for anyone in his position whether they have his good PR or not. Money is indeed a superpower. Just ask Batman.

Edit. Funny how all my comments received the same number of downvotes at almost the same time.

<comment><USER12> I have a different position, which is that I actively tolerate quite a lot of crappy behavior from great minds doing great things. Sure, when someone breaks the law, do whatever is normal when a person breaks that law. If he violated SEC regulations, okay the SEC will do whatever the SEC does. But I don't really care on an emotional level if some investors lost some money. And there's almost no manner of wrong-think or Twitter bullying or any other obnoxious but not illegal behavior that would upset me at all.

Have you ever noticed how many of the greatest actors/actresses are a bit on the crazy side? Genius and "craziness" tend to go hand in hand. I believe we'll all be better off if we tolerate quite a bit of craziness from geniuses. Better art, better science, better world.

<comment><USER13> Elon Musk is really not a genius or a great mind. Both his companies appear to need large amounts of government mandates & subsidies and constant injections of capital to stay afloat. Teslas are neat cars but their environmental benefits are questionable and far more expensive than other methods of carbon abatement. Landing rockets is cool but the jury is out on whether it's financially better than the disposable ones used by the rest of the industry.

<comment><USER14> Hi did however manage to push his people towards achieving what they did so far with Tesla and Space X. I guess that's also a big thing? Not genius but definitely something, although I'm sure everything came at a huge cost for the people involved. You just have to ask yourself if the result justifies it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a person who really wanted Musk to be an exception to the rule of shitty billionaires, this story really is the last nail in the coffin. Way too much moral casuistry you'd have to go through to justify or cast doubt on all of these insane stories.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if the issue is that most people are just shitty but society acts as a check. When you're above societies rules you can act and do anything you want.

<comment> loa-in-backup That reminds me of one point: I highly respect that Elon Musk doesn't wall himself off from the mind of the internet (aka the populace). It's something you won't see other CEOs do, unless it's a PR stunt meant to achieve some positive PR statistics.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I think a lot of people here are just naive to how much dirty dealing goes on in the world. This stuff is just more public.

Musk was never some wonderful person that should have been looked up to for his own merit. But I generally don't pick cars based on how much we like or dislike their CEO, and I suspect that most others don't either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _To Antinoro, one of the strangest parts of the situation was that after he told the company the threat was false, it asked him to put out a press release hyping it. He declined, but Tesla publicized the incident anyway._

 _Antinoro says he's told his force not to bother investigating crimes at the Gigafactory unless Tesla starts cooperating. Big business, he's decided, is its own strange world. "Standard Oil was probably as weird as Elon Musk," he says._

Yep, this is every small town sheriff dealing with someone they believe to be a crackpot. One shouldn't play games with law enforcement.

<comment><USER19> Umm... shouldn't the sheriff be fired for this? Investigating crimes is his job, corporate recalcitrance is not an excuse for not trying to protect that corporation's employees.

<comment><USER18> Like a lot of things, its a matter of resource allocation. Asking a sheriff to do a press release that's a lie lessens the credibility of the source. Having a company ask you to use your resources to "investigating crimes at the Gigafactory" without Tesla's honest cooperation is a waste of those resources and could get someone else killed while his people chase their tails. It is an extremely reasonable judgement call on the sheriff's part, and he should be commended for not bowing to the pressure of a big company over his office's integrity and the rest of the citizens he is responsible for.

<comment><USER19> Not prioritizing the investigation of complaints filed by Tesla when they refuse to cooperate and not issuing press releases on command is commendable.

Publicly announcing that no crimes at the Gigafactory will be investigated seems like dereliction of duty and abandoning the tax paying workers of Tesla to a potentially unsafe environment.

<comment><USER18> The key part of the phrase is "unless Tesla starts cooperating". I'm sure Tesla will actually cooperate if there is an actual danger as opposed to another attempt to get the Sheriff's office to lie for them. The Sheriff is not doing anything wrong, and Tesla should have learned the whole cry wolf thing long ago.

<comment><USER19> Again, saying they won't investigate crimes reported by Tesla is very different from saying they will investigate no crimes at the Gigafactory.

You seem to think that I am saying something I am not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand what the story here is supposed to be. By Tripp's own account, he did gather private information, the information did not itself prove wrongdoing, and he did leak it to the press because he wanted to make Tesla look bad.

<comment><USER21> _I don't understand what the story here is supposed to be._

Did you catch the parts about Tesla harassing Tripp in a whole bunch of outlandish and basically thuggish ways in response -- ranging from a bogus $167m lawsuit up to apparently lying to the local police about him planning a mass shooting?

That's what the story was about.

<comment><USER20> The article certainly makes those claims. But Bloomberg doesn't seem to have any evidence of those things, beyond Tripp's raw assertion that his friends didn't make the call and he didn't do what the lawsuit says. With no corroboration, why should we believe him over Tesla at this point?

<comment><USER13> > Why should we believe him over Tesla at this point?

"Funding secured."

Also, your assertion that there is no corroboration is wrong, the new whistleblower Sean Gouthro is corroborating Tripp's claims. This behavior is also well in line with Elon Musk's established pattern of paranoid behavior in surveiling employees.

<comment><USER22> Funding in Elon's mind could have been secured - perhaps not to what SEC's requirements of what that meant however; if I had $100B to invest in taking Tesla private, I'd certainly give it to Musk - Saudi Arabia is throwing around huge amounts as well, which I believe was his believed source of funding.

<comment><USER23> What Elon believes the requirements are and what the legal requirements are two different things.

Not to mention that Tesla failed to file an 8k form in a timely manner, and when it was finally filed it clearly showed that funding had not been 'secured' under any reasonable definition.

<comment><USER13> The idea Elon Musk "believed in his mind" that funding was secured is pure sophistry. He has done hundreds of fundraising rounds in his life and knows the various stages involved in intimate detail.

He was obsessed at the time with squeezing shorts and probably thought he could touch off a VW-style spike in the stock. Ironically, by capping the upside at $420, he presented shorts with one of the best risk-reward profiles in the stock's history, and that days intraday high has never been seen since.

