Uber hit with near-$1 billion fine after algorithms suspended drivers without human review

[midian182]

What just happened? Uber has been fined €824.99 million (about $966 million) for allowing automated systems to suspend European drivers without adequate notice or meaningful human review. The penalty is the second-largest imposed under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, beaten only by Meta's €1.2 billion 2023 fine, though Uber has already confirmed that it will appeal.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority found that between 2018 and 2022, Uber's systems temporarily blocked drivers suspected of fraud, including those flagged for allegedly taking unnecessary detours to increase fares or accepting trips they did not intend to complete.

Low customer ratings could also trigger temporary or permanent deactivation. Regulators concluded that these were solely automated decisions because no person participated in the decision-making process, according to the official findings.

Article 22 of the GDPR protects people from decisions based entirely on automated processing when the outcome has a significant legal or personal effect. A suspended Uber driver cannot accept journeys or earn money through the platform, placing deactivation squarely within that category, the regulator said.

Uber also allegedly failed to explain the automated process adequately to affected drivers.

The investigation came from a collective complaint submitted to France's CNIL in 2020 by human-rights organization La Ligue des droits de l'Homme, representing more than 170 drivers.

The Dutch authority handled the case because Uber's principal European establishment is in Amsterdam, while the French regulator assisted under the GDPR's cross-border cooperation system.

Unsurprisingly, Uber is disputing several of the findings. The company says fraud-related suspensions were generally brief, permanent deactivations were never made without human review, and affected drivers could appeal.

It also noted that only 126 European drivers lost access because of low ratings in 2021. Uber describes the examined policies as historical and says its current process incorporates human reviews and stronger safeguards, Reuters reports.

The new sanction follows two earlier penalties arising from the same wider complaint. Dutch regulators fined Uber €10 million ($11.6 million) in 2023 for insufficiently informing drivers and €290 million ($338.2 million) in 2024 over transfers of European driver data to the United States. Only Meta's €1.2 billion GDPR fine from 2023 is larger than this week's penalty.

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Uber hit with near-$1 billion fine after algorithms suspended drivers without human review

 

[pnntmp]

It's kinda weird they're making a negative claim (without "meaningful human review"), and a fairly vague one at that. How could you possibly prove there was no meaningful review?
Aren't low customer ratings exactly that, a meaningful human review?

Unnecessary detours are so easy to catch automatically that only incredibly dumb people may think of trying that. I wonder how a meaningful review of such scam is supposed to look. What is there to review?

 

[yRaz]

These fines are still just the cost of doing business

 

[The Talking Tech]

Wish something like that would happen in the U.S if this current presidential administration believed in A.I regulation....but that's too much to ask for the Republicans to do.

 

[Win7user]

I wouldn't recommend any woman take Uber. Too many foreigners driving them, and you don't know if they're illegal or otherwise.

 

[kaosken]

Ok, near $1Billion fine! Who gets the money? Seems to me there is an incentive in the mix...

 

[axiomatic13]

I wouldn't recommend any woman take Uber. Too many foreigners driving them, and you don't know if they're illegal or otherwise.

You may want to check the real data on that claim? If your implication is "rape" it's overwhelmingly white individuals committing that crime. FBI table 21

 

[Northy]

These fines are still just the cost of doing business

Just a drop in the bucket

Wish something like that would happen in the U.S if this current presidential administration believed in A.I regulation....but that's too much to ask for the Republicans to do.

Marbles, eggs, AI, something something, it's the President and my political enemies fault that something.

I wouldn't recommend any woman take Uber. Too many foreigners driving them, and you don't know if they're illegal or otherwise.

Because everyone knows that foreigners are dangerous to women, we shouldn't even allow the fairer sex to have passports.

Ok, near $1Billion fine! Who gets the money? Seems to me there is an incentive in the mix...

It's a fine, it goes to government coffers.

 

[Tantor]

You may want to check the real data on that claim? If your implication is "rape" it's overwhelmingly white individuals committing that crime. FBI table 21

LOL - He didn't say anything about race. The issue is not really about race, but about illegal immigrants that are working under the table.

However, look at the FBI table 21. Whites commit rapes in proportion to their population percentage. But Blacks commit crimes at rates higher than whites. For example, Blacks are only 14% of the population but commit most of the murders every year. (blacks = 4,935 murders, whites = 4,192 murders). Look at it another way. Young black males are about 5% of the population, committing over 50% of the murders.

Foreigner rape statistics are somewhat skewed because they do not report rapes at the same rate as Whites. Think about it, if you were an illegal alien, would you trust the police? I think not.

 

[Axeia]

Ok, near $1Billion fine! Who gets the money? Seems to me there is an incentive in the mix...

From what I understood the Dutch government will receive the fine as Uber themselves decided to put their headquarters there.
Which is somewhat ironic as the complaints didn't stem from The Netherlands (as someone from The Netherlands, don't worry - I'm sure my government will find a way to waste it just as well as any).

Uber should probably have their IT team consult their legal team every now and then to ensure they're following the rules.

It's kinda weird they're making a negative claim (without "meaningful human review"), and a fairly vague one at that. How could you possibly prove there was no meaningful review?
Aren't low customer ratings exactly that, a meaningful human review?

Unnecessary detours are so easy to catch automatically that only incredibly dumb people may think of trying that. I wonder how a meaningful review of such scam is supposed to look. What is there to review?

Even if the rules are dumb, breaking them should not go unpunished.

And no, I wouldn't bank on user reviews matching the criteria needed. I'm too lazy to look up the exact legal language used but I'm going to take a wild guess 'a meaningful human review' does not mean someone jotting down 'car smelled funny - 1 star' or something.

