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Lyft’s ride-hailing business is starting to claw its way out of a deep hole

Lyft continues to struggle to bring in money amid rising case numbers of COVID-19 in the US. The ride-hailing company lost $459.5 million over the last three months, with its adjusted net revenues down 48 percent year over year.

Its ride-hailing is significantly smaller than it was last year. This quarter, Lyft reported having 12.5 million active riders, compared to 22.3 million in the third quarter of 2019 — a drop of 44 percent. It’s a deep hole, but Lyft is starting to claw its way out. The company’s ridership has been steadily growing over the course of the year: this quarter’s number is 44 percent improvement over Q2.

Lyft brought in nearly $500 million in revenue this quarter, versus $956 million in the third quarter of 2019. It was a steady improvement of 47 percent over the second quarter of 2020, when Lyft only made $339 million. Lyft’s losses were essentially flat this quarter when compared to Q3 of 2019: $495 million versus $463.5 million.

Amid all that red ink there was one positive note for Lyft. The passage of Proposition 22 in California was an obvious win for the company which, along with Uber and DoorDash, spent over $200 million to push for its approval. The ballot measure exempts Lyft from a state law requiring it to classify its drivers as employees.

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Uber and Lyft had an edge in the Prop 22 fight: their apps

The victory of Prop 22 in California could set a precedent for how companies use technology to lobby for political outcomes

The apps told California voters to vote yes on Proposition 22. And the voters listened.

Uber and Lyft spent over $200 million on the ballot measure to keep their drivers classified as independent contractors, but their most effective bit of lobbying may actually have been just a few lines of code.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the companies used their respective apps to bombard riders and drivers with messages urging them to vote for Prop 22, the ballot measure. Its victory will set a precedent for other states’ labor laws around gig work, as well as for how huge companies with an easy way to communicate to millions of voters can lobby against laws they don’t like.

The outcome on Prop 22 was never certain, with polling in the run-up to the election showing the electorate sharply divided over whether Uber and Lyft should treat drivers like employees. Most notably, at least a quarter of voters said they were undecided just weeks before the vote, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Studies poll. This gave Uber and Lyft an opportunity to define the issue to voters using their apps, said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at NYU’s school of business and author of The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.

“I doubt whether the average voter would have weighed the pros and cons of the labor law around AB5 versus the new initiative,” Sundararajan said. “They feel positively towards the platforms, they don’t want to see a disruption in something that they depend on, and so they vote for the platform’s position.”

Prop 22 cements gig workers’ status in California as independent contractors. The ballot measure, which won with 58 percent of the vote, exempts gig economy companies from a state law requiring them to classify their workers as employees. It also mandates that gig workers receive new benefits, such as minimum hourly earnings. Critics say these benefits fall short of the full protections that come with employment, as they may have had to under another law, AB5 — which originally took aim at gig work.

The companies splashed out a historic sum that probably influenced the outcome. The companies’ “Yes on 22” campaign spent over $200 million on billboards, digital, print, and radio ads. They also deployed dozens of lobbyists, and sent voter mailers that critics said were misleading. At the same time, Uber and Lyft’s top executives undertook a media tour in which they threatened to leave the state if Prop 22 failed. And they even sponsored academic research to support their claims about the benefits of Prop 22. Labor groups, which opposed the law, raised only a tenth as much money.

It’s notoriously difficult to secure a yes vote on a ballot measure in California. Major companies have outspent their opponents by tens of millions of dollars and still come up short. In 2010, for example, PG&E spent $43 million to pass a measure to deter government-run power providers, but the measure was defeated by a large margin.

But the gig companies’ digital reach and their use of in-app messages to reach voters was unique, setting it apart from ballot fights of the past. In the weeks leading up to the vote, Uber and Lyft served users with a pop-up message threatening longer wait times and higher prices if Prop 22 failed. They also claimed drivers would lose their livelihoods. In order to request a ride, users had to tap the “confirm” button on the message.

Uber and Lyft’s use of their apps to push a political message may be legal, but it still felt improper, said Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a nonprofit that opposed Prop 22. “If anyone else collected data from people for one reason, and then used it for another political purpose, they would be in a world of trouble,” she said.

The fight was certainly asymmetrical. Anti-Prop 22 groups were able to fund a modest ad campaign arguing against the ballot measure, but lacked direct access to voters through their smartphones.

Uber was also lobbying its drivers through the app. In a lawsuit filed recently, Uber drivers accused the company of pressuring them to support Prop 22 through the app. The drivers claimed they were getting messages reading “Prop 22 is progress,” as well as dire warnings about what would happen to their jobs if Prop 22 were to fail. Like riders, drivers had to click “OK” before they could move forward in the app. A judge rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that the outcome of Prop 22 would render it “moot.” The judge also dismissed the drivers’ allegations of “political coercion,” stating that there was no evidence of any Uber driver being punished for not supporting Prop 22.