<comment><USER22> So let's do an exercise. You have someone you trust someone's word, they tell you they're going to pick you up at X time and Y location. Do you trust them, why do you trust them? So now, why can't this same scenario exist for Elon and someone, say Saudi money, for securing funding - someone saying they will give you all the money he needs to take Tesla private? You're presenting no proof it was a fallacious statement from him, based on his belief of what funding secured meant. You're also presenting a very one-sided argument. Elon also yes "hates" \- so arguably it makes at least equal sense, if not more, that he'd legitimately want to take Tesla off the stock market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tesla, Inc. v. Tripp Nevada District Court, Case No. 3:18-cv-00296-LRH-CBC

[https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/3br5tkwuj/nevada- district-...](https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/3br5tkwuj/nevada-district- court/tesla-inc-v-tripp/)

<comment><USER25> The fact that this publishes conference telephone numbers, complete with access code and security code, and that none of these numbers changes over a period of 6 months, is somewhat worrying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hopefully Musk faces charges for this

<comment><USER27> In a world where high-paid Silicon Valley executives can grope women and get paid tens of millions of dollars in severance payouts for doing so, I wouldn't exactly bet on any billionaires going to jail any time soon.

I've seen far too many stories where one could reasonably say "this is definitely obviously a crime, right?" and nothing happens anyways. Money is the world's cheat code.

<comment><USER28> It's money and position together.

Elon is strategically important for the US at this point, putting him to jail would wipe out billions of dollars of the US stock market, and SpaceX may be part of the future of US defense.

<comment><USER27> I would argue that neither Tesla nor SpaceX will disappear if Elon Musk goes to jail. In fact, the argument could be made both companies would perform more reliably without him.

<comment><USER29> Musk is heavily involved in the engineering efforts at Tesla and SpaceX. Losing him would not be a good thing for these companies despite his public antics.

<comment><USER30> Is he? Musk has no engineering degree, he's never been the CTO of his companies, and most of his time seems to be spent on Twitter, dealing with media, and other PR things. I haven't seen any evidence that the engineering departments at either firm would be worse off without him.

<comment><USER31> He's CTO at SpaceX.

<comment><USER32> Which doesn't mean anything really. If you have founded the company and own it, you can be CTO and delegate all the real engineering / research work.

<comment><USER33> Even Tom Mueller, propulsion engineer & co-founder of SpaceX, publicly acknowledges that Musk is heavily involved in key engineering decisions. I get that Musk gets a large amount of hate these days, but at least find something material to criticize. "He's not even an engineer" isn't just an irrelevant argument, it's also wrong. (Except in the "certified engineer" sense, which I don't think anyone is claiming).

<comment><USER30> Yeah, but is Tom Mueller, whose boss is Elon Musk, really going to publicly state anything else?

<comment><USER33> I think he's retired now, and only participates occasionally in an advisory role...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not saying the article is or isn't true, but how credible is Bloomberg as a news outlet these days after the SuperMicro story?

<comment><USER21> Quite credible actually.

Edit (now that the above post has been edited): I agree that the lack of an unequivocal follow-up to the SuperMicro story -- that is saying neither "we admit we screwed up" or "we stand by the main points of our original story" or even "we need more time to look into this pls" \-- is quite troubling.

Still, you have to look at their broader track record, compare them to other outlets in their weight class (nearly all of which, like the NYT in particular, have indulged in many more, and far greater follies). That and the fact that what they're reporting in this particular case is consistent with what we know to expect from Tesla/Musk after various other incidents.

<comment><USER35> I agree, very credible.

<comment><USER36> Without a retraction they have zero credibility.

<comment><USER21> Fine for you, but I'm not a black-or-white person.

I would say their credibility stands at "significantly compromised", which is damning enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This should be much bigger than an SEC problem.

Spreading rumours Tripp is homicidal, or secretly surveilling texts & emails without his knowledge - both alone could be prosecuted as criminal charges. Instead the absolute worst that will happen to Musk or anyone involved is being thrown out of Tesla.

The sheriff "says he's told his force not to bother investigating crimes at the Gigafactory unless Tesla starts cooperating."

Remember folks, if you wanna be a criminal, start a company first. That way, your crimes become the companies crimes and your jail time becomes a fine! Thats the American Way.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you haven't seen this Twitter thread, it is a good read. Tune your credibility factor to maybe 0.6-0.8 before diving in.

[https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939621636661248](https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939621636661248)

</comment><comment><USER39> He is not a whistleblower. Shame on Bloomberg for tainting the word. And he destryoed himself, any company would have thrown the book at any employee who did what he did.

He purposely leaked negative and false information of no material consequence to Linet Lopez, one of the top FUD reporters on Tesla at the time. Look up her articles over 2014 - 2017. Her full time job at the time was to trash the Tesla brand.

The "I'm not smart enough to sabotage assembly systems" remark was also proven false. His github and stackoverflow accounts were found and show his as a capable coder who would have had no trouble at all modifying the production systems he sabotaged.

He very quickly deleted both as soon as this came but the posts still exist today.

His trial is ongoing:

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7244147/tesla-inc-v- tri...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7244147/tesla-inc-v-tripp/)

I suspect this article will not age well. Either way it will serve its purpose as a hit piece before Model Y announcement.

<comment><USER40> In what way is what he leaked "false"? Are the Tesla documents and VINS false? Isn't Tesla's report to the police objectively more false?

Should we really allow Tesla to get away clean after their report to the police while Jessie Smollett faces felonies?

<comment><USER39> Stating Tesla lied about production numbers.

Stating Tesla shipped battery packs with punctured cells.

Stating he does not know how to code to sabotage assembly line.

Stating the waste rate at Gigafactory was abnormally high.

Stating he didnt try to frame a fellow employee.

The case will reveal more I'm sure, these are not hard things to prove.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In other news, the EU just issued a directive aimed at protecting whistleblowers:

[https://www.dw.com/en/eu-protects-whistleblowers-with-new- di...](https://www.dw.com/en/eu-protects-whistleblowers-with-new- directive/a-47865249)

</comment><comment><USER42> Tesla keeps files of employees "tattoos/identifying marks"?? Is that a real image from Tesla (first main image)?