The law is there to protect you from getting fired over updates messing up algorithms or the algorithm getting overzealous. You only need to look at something like YouTube to know these things happen. People getting videos taken down over false claims from other users is super common, Creators with hundreds of thousands of subscribers getting banned with YouTube not providing a reason that makes sense or even willing to manually intervene. Heck, it's so automated nowadays that videos get removed because the AI misheard something or mistook a prank for gore or some BS like that.

Now afaik YouTube doesn't exactly 'employ' people so they can get away with it, but I don't want the same hands off approach for Uber drivers, offering them some protections seem logical.

For Uber I can totally imagine a situation like a road getting closed or blocked by traffic but not showing in Ubers system as such just yet. If a driver then get falsely flagged for dismissal for taking unnecessary detours it's probably wise to have a human ring up the driver and ask what the reason was and check if they're BSing or not.
I've also heard of some vengeful ex-partners stalking a drivers location and getting their friends to book a ride to leave a bad review. Pretty hard to recover from in the first place but now imagine getting automatically fired over it without a human ever checking what's going on.

 

[scavengerspc]

Lazy bastards.

 

[pnntmp]

From what I understood the Dutch government will receive the fine as Uber themselves decided to put their headquarters there.
Which is somewhat ironic as the complaints didn't stem from The Netherlands (as someone from The Netherlands, don't worry - I'm sure my government will find a way to waste it just as well as any).

Uber should probably have their IT team consult their legal team every now and then to ensure they're following the rules.


Even if the rules are dumb, breaking them should not go unpunished.

And no, I wouldn't bank on user reviews matching the criteria needed. I'm too lazy to look up the exact legal language used but I'm going to take a wild guess 'a meaningful human review' does not mean someone jotting down 'car smelled funny - 1 star' or something.

The law is there to protect you from getting fired over updates messing up algorithms or the algorithm getting overzealous. You only need to look at something like YouTube to know these things happen. People getting videos taken down over false claims from other users is super common, Creators with hundreds of thousands of subscribers getting banned with YouTube not providing a reason that makes sense or even willing to manually intervene. Heck, it's so automated nowadays that videos get removed because the AI misheard something or mistook a prank for gore or some BS like that.

Now afaik YouTube doesn't exactly 'employ' people so they can get away with it, but I don't want the same hands off approach for Uber drivers, offering them some protections seem logical.

For Uber I can totally imagine a situation like a road getting closed or blocked by traffic but not showing in Ubers system as such just yet. If a driver then get falsely flagged for dismissal for taking unnecessary detours it's probably wise to have a human ring up the driver and ask what the reason was and check if they're BSing or not.
I've also heard of some vengeful ex-partners stalking a drivers location and getting their friends to book a ride to leave a bad review. Pretty hard to recover from in the first place but now imagine getting automatically fired over it without a human ever checking what's going on.

I don't think parallels with Youtube are the best way to describe the issue.
Youtube has nearly 70 million authors and 5+ billion clips, it's absolutely impossible to manage that without automating 99.999% of it. The alleged problem with Uber affected 171 drivers (note that there is nothing after 171 - neither hundreds nor thousands nor millions or billions). It's perfectly possible humans to review this microscopic amount, and I guess they do because Uber has no interest at all to get rid of good drivers - only of those who ruin their reputation.

It's super -easy to know if a car takes a longer route to cheat or to avoid traffic, because they are tracking many cars simultaneously, and I guess it's possible to purchase aggregate traffic data from google maps, waze or local systems. If someone's flagged for cheating you can even check them in realtime by comparing google maps ETA and selected best route with the actual ride data.

 

[axiomatic13]

LOL - He didn't say anything about race. The issue is not really about race, but about illegal immigrants that are working under the table.

However, look at the FBI table 21. Whites commit rapes in proportion to their population percentage. But Blacks commit crimes at rates higher than whites. For example, Blacks are only 14% of the population but commit most of the murders every year. (blacks = 4,935 murders, whites = 4,192 murders). Look at it another way. Young black males are about 5% of the population, committing over 50% of the murders.

Foreigner rape statistics are somewhat skewed because they do not report rapes at the same rate as Whites. Think about it, if you were an illegal alien, would you trust the police? I think not.

Do you feel better now?

 

[jdrch]

Had to be the EU because there's no way the US would fine a company that much money for anything since T1.

 

[Northy]

Had to be the EU because there's no way the US would fine a company that much money for anything since T1.

The US government was sold out to it's corporate masters long before Trump arrived.

 

[Win7user]

LOL - He didn't say anything about race. The issue is not really about race, but about illegal immigrants that are working under the table.

However, look at the FBI table 21. Whites commit rapes in proportion to their population percentage. But Blacks commit crimes at rates higher than whites. For example, Blacks are only 14% of the population but commit most of the murders every year. (blacks = 4,935 murders, whites = 4,192 murders). Look at it another way. Young black males are about 5% of the population, committing over 50% of the murders.

Foreigner rape statistics are somewhat skewed because they do not report rapes at the same rate as Whites. Think about it, if you were an illegal alien, would you trust the police? I think not.

Well, said. You saved me the trouble of having to respond to that, dink.I believe that boy suffers from what's called, the Cancel Culture. I don't and you obviously don't subscribe to that....

 

[axiomatic13]

Well, said. You saved me the trouble of having to respond to that, dink.I believe that boy suffers from what's called, the Cancel Culture. I don't and you obviously don't subscribe to that....

"Cancel Culture" LOL, you made a bigoted comment, I called you on it. That's all that happened.