This isn’t the first time Uber wielded its app to score a political victory. In 2015, the company was feuding with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over his effort to limit the number of new ride-hail vehicles on the road. To marshal its user base to oppose the mayor, Uber added a “DE BLASIO” option that illustrated how ride requests could vanish and vehicles could slow to a crawl if the mayor’s proposal was approved.

Other tech companies have embedded political messages in their products before. In 2012, Google blacked out its logo on its search page in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) that passed the House of Representatives.

“Different tech platforms have tried to engage consumers through their tech in different ways,” Sundararajan said. “But Uber is probably among the most sophisticated at using the app, and it was particularly important in this case, given that it was a ballot initiative.”

Jobs with Justice’s Smiley argues for stricter laws around companies using apps to push political messages. “They have to create separate political PACs to be able to talk to consumers or workers,” she said, “and build those lists based on that premise, not based on the need to fulfill a service.”

Uber’s messages to riders and drivers are not considered political advertisements, though the Yes on 22 campaign still included them in a disclosure statement as a non-monetary contribution, a spokesperson for the company said. “Uber’s app shared the voice of tens of thousands of drivers, 72 percent of whom support Prop 22, with millions of riders in California and keeping them informed of the stakes on this issue,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We have previously shared videos from drivers with riders and this week MADD’s endorsement of prop 22 because of ridesharing’s impact on reducing drunk driving.”

A Lyft spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s unclear whether states will step in to restrict these types of mass-messaging campaigns. In California, app notifications appeared to be fair game. In a statement to the LA Times, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission said political advertising only needs proper disclosure to let the public know who’s paying for it to be in compliance with the law.

The pro-Prop 22 notifications on Uber’s app included a small line of gray print reading “paid for by Uber.”

Uber, Lyft drivers aren’t employees after all, California voters say

California voters approved Prop. 22, which would exempt companies such as Uber and Lyft from having to classify their workers as employees, according to The Associated Press. The $200 million campaign in support of the measure was the most expensive in state history.

The ballot measure mandates that drivers for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash will receive new benefits, such as minimum hourly earnings. But drivers won’t get the full protections and benefits that come with employment, as they may have had to under another law, AB5 — which originally took aim at gig work. Labor groups, which opposed the law, raised only a tenth as much money.

Uber and Lyft threatened to leave California — or drastically cut back service — if they were forced to classify drivers as employees. Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, predicted a sharp increase in fare prices and fewer drivers on the platform if Prop 22 failed. If Uber had to hire its drivers, he said, it would only have room for 280,000 workers instead of the 1.4 million who currently use the app. The company declared victory tonight, thanking the Prop 22 supporters.

The fight over gig economy workers has been playing out in California for well over a year, but it intensified this summer when Uber and Lyft were ordered by a California Superior Court judge to immediately classify their drivers as employees. The ruling was in response to a preliminary injunction filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as part of a lawsuit alleging the companies are in violation of the state’s AB5 law that went into effect on January 1st. The law enshrines the so-called “ABC test” to determine if someone is a contractor or an employee, and generally makes it more difficult for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify workers as independent contractors.

Uber and Lyft say most drivers prefer to be independent because of the flexibility and ability to set their own hours. But this status also forces drivers to shoulder all the costs of their work, while depriving them of traditional employee benefits like paid sick leave, health insurance, and worker’s compensation.

Waymo moved its self-driving cars in San Francisco to a ‘secured location’ in case of election chaos

Waymo is pulling its autonomous vehicles out of San Francisco in anticipation of Election Day unrest, The Verge has learned.

The Google spinoff is “temporarily pausing” its AV test operations in San Francisco on Tuesday and Wednesday and moving its fleet to Mountain View, where it will be parked in a “secured location,” according to an email from Transdev, Waymo’s fleet operations vendor.

The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution ahead of some of the planned protests around the general election,” Chris Cheung, general manager at Transdev North America, wrote in the email obtained by The Verge.

Two Waymo safety drivers told The Verge they got the word midday on Monday to manually drive their autonomous vehicles from San Francisco to Mountain View that afternoon. They then had to take Uber or Lyft rides back to their base in the city to retrieve their personal vehicles. A Waymo spokesperson said drivers will be reimbursed for those rides.

Safety drivers based in San Francisco will be paid while operations are suspended, Cheung said in the email. And Waymo’s fleet that is based in Mountain View will continue to test on public roads. “Your safety is our number one priority,” she added, “and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Echoing Cheung’s email, the spokesperson for Waymo said, “Out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our team in mind, we are temporarily suspending driving operations in San Francisco on 11/3 and 11/4.”