<comment><USER43> The caption indicates it's real, and I'd imagine listing key identifying characteristics is quite standard for a security department's "don't let this disgruntled employee in" notices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Super cool that companies just intercept texts no big deal totally cool, must have been in the terms I signed.

</comment><comment><USER45> Elon Musk is a pathological liar who goes full evil against people who dare to question him.

Remember the British diver Unsworth. Or how tried to trigger a short squeeze by lying on Twitter multiple times. He called a respected non-profit media organization an extremist organization" after they did a piece critical of Tesla.

<comment><USER46> in 2016 he shared an article that suggested a rocket explosion was sabotage. Though he qualified that by saying it isn't true.

<comment><USER22> I read a response of his saying that sabotage wasn't ruled out, when someone first asked him about the rocket explosion before they had ruled it out. Do you have a reference/quote of him saying outright he thought it was sabotage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This article is so one sided that it feels like Bloomberg really has it out for Musk. There's no proof that Musk did this, even though I'm open to the possibility.

</comment><comment><USER48> There is such a tremendous amount of dislike for Elon in this thread. I just don't understand. Nobody here holds a candle to his accomplishments.

<comment><USER49> Your username checks out, at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm going to separate Musk from the other asshole billionairs, for now, because I truely think there's a higher purpose here that his companies are helping bring about. I think his heart's in the right place too. Something happens to people when they become that rich and are surrounded by sycophants. I wish he had respect for his staff and treated them well, same with Bezos but Tesla is more useful to the world than Amazon.

<comment><USER51> "I think his heart's in the right place too."

Trying to ruin someone's life is having your heart in the right place?

<comment><USER50> ahem...apart from that...I was referring to the higher-purpose of accelerating the much-needed transition to electric vehicles - it's kind of obvious that was my meaning from the context - I'm saying, yes this is shitty, but look at the bigger picture.

<comment><USER51> There's absolutely nothing that Elon Musk has done for the electric car market to excuse this kind of behavior. He could've changed the market just the same without acting this way.

<comment><USER50> ok yes I agree with you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Wait we're trusting bloomberg all of a sudden?

</comment><comment><USER53> Is there a lesson here somewhere? Between Musk, Trump, and everything else I read, it seems like public insanity is a winning strategy.

</comment><comment><USER54> Tripp wasn't a whistleblower.

</comment><comment><USER55> What I don't understand is why Bloomberg is not required to publish that they have any financial interest in Tesla. Bloomberg seems to only publish negative news about Tesla, and clearly has a bias, as if they hold or represent someone that holds a large short position.

The story published by Bloomberg does not actually cite any sources, only what is already publicly known and what Tripp has personally claimed; and seems to just run entirely on emotions, not facts. The whistleblower did, indeed, blow the whistle, and this seems to be one of only two provable and externally verifiable fact in the entire story (the other one being he once worked there and was fired from there; even the internal investigation at Tesla over Tripp's actions, according to that story, just seems to be Tripp's claims to such).

There is no proof that Tesla invented the shooter story, and it is also at least as equally possible that someone outside of Tesla saw a chance to throw a spanner in the works and take advantage of the situation. It is also just as equally possible that Tripp had expressed feelings of shooting up the place, but lacked the materials, know how, or actual willpower to achieve the act, and told someone they intended to perform the act.

If law enforcement believes that Elon, or someone from his company, made false claims to suppress Tripp's speech, then charges should be pressed. A quick Google tells me no charges have been pressed, and it does not seem likely charges will ever be pressed.

I know some people just have an eternal hateboner for Elon's style as CEO and the way he personally conducts himself as a human being, but the only thing I care about is facts, not feelings. This entire story is just summed up as "whistleblower ex-employee claims Tesla called cops on possible revenge shooting after being fired for violating employment contract; Tesla released statement claiming that they believed it was a credible threat and no shooting ultimately occurred."

What I said in quotes, obviously, does not sell newspapers and is not sensational enough to even warrant a second glance from a reader.

<comment><USER56> The timing of the publication though. One day before Model Y announcement.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps the hope, on the part of whichever government officials I assume have been asking the media and lawyers involved to hold back this information, is that a story deeply embarrassing to Musk will discourage more dupes from putting down Model Y deposits and becoming unsecured Tesla creditors. Elon Musk ran the company to the verge of bankruptcy on customer deposits once before already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I don't appreciate the Bloomberg's constant push to "move markets". Especially their negative approach to TSLA.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm not American and so not familiar with the laws. But can someone please contradict me on the fact that money equals liberty in the USA? Or are all these things that Elon do legal when you are poor too?

<comment><USER58> I dont get the anonymous down votes. Please argument becaue I am serious. Is it because it is very clear and apparent and I ask a stupid question? Or is it because we dont want to talk about it? Confused here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> What should stockholders do when their CEO is a druggie?

<comment><USER60> Smoking a joint makes someone a druggie?

<comment><USER61> [http://fortune.com/2018/08/17/elon-musk-ambien-tweeting- nyt/](http://fortune.com/2018/08/17/elon-musk-ambien-tweeting-nyt/)

[https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism- treatment/mi...](https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism- treatment/mixing-ambien)

> _Physical Risks and Side Effects of Combining Alcohol and Ambien_

> _When mixed together, Ambien and alcohol can enhance each other's > intoxicating effects. The following effects may be felt: [...] Confusion, > Difficulty concentrating, Impaired cognition, Impaired judgment [...]_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "You have what's coming to you for the lies you have told to the public and investors"

For a hit piece on Musk, I don't think that's the most flattering quote for the victim in this story.

<comment><USER13> Tripp's courage is actually quite remarkable and admirable, as represented by that quote in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I usually like Bloomberg, it's one of my favorite news sources but this article seems way off.

They begin by talking about Martin Tripp's story (without any real details of what exactly happened), then they move to some random security guard with claims of sex and drugs in the factory, then they jump back to Tripp's story again and it takes a while for the article to get to the real point of Tripp's story which is:

> "While Gouthro was trying to address the sex, drugs, and raucous > disorganization, Tripp decided to go public. He had access to Tesla's > internal production database and dug into it to figure out just how much > material was being wasted. He decided to go to Lopez, who'd written about > Tesla for Business Insider, emailing and texting her numbers showing wasted > material and pictures of battery parts that he said could catch fire.

> Tripp hoped that when Lopez's story came out, Tesla would be forced to make > the changes he'd suggested."

So he actually leaked information. I'm not a Tesla defender but it feels like Bloomberg is trying really hard to portrait Tesla in the worst possible picture here.

<comment><USER64> > So he actually leaked information.

Well, that's what a whistleblower does, isn't it?

How would a whistleblower reveal that a company is doing questionable things without leaking information?

<comment><USER65> Take it to law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> These articles need to be written in the manner they usually are because of the juxtaposition of who Musk presents himself as and who he actually is.

Musk in practice isn't a scientist or engineer. He has never built anything in a professional setting. He has discovered nothing. He belongs to the business class. In our society we give the business class a lot of privilege, power, and general leeway. Most of it quite frankly undeserved.

It shouldn't be a surprise that yet again, without reasonable channels about who is "successful" and why, we end up with a class of people filled with lackluster individuals. Musk being the current shining example; a person who apparently isn't smart enough to stop himself from acting foolish or unethical in any setting.

He's played games with the companies finances, engaged in deplorable behavior, and is just a generally unsavory person.

SpaceX and Tesla do not need Musk. They never have. No company or society needs people like Musk. Do not let the cult of personality and his myths lend any amount of credence to his efficacy as a CEO or how impactful he actually is as a person.

Kick him out and let him fade away.</comment>


Twitter rewrites developer policy to better support research and 'good' bots - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/twitter-rewrites-developer-policy-to-better-support-academic-research-and-use-of-good-bots/ <comment><USER3> While I hope this is a step in the right direction, I'm not too wowed by this new policy. The term "good bot" is incredibly vague, and I wasn't able to find a much better definition within the policy change itself. The limitations they want to set on bots aren't too limiting either, basically if you pinky swear to behave, you're a good bot. They mention things like no bulk following or spam posting content, but surely these things could be limited in some way by their API, with whitelisted exemptions for the academic groups they want to target?

I also find fault with this statement from the article:

> Going forward, developers must specify if they're operating a bot account, > what the account is, and who is behind it. This way, explains Twitter, "it's > easier for everyone on Twitter to know what's a bot – and what's not."

It may be known to Twitter who is and isn't a bot, but unless something has changed, there is no public facing way to know if an account is a bot. I have never understood this. Sites like Mastodon and Discord clearly label bot accounts, but Twitter has never done so. They are fine labeling accounts arbitrarily as 'verified', but not clearly identifying bots. This would be a great step forward if they want to redefine bot behavior on the site.

<comment><USER4> I personally object to these sorts of editorial labels. Bots are operated by humans; these are human accounts. They're just alts. They should not be treated differently. There's no such thing as a "bot post": just human beings using different types of software to author posts.

Literally every single "bot post" was posted by a real person. That person's posts should not be segregated as a result of their client software.

<comment><USER5> As a person who runs a bot (@sfships) as well as a real Twitter account (@williampietri), I strongly disagree. It's like saying that there's no difference between talking to the store manager and standing next to an in- store TV running a commercial on a loop.

Twitter is mainly about human-to-human connection, and that should be the presumption for any account one comes across. Other uses should be obvious, or at least declared.

<comment><USER6> I think instead of disambiguating between good and bad bots, they should just allow 'bot accounts' @NAME - bot. If bots want to do their thing, that is fine, and there's certainly a place for bot accounts, it's just when they mascaraed as people.

I'm not sure how you separate them out entirely, I would assume that twitter knows though.

<comment><USER7> (slightly offtopic, hope you don't mind)

I believe the term is: masquerade.

Though mascaraed is technically correct, it just denotes wearing mascara and not to "mask" oneself as someone else.

<comment><USER8> I'm fairly sure "mascara" isn't valid as a intransitive verb (transitive would be applying mascara _to_ something), so "when they mascaraed as people" would still be incorrect. Wearing mascara would be "when they _were_ mascaraed as people". (Although it's probably a typo rather than a word choice error, so <shrug>.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of those that build on the Twitter platform gets burned at some point. They have shown not themselves to be a reliable partner. Any company doing social media management at some point gets hurt by changing APIs and increasing fees, sometimes causing fatal damage to their business.

<comment><USER10> >They have shown themselves to be a reliable partner

I hope you mean the opposite? Twitter has long been an unreliable partner in the developer ecosystem.

<comment><USER11> Not sure if edited, but your quote is slightly off. Should be

> They have shown not themselves to be a reliable partner

The "not" there feels like it's in an ambiguous spot, but at least gives a faint connotation of the author's intent, which reads as you'd like it to.

<comment><USER12> Even GP flailed it and put the 'not' in the wrong place. Should be "They have shown themselves not to be a reliable partner."

<comment><USER13> Also acceptable would be "they have shown themselves to be a reliable partner... not"

<comment><USER8> That could be interpreted as "they have not shown themselves to be a reliable partner" (ie we don't know) instead of the correct "they have shown themselves to not be a reliable partner" (ie we know they aren't), though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a bot once, which would tweet a single word from the 300k most used words in German every 15 minutes (there is a corpus for that). The bot even had "Bot" in it's name.

It got striked several times by Twitter because of "hate-speech". Yes, the words were unfiltered - of course. That's language. The longest strike lasted for 5 days. It goes without saying that I disputed every single strike to no avail.

I finally took the bot down.

<comment><USER15> I mean, in German you can cram a pretty large amount of hateful information into a single word, since many words are a combination of words. I'd be curious to see what specifically was flagged.

<comment><USER14> Well, mostly related to 1933 - 1945 references, if I recall it correct. Basically the "N-Word"-category, but related to jewish people. I think one tweet also said "Judenvernichtung" ("extermination of the Jews").

So, yeah, in hindsight, I should have modified the corpus. But at that time, around 2017, I was pretty angry at how Twitter handled these strikes.

P.S.: The account is still online and has 775 followers. Maybe I should revive it in a more "harmless" way. It was fun.

<comment><USER16> If your intent was to show the most commonly used German words, then modifying the corpus for political or rule-breaking reasons kind of takes away its value, doesn't it? Twitter just isn't a place that tolerates all cultures the way an impartial academic would.