Waymo isn’t alone in its expectation of Election Day chaos. Businesses across the US are boarding up windows and stepping up security measures in anticipation of protests and possible looting. This was true in the Bay Area, where KRON4 reported that plywood was being used to cover up windows at the Westin St. Francis hotel off of Union Square. The results of the election are not expected to be finalized on November 3rd and may not be known for days to come.

The election will take place against the backdrop of a global pandemic and nationwide protests against the police killing of unarmed Black men and women. In May, protests in the Bay Area resulted in police firing tear gas and injuring demonstrators with rubber bullets. Hundreds of protestors marched peacefully through downtown San Francisco last Sunday in advance of the general election.

This isn’t the first time Waymo grounded its fleet of about 600 vehicles, more than half of which are based in Arizona. The company temporarily paused its vehicle testing operation back in March at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Some safety drivers had complained that the company was slow to respond to the health crisis, but Waymo insisted that it acted appropriately.

The company resumed testing in the Bay Area at the end of May, even as COVID-19 cases were increasing in California and across the country. Safety drivers expressed concern that the company continued to operate during widespread wildfires on the West Coast over the summer. Waymo eventually halted testing for a day in early September when the air quality registered as “very unhealthy.”

Update November 3rd, 11:46AM ET: Transdev General Manager Chris Cheung is a woman. A previous version of this story used the wrong pronoun. We regret the error.

Evil makes sense of a messy world

Earlier this month, CBS’s Evil dropped its first season on Netflix. It arrived after what had felt for me like a listless few months; very little pop culture could hold my attention. And then out of nowhere I was transfixed.

Evil is a show that surprises you, which to me makes it one of last year’s best dramas. While the show is essentially a network procedural — perhaps the least surprising genre of television — the series is interested in stretching the boundaries of what that means, starting with its premise. Evil follows Dr. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), a forensic psychologist, and David Acosta (Mike Colter), a priest in training. Together, the two work as assessors for the Catholic church, investigating claims of the supernatural in order to determine if the church should get involved, usually for an exorcism.

Their dynamic is at least two kinds of broadcast staple: a will they / won’t they and believer / skeptic, a pairing at least as old as The X-Files. Their occupation, however, is unusual — and, as far as I can tell, an extremely liberal interpretation of what real-life Catholic assessors do, which according to a quick online search, seems to be something more like an ecclesiastical paralegal. And the job immediately provides fuel for interesting twists on shopworn stories. Like in the pilot, where Acosta must determine whether a serial killer is in fact possessed by a demon named Roy. A demon that then seems to haunt the skeptical Bouchard.

In Evil, there is usually an explanation for the supernatural, but the show always leaves just enough room for doubt to creep in: sometimes it’s an image no one can explain, a culprit no one ever sees again, or a smoking gun that makes no sense. In a genre largely concerned with wrapping everything up in an hour, Evil rejects closure. The only thing it believes, definitively, is that things are getting terrible in a way that they really haven’t before.

“The world is getting worse,” David Acosta tells Bouchard toward the end of the pilot episode, “because evil is no longer isolated. Bad people are talking to one another.”

I’ve been thinking about that line nonstop since I heard it. Bad people are talking to one another. It feels too neat and reductive to be completely accurate, and yet I feel its truth every time I see a pundit parrot white supremacist talking points or run-of-the-mill disinformation that’s come from the president of the United States himself. These conversations are happening every day. So, yeah. Evil seems stronger than before, and technology is good at helping it.

It’s the inverse of a lot of mass messaging about technology, which still trends toward vapid boosterism: Facebook connects us, Uber takes you places, GoFundMe helps you raise money to do things you believe in. This cheery facade was always rotten, red meat for investors propped up by a trembling skeleton of venture capital, but now it is absolutely putrescent. Facebook empowers dictators. Uber and Lyft lobby for legislation that will deny gig workers the employment status that would provide them with things as basic as minimum wage and paid overtime. GoFundMe is a testament to our failed health care system, where only people who are lucky enough to go viral can raise the money to pay off lifesaving care.

Social good is great branding, but technology is always an accelerant. You don’t see the evil until it’s too late, when the products are entrenched in the marketplace and the status quo has reasserted itself in devious new ways.

In Evil, technology is crucial: Bouchard and Acosta investigate their horror stories with the help of tech specialist Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi), who is usually integral to proving there’s a rational explanation to some supernatural occurrence. In one fun episode, he has to determine if a smart speaker is haunted. In another, a hacker breaks into a VR game to trick children into thinking a ghost controls their headsets. In Evil’s universe, technology functions as an explanation, and never as a tool of outright subjugation. If there is anything truly supernatural, it’s outside of the digital realm.