<comment><USER17> Literally the definition of censorship.

<comment><USER18> Yes censorship is a major part of fighting Nazis in the largest war ever held on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Twitter says since it introduced a new developer review process in July > 2018, it has reviewed over a million developer applications and approved > 75%.

There is still no re-review process however. I have an original apps.twitter.com account and used the new development experience form with the first few weeks.

I essentially requested API access for personal projects and was denied with no substantive explanation.

There is a form to submit a platform request hidden away in the support area (literally, it's not even on the page that lists all of the contact forms) but having used it about five times over a number of years has led to no response.

I would like to be a developer, contributing to the ecosystem I've been a member of for just over 10 years but Twitter seems to make this exceedingly hard with no recourse available :(

</comment><comment><USER20> "Twitter rewrites developer policy" is a frequent enough occurrence that I'd be highly reluctant to build anything material on top of the ever-shifting sands that comprise their APIs.

<comment><USER21> > I'd be reluctant to use their API's.

I'm not sure what you mean - what choice do you have? You're either building a twitter bot, or you aren't and it doesn't matter?

Also this isn't much (if any?) of an API change, it's a policy change. And even then it doesn't look like it should negatively affect you unless you were doing something nefarious already.

<comment><USER5> The choice is of what to do with one's time. If Twitter had been a reliable partner to developers, more people would make things for it.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough, that's a good point.

Now that you mention it, a bot-oriented twitter clone might be interesting...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been supporting their API for several years, with a 3rd party library. It's always been mixed feelings, remembering the early days when the ecosystem was exciting and growing, yet the intermediate years when it felt like developers and businesses that built on their platform were getting screwed. Overall, it would be great if they could figure out how to clean up the bad actors, yet build a thriving platform for innovation - a balance they seem tortured to achieve. While a lot of developers have come and gone, I'm still hoping for better.

</comment><comment><USER23> Years ago I wrote a bot to correct people's poor grammar (specifically "I could care less"), stayed within the API limits, and clearly labeled the account as a bot. Banned by Twitter within a week. Their policies have always been arbitrary and selective, and this kind of vague language ensures that will continue.

<comment><USER24> I'm glad it got banned, frankly. Those sorts of bots on Reddit are extremely spammy and annoying.

Being a "grammar nazi" used to be a thing on Reddit and I'm glad it died out.

<comment><USER23> It violated no rules, and was all in good fun. All it did was reply with "Are you sure you _couldn 't_ care less?"

<comment><USER25> I'm glad it got banned too - bot replies are the worst.

And since it's nit-picking, it's worth noting that the "could/couldn't care less" thing isn't at all as clear-cut as you are making out.

 _In the early 1990s, the well-known Harvard professor and language writer Stephen Pinker argued that the way most people say "could care less"—the way they emphasize the words—implies they are being ironic or sarcastic along the lines of the Yiddish phrases like "I should be so lucky!" which typically means the speaker doesn't really expect to be so lucky. Michael Quinion of the wonderful World Wide Words website makes the same argument._

and

 _Both Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com have weighed in and say "could care less" and "couldn't care less" mean the same thing. Their reasoning is that both phrases are informal, English is often illogical, and people use the two phrases in the same way. "Could care less" has come to mean the same thing as "couldn't care less."_

[https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could- ca...](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-care-less- versus-couldnt-care-less)

<comment><USER26> Linguists and professional grammarians agree.

[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001182...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001182.html)

[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The issue I see is that it limits the usage to those associated with Academic Institutions. What if you're a data scientist, or an interested person, not working in Academia? Any research you'd want to do and publish isn't good enough, unrelated to the research itself? Seems unfortunate.

<comment><USER28> That's life, my man. If you think you're going to get the same access as Raj Chetty is, you're in for a rude surprise. The society of academia is built on trust and since people abhor providing information, academics who have other means of demonstrating trustworthiness will be the ones with access.

This is true of everything from IRS data to a startup's data. I worked at a company which shared data extensively with researchers. But we weren't idiots. We gave it to people we trusted. Not every clown claiming to be an independent researcher. That's just sensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I run a couple of 'good' bots:

[https://twitter.com/thehugfairy](https://twitter.com/thehugfairy) \- Sends Twitter hugs. You sign up at hugfairy.com to tell it who to hug. This one get's a lot of use. The website has about 1,500 DAU.

[https://twitter.com/smithsonianbot](https://twitter.com/smithsonianbot) \- A more recent one, which sends random photos from Smithsonian's Open Access collection.

Overall I'm glad to see Twitter clarifying their rules. I've had API keys revoked without warning, my accounts deactivated, etc. Twitter dev support is always nice and I've gotten the bots running again, but it would be great to know in advance how I can avoid getting shut down.

</comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone ever been refused a developer account? I wanted to write some scraper and did the form, but they rejected, told me in the email there was no appeal, and I guess that's it?

<comment><USER31> Yes. I got rejected because their email asking for more info went to spam, and that rejection was final, with no appeal permitted.

I get a final rejection after several rounds, but the very first time? Because of non-response? Ooof.

Luckily, this was just on my personal account, not for work.

<comment><USER30> Actually, yes I recall now this is exactly what happened to me! I applied and forgot about it, assuming it didn't matter to them when I responded. What a bummer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As someone who has made GPT-2-based Twitter bots, I think the reasonable compromise to the arbitrary app approval process is to allow limited bot access (tweeting only, no replies) through the API without requiring app approval. That would cover the majority of genuine fun bot use cases.

</comment><comment><USER33> As long as they stop leaving apps dead on the water whenever they decide to maybe develop something remotely related, as has happened several times in the past, then I guess this is good? My previous exp with them isn't super encouraging unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> This could very well be a "they let Jack remain CEO" dangle, so I'm going to be waiting for another shoe to drop. People will jump on it right away and one of those people will be the first to get burned by whatever develops (and I'm pretty sure there will be burning in the future), and we'll hear about it then. That's the point at which I'll decide to participate or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Never trust Twitter API or waste time developing on it. Many burnt bridges.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hard to believe they won't artificially stifle or prohibit successful use cases, like every other time people built on Twitter. There used to be a whole ecosystem of successful alternate clients, link shorteners, image/video hosting, tweet analytics and other software and it all got deliberately destroyed as Twitter wanted to appropriate the engagement those developers had.

[https://www.accuracast.com/news/social-media-7471/twitter- ba...](https://www.accuracast.com/news/social-media-7471/twitter-bans-third- party-apps/)

> In effect ad networks like 'Sponsored Tweets' and 'Ad.ly' will be > discontinued.

[https://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/17/twitter-4/](https://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/17/twitter-4/)

> These changes effectively kill off the growth of the third-party client > ecosystem as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER36> We need real human customer support and not some automated system based algorithms

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't like the term "good bot" and I really don't like the term "'good' bot", as if bots are always evil. We should just think of them "useful bots", "useless bots", or "malicious bots".

</comment><comment><USER38> Seems like we're going full circle with Twitter now.

</comment><comment><USER39> I know I will be downvoted, but I don't care: why are people using Twitter? To me it's the most vile and disgusting platform: no signal, just noise. On top of that, the people that run it are effectively coming up with arbitrary progressive left-wing policies on restricting free speech: for proof, watch this: [https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ](https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ) after seeing I realised Twitter/Facebook/Google/Apple are evil corporations taking away your freedom with you cheering to it. Why are you using Twitter's platform? For business? Do you want to make business from Twitter's users which are mind-numbed angry, twitching zombies? Are there no business opportunities elsewhere? Anyone who is doing any sort of business related to social media is wasting their time: it's a broken system that deserves to be boycotted. To anyone who would call me angry: I am saying this so you open your mind about the pointlessness of social media: I dont use it, and I seem to live a nice life, only time I get angry is when I think about social media, like in this post. Oh well, this is HN after all, born and bred in silicon valley where such blasphemy will not be tolerated. But lets see.

</comment><comment><USER40> Had to look up how many engineers they have, around 4000. That's a lot.

</comment><comment><USER41> Bots just need banned or API limited... Twitter needs to be re-humazized

</comment><comment><USER42> They're just picking winners that align with their own ideology at this point. The dangers of authoritarianism are latent in any power structure - <USER2> government, corporate, or other.

This is bad for society.

<comment><USER12> > _They 're just picking winners that align with their own ideology at this > point_

Which is why Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and all of them are actually publishers, akin to the Washington Times or Fox News, and don't (currently) deserve §230 protection.

<comment><USER43> I mean at a certain point, does a difference in volume not become a difference in kind? Washington Times and Fox News are effectively "whitelisting" the content that goes onto their sites, whereas the stance that Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn are taking here is a blacklist. Those are different things.

<comment><USER12> > _does a difference in volume not become a difference in kind?_

Why should it? They built the firehose, they can build the valves. It's not reasonable to argue, "whoopsy, too hard to do now!" when moderation has been around for DECADES and which therefore they consciously decided not to implement anywhere along the line. Even if Zuckerberg was already in over his head by that point, Thiel knew about this stuff. So did Parker. FB pays smart people who know about this stuff, too, they're just presumably prevented from implementing it.

This really is "a steering wheel that doesn't fly off while you're driving" situation, but FB refuses to secure steering wheels until they can figure out a way to do it without humans.

It's their problem if blacklists don't work. Why can't ( _can 't_) they use whitelists if that's the sure-fire solution? They can, they just don't want to. Look how many teeth had to be pulled just to get attribution on ads that were proven to be problematic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will The Future of the Internet be Written in Chinese? - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/12/will-the-future-of-the-internet-be-written-in-chinese/

<comment><USER2> Two answers:

1\. Will the future of the Internet be written in Chinese? Some, maybe majority, but certainly not all.

2\. The Chinese still makes up the majority of the world population. It was bound to surpass English sites at some point and considering China's majority of Internet userbase are twenty somethings, this will continue to rapidly increase in time

</comment><comment><USER3> NO WAY ! nothing more to add.</comment>


We may have reached peak "gig" economy - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/837237/people-are-getting-sick-of-working-in-the-sharing-economy/ <comment><USER2> It's funny to see the sharing economy promoted as a goal in itself, when 30 years ago one of the criticisms of the Soviet Union was that people there are so poor that they are forced to share kitchens and cars with strangers.

Nobody _wants_ to share things, it's all done for economic reasons. People buy on AirBNB and Uber because it's cheaper than an equivalent hotel or taxi. People sell on AirBNB and Uber because they need the extra income.

For a short while, VC investments paid out as bonuses to the participants, and just the novelty of the thing might keep both sides happy. But eventually there has to be a balance found between "I want to pay less" and "I want to earn as much as before" and "government wants as much taxes as before".

<comment><USER3> "It's funny to see the sharing economy promoted as a goal in itself, when 30 years ago one of the criticisms of the Soviet Union was that people there are so poor that they are forced to share kitchens and cars with strangers."

And how the soviet union would only have one manufacturer and one shitty product.

Now we have walmart.

No matter the ideology, powerful people will want to possess power and wealth and will use whatever systems are in place to get there.

<comment><USER4> > one shitty product.

Many of the things made during the Soviet era were made to last. I'd recommend the documentary: "The Lightbulb Conspiracy." It talks about planned obsolesce and the throw away economy.

It's not necessarily because the Soviet state, but more simply due to resource scarcity and needing to make things that last a very long time.

It's more than appalling that our cell phones are only intended to last two ~ four years. Of course that gives miners and Chinese manufactures jobs and growth (and the war industry too as they start a few more wars to collect resources).

<comment><USER5> > _but more simply due to resource scarcity and needing to make things that > last a very long time_

And no pressure to make shitty things just to ensure you have return customers.

<comment><USER6> Increase sales tax on status/luxury items. Decrease sales tax on long-life products.

<comment><USER5> I don't see how the latter would help - "long-life" products would break anyway.

OTOH, if we could get minimum warranties from the EU's standard 2 years to something like 20 years for appliances and 10+ years for digital electronics... maybe then companies would start to care.