After some shoe-leather investigating, it usually turns out Evil’s occult concerns are — like any moral panic — a smoke screen for more everyday horrors. Like in a later episode, when a disillusioned young man is rejected by a woman he’s attracted to and is encoura

Uber and Lyft lose appeal, ordered again to classify drivers as employees

Uber and Lyft were ordered by California’s court of appeals to classify their drivers as employees. In a 74-page opinion, the court affirmed the injunction that was issued on August 10th requiring Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees within 30 days.

But it’s unlikely this ruling will go into effect before California voters weigh in on a ballot measure, Prop 22, that would exempt Uber, Lyft and other gig economy companies from the state law making it more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors.

The injunction won’t go into effect until 30 days after the appeals ruling. Still, it’s a sign that Uber and Lyft have a lot riding on the passage of Prop 22. The companies, along with DoorDash and other gig economy companies, are spending $186 million to win over the electorate.

Nonetheless, public officials and driver groups celebrated the court ruling. “This is a huge victory for drivers,” the pro-Prop 22 Gig Workers Rising said in a statement. The city attorney of San Francisco simply tweeted, “Drivers are employees.”

Uber and Lyft said they are exploring their “appeal options,” and may take the case to the state’s Supreme Court. “Today’s ruling means that if the voters don’t say Yes on Proposition 22, rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors, putting hundreds of thousands of Californians out of work and likely shutting down ridesharing throughout much of the state,” an Uber spokesperson added.

A Lyft spokesperson said, “This ruling makes it more urgent than ever for voters to stand with drivers and vote yes on Prop. 22.”

The battle over Prop 22 has been heating up in recent weeks, as polling shows the electorate sharply divided over whether Uber and Lyft should treat drivers like employees. A group of Uber drivers sued the company today claiming the “constant barrage” of messages in its app violates workers’ rights. The drivers are seeking up to $260 million in penalties.

The August 10th ruling was in response to a preliminary injunction filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as part of a lawsuit alleging the companies are in violation of the state’s AB5 law that went into effect on January 1st. The law enshrines the so-called “ABC test” to determine if someone is a contractor or an employee, and generally makes it more difficult for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify workers as independent contractors.

Uber and Lyft say most drivers prefer to be

Uber accused in lawsuit of bullying drivers in its app to support Prop 22

Uber drivers in California are suing the ride-sharing company, claiming the “constant barrage” of messages in its app violates workers’ rights. The group of drivers is seeking up to $260 million in penalties, saying in a press release that Uber is “illegally exploiting its economic power over its California-based drivers by pressuring them to support the Yes on 22 campaign.”

The drivers say they have been getting messages reading “Prop 22 is progress,” and receiving in-app warnings about what would happen if Prop 22 were to fail. They have to click “OK” before they can move forward in the app. “Almost every time we log on, we are fed more one-sided information to pressure us into supporting Prop 22,” Ben Valdez, a driver for Uber and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. That includes in-app videos of drivers speaking about why “Prop 22 would make a difference,” reinforcing Uber’s stance that the measure should pass.

California law prohibits employers from trying to influence employees’ political activities by threatening a loss of employment, according to the press release. The lawsuit, which was first reported by The Washington Post, takes aim at what it calls Uber’s wrongful efforts to dictate to its drivers how they should vote in the upcoming election. But it’s not clear whether the law would apply to Uber drivers, all of whom are independent contractors, not employees — the very status that’s up for debate in the Prop 22 battle.

“Let’s be absolutely clear,” said attorney David Lowe, of Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Uber’s threats and constant barrage of Prop 22 propaganda on an app the drivers must use to do their work have one purpose: to coerce the drivers to support Uber’s political battle to strip them of workplace protections.”

Prop 22, a November ballot initiative in California, would exempt companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash from a California state law that requires them to classify their workers as employees. Drivers for Uber are classified as independent contractors who aren’t entitled to overtime pay, paid sick leave, or other benefits. The companies have spent more than $186 million on a campaign to support Prop 22.

The workers are seeking an injunction to prevent Uber from showing any further Prop 22 messages to drivers in the app. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court, under the California Private Attorneys General Act, which allows employees to sue on behalf of the state, Lowe said. The suit alleges that Uber told workers that 72 percent of its drivers plan to vote yes on Prop 22, which the workers say is “false and misleading.” The company says the survey was conducted in May and June, before there was any messaging in the app.

“This is an absurd lawsuit, without merit, filed solely for press attention and without regard for the facts,” an Uber spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. “It can’t distract from the truth: that the vast majority of drivers support Prop 22