<comment><USER6> The idea is to give companies an incentive to make tough stuff by increasing their revenue for such products. But let's do both!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The job of the gatekeepers we've been so eager to dismantle was to keep prices, and to some extent wages, up. We should not be surprised to find that in more open markets, prices, and to a more extreme extent wages, are dropping.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of the cut paid out to workers in the gig economy is going to fade to nothing. Uber and Lyft, as prime examples, are two capital spigots that are making binary bets that they can essentially cut their labor costs and become profitable through the use of automation (Travis basically said "self-driving and IPO or bust). It's not going to look pretty when workers who didn't have any protections suddenly face up to shifting capital.

<comment><USER9> No kind of protections can stop the progress of technology.

<comment><USER8> Protections can help soften the secondary impacts of technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People are "quitting" but the yr/yr graphs on participation growth don't go below zero?

I'm not through the whole thing, yet, but we're off to a bad start

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the headline isn't supported by the article.

Another way of looking at these numbers is that the unsustainable explosive growth the "gig economy" saw early on was just that, unsustainable and explosive initial growth. The "mere" ~100% YoY growth for labor platforms is still incredible, and time will tell if that continues to drop.

The article avoids talking about what the "gig economy" would need to sustain itself, but it's entirely possible it doesn't need to grow nearly this fast to still be completely viable.

<comment><USER12> Decelerating growth while still being unsustainable because it's VC-subsidized raises serious questions of whether there is a self-sustaining business underneath; the main advantage "gig economy" firms have over competing established incumbents is willingness to spend VC money and test the limits of the law, but once the law is either adjusted or settled through disputes and VCs want to see returns rather than pouring in more subsidies in hopes of future growth, both of those advantages go away and they end up in competitive markets without a moat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is how it's supposed to work isn't it? If the wages fall so low that it's no longer worthwhile for people to do the work, people will stop doing it. If the work still needs to be done, people will have to pay an amount that workers are willing to accept.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good, hopefully people are realising how exploitative a lot of these platforms are. We need new laws that require gig employees to get sick/accident pay and net pay at minimum wage or above.

<comment><USER15> In the UK, there have been a few cases (Uber, Hermes, City Sprint) where "gig economy workers" were declared to be employees rather than independent contractors, and therefore entitled to all the usual benefits.

Hopefully that spreads wider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anybody see a real future in any of these gig service companies? I'd say Uber is the exception because of the way the business works (i.e. ride sharing is something you can't plan for the future, it's a one shot per transaction deal) (this also doesn't account for it's constant boxing matches with various Governments, that's a different discussion)? Like the maid services, once you get linked up with a maid you like, you're directly incentivized to abandon the service to keep the maid you want, and they are incentivized you let you do it because they get more money?

It seems like all of these "match x worker to x task" services are a countdown until the customer finds a worker they particularly like (or just one they can tolerate, I wouldn't be wild about strangers having access to my home) at which point they drop the service, and the servicer's time to handle clients for said service has now been reduced, since they have a direct relationship with a client.

I mean they can put this in the ToS that you "can't do that" but in reality they absolutely can, there's nothing to stop them and no real way to follow up in a meaningful, actionable way for the service.

<comment><USER17> You can certainly put a non-compete of existing customers in the contract with the "independent contractor" and make it clear that if the platform finds out you'll lose all your existing contracts and get sued. You could offer a way to buy themselves out of the contract too.

<comment><USER16> The tricky part is the platform finding out. The customer isn't going to out them, and the provider is going to do everything possible to not out themselves. Unless our hypothetical service is hiring PI's to follow all their contractors around, it seems unlikely they could catch even a small fraction of the offenders.

<comment><USER18> PIs are expensive. My dad's a PI, and mostly works for insurance companies on worker's comp fraud cases. Even the insurance companies, for all their money, don't hire a PI until they are 99.9% positive a given claimant is defrauding them, and at that point the PI is more of a formality to gather evidence for court than a tool for finding out if the claimant is a fraud or not.

<comment><USER16> Right and that's what I'm saying, the expense for finding out who's skimming clients is going to be incredibly high compared to the minimal benefits. Even with VC cash that seems like a tough sell.

Not to mention, it would be a trifle for even a lackluster reporter to paint this up like the company being the creepy big brother bad guy. The PR cost could be very high too, considering the levels of loyalty (read: none) most customers have to these services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article conveniently omits the "up and to the right" graph of increased Uber Drivers and Riders.

And the "down and to the right" graph depicting 500% growth falling to 100% is, well... judge for yourself.

<comment><USER20> My thought as well. 100% growth as your last measured datapoint is not peak anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotes allowed here?

Former GrubHub employee here.

When you tip with your credit card when ordering through grubhub, 99% of the time it goes to grubhub and it never reaches the driver. Grubhub guarantees a hourly wage, but to keep your tips that you have to earn more then your hourly rate. This means the driver won't receive any tips until he/she makes themselves free for grubhub. Pretty ingenious IMO, make the driver a contractor so you don't pay payroll tax, and the drivers basically work to make themselves free for you to hire.

It's not that I want the tips, I really do think tipping is a horrendous system and it is "my fault" for signing up to work for them (I was incredibly desperate for money). I just feel it is disingenuous to call it a tip when it should be called a "please pay my driver's hourly wage for me" fund. I know that is basically what a tip is, but when someone tips me very well I have this sick feeling in my stomach because they wanted it to go to me not grubhub. That is why I'm leaving grubhub.

I'll break it down for you guys how it works because I was confused for a long while about how it works (which is probably by design).

You work 8 hours for grubhub. For brevity, lets assume in your area grubhub pays $10 a hour, the mileage they pay you is 25 cents a mile (from restaurant to customer only, you don't get anything driving to restaurant) and the delivery fee is $2. You deliver 10 deliveries during that time, your (payable) mileage is 40 miles:

You worked 8 hours, so your hourly wage is $80. Now lets see how much in tips you need to make before you can start keeping your tips!

Delivery fees - $20 Mileage - $10

You would need to make $50 in tips to start actually getting your tips.

Now I'm getting a new pizza delivery job where the hourly rate is a couple bucks an hour lower, so my hourly rate in this example would be $8, so while I would only make $64 dollars from my hourly rate, I get to keep my delivery fees, mileage, and tips on top of that.

The Grubhub I worked for spreads the work around so that people earn the minimum hourly rate. Why wouldn't they? it lowers their labor costs to near zero.

If you have to use grubhub tip in cash, or better yet just don't tip. I don't care I am making the minimum hourly rate 99% of the time. If grubhub can't survive without the credit card tips customers intended to go to the driver it shouldn't be around.

P.S.: I'll say again I understood that I signed a contract so grubhub can do whatever it wants. I understand I got a few dollars more over the minimum wage (as if it was worth giving up all that tip money). This entire post was about informing people the deception involved around the credit card tips. If grubhub stands by their practices, then spreading this information around won't hurt their business.

<comment><USER21> This is the way that server's wages are __supposed __to work everywhere.

Yes, your new pizza gig, is supposed to make up the difference between $2.35 and $7.25 if you make no tips.

<comment><USER3> I feel like you're missing my point, but if not just ignore this, you can interpret this your own way. :)

Going with your server example, if it worked like grubhub the waitress would have to earn over $2.35 an hour before s/he could start keeping her/his tips. At that point, s/he is essentially free for the business to hire. Now imagine if that place had maybe a hundred waitresses and spread the tables out between them so none made more then the $2.35 an hour. The business then keeps all the tips in this scenario. That is how grubhub works (where I live at least)

When I got a big tip early in my shift, I would never receive any more orders the rest of my night. Why would they send me more orders? then they'd have to give me some of the credit card tip money. They could have one of the other drivers do all that work until they maxed out their hourly.

Is it right to call it a tip when the business intends to do everything in it's power to not give any of the money written in the tip line to the driver? I guess thats a personal opinion you will have to make on your own.

The new place I start working at in a few weeks "guarantees" only $2 less an hour. that is one delivery an hour at the new place with no tip and I am making the same hourly rate. Then I will keep my tips and mileage and delivery fees.

A company I can be proud to work for hopefully. I won't feel bad seeing a good tip ever again. peace of mind is the best tip I can think of.

<comment><USER22> Are you positive that you fully understand the compensation structure of the new pizza delivery place? Because it seems incredibly unlikely that they will pay you $8/hour, plus a delivery fee per delivery, plus a per mile rate, and then tips on top of all of that.

<comment><USER3> Guess I'm lucky. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 2012: We are in the "sharing economy".

2017: Not anymore.

2022: We are in the "minimalist economy".

Are there any sharing economy unicorns currently listed on the stock exchange? They are just asking for people to short it.

</comment><comment><USER24> In London at least, from the way they drive, it's painfully clear that the average Uber driver has very little experience.

It follows that turnover must be quite huge in the profession.

<comment><USER14> Same with deliveroo, I hate seeing their cyclists have accidents, knowing their employer will not help them.

Sadly, the employees have no choice, they cannot get unemployment benefit if they leave an uber/deliveroo job. Or they work a zero hours contract job, again with no security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of a study (and subsequently made into a book)that tracked how the poor manage their finances through a series of diaries. [1] The most interesting insight, for me, was the fact that it isn't the absence of income but the unpredictability of it that is most worrisome for poor families.

Similarly, in this case, if I have a job with an assured income every 2-4 weeks, you'll have to convince me with a huge uptick over this income to sacrifice this assurance for a chance to become a contractor. Add to this the other benefits such as retirals and health-insurance and the trade-off looks even less attractive.

[1] [http://www.portfoliosofthepoor.com/](http://www.portfoliosofthepoor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can this data mean that a significant part of "gig economy happens to be a fad, similar to 3D TVs or Groupon? I.e. that value of relevant companies could and would soon significantly shrink, just like it happened with Groupon and its clones, after they went through the whole body of SMBs (for most the deals were NOT profitable) and the deal-seeking individuals. The main difference being that attractive pricing for the labor-sharing and capital-sharing platforms was funded and subsidized by VC money, while for Groupon and clones money for reduced pricing went out of pockets of SMBs...

</comment><comment><USER27> is this surprising news? at least living in SF its pretty clear we're at full saturation. Companies have been throwing all the money at fending off competition and expanding to new markets... As well, most all of these gigs are means to an end, so equally unsurprising about the employment trends. Go ask folks if they want to be a taxi driver or delivery person and you'll get pretty negative response. Ask, hey do you want to work for Uber or Caviar and it's sure, why not. I imagine the novelty wears off pretty quickly.

<comment><USER28> Every job is a means to end, though. Employees agree with employers to exchange labour for money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What I don't see discussed here is that we are reaching peak employment in the United States so part time jobs will swap out in favor of more stable employment. I would predict an increase in the number of "gig" jobs as employment regresses back to the mean and/or if we see another spike in unemployment.

Rephrased as a question: "Did these companies succeed primarily because of the job / capital market they grew up in, or was it just a contributor to the scale / growth?"

</comment><comment><USER30> "None of this is great news for investors or managers of sharing economy startups."

Actually if the true reason for this trend is that the economy is improving and wages will improve then these investors should be fine.

</comment><comment> a-guest observations:

1\. The article seemed fuzzy on data supporting the claim that people who have dropped out of the gig economy have changed to non-gig employment.

2\. What are the types of jobs the former gig-sters moved to?

3\. Are more employers trying to move to a gig-based employment model?

4\. Aren't there already companies who sort of operate on a gig-based model in how they hire contractors for a limited duration and then drop them when the contract ends? It's just that these don't get counted as the trendy "gig" model?

5\. We may have reached peak "peak" articles.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, for one thing it's not a "sharing economy" (that's a feel-good misnomer) - it's a "part-time work economy", which is a completely different beast. The fact that Uber, TaskRabbit et. al. have managed to brand it as such is a triumph of marketing.

(I like the term "gig economy" \- also used in linked article - because it reflects the reality of the style and conditions of the work.)

<comment><USER24> I like 'gig economy' too. You may also like to call it the 'tax- and labor law- avoidance economy'

<comment><USER32> * Hotel licence avoidance economy

<comment><USER33> That's just a subset of tax and law (/regulations) avoidance isn't it?

<comment><USER32> I'm being deliberately teasy with my reply, but if you like I can say that grand parent specifies tax and _labour_ laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Everyone quits at the same time. When they realize how much they owe in taxes or incur accidental cost like a car accident or a large maintenance bill to their home they were renting out.

When your contractors lose money working with you they eventually have no choice but to do something else because they run out of money.</comment>