I really can't tell if it's satire or not, it's so bizarre. Everyone talking about the lengths to which they go to get a good passenger rating. How friendly, and social, and polite they are to the drivers they're hiring? I'm not saying be an ass, but when I hire a driver I want them to drive, I'm not really interested in chatting with them. Nothing against them, I'm just not interested in that.

Yeah, I'm the same. If I get into a taxi I'll make sure I'm ready when they turn up, say 'hey' and then sit there.

Maybe they think I'm rude, but I've paid them and thanked them, and I've not caused them any trouble.

I'm not from America, so maybe it's slightly more acceptable to do that but I could just be using stereotypes of Americans to explain the taxi scoring behavior.

Turns out that people like to generally interact with one another, and those that don't like doing that are judged as being less good.

I rate you as a 3/5.

Are we going to start giving shoppers a 'shopper' rating? People who don't talk enough to the cashier won't be served?

It's crazy this system is perfectly acceptable.. But the Chinese system aiming to do the exact same thing? Completely unacceptable...

I think that the general public is more okay with these systems than we think. I personally find them abhorrent.

You can do that to and it'll be fine. Some people are truly assholes and they get bad ratings.

This is great. If you are a shitty human being, and you are toxic to the workforce, then you get banned.

Unfortunately people are shitty and this is a very much needed feature to avoid abuse of drivers.

Doing something about "those people" is a common refrain when justifying poor ideas.

If the system were such that drivers would only leave negative feedback on exceptionally bad encounters, with a specifically described complaint, it could plausibly work as you state.

But as it stands, your "shitty human being" is likely to not be correlated with a poor average rating - imagine a run of the mill douchebag that talks themselves up to everyone they meet, yet is an abusive asshole when it benefits them. Such a person is likely to have a higher passenger rating than a genuinely nice person who is socially awkward.

All systems calcify, become overprescriptive, and get gamed by people with nothing better to do. This setup is ripe for that, and Uber's / Surveillance Valley's general stance towards accountability doubles the worry.

You're hypocrite because you want this feature for drivers but not riders.

It could be great, but it could go the other way too - drivers giving low ratings to minorities, or folk that live outside of the urban core.

One of Uber's selling points was that it avoided the kind of discrimination that taxis were famous for.

I'm not a taxi driver, and I don't know any but I'm not sure how widespread toxic riders is.

I've heard of taxi drivers complaining about drunks, people with food and stuff, but AFAIK taxi drivers in the UK are allowed to refuse service for things like this.

I almost always pool when using Uber/Lyft, and this filters people I wouldn't want as co-riders out too.

I think it makes a lot of sense for Uber Pool, at least, because shitty riders make the experience worse for other riders. The last time I took a Pool, we picked up someone who booked the ride for one person but had a friend with her. She tried to argue and say she would give the driver a tip at the end, etc., while the driver tried to explain that it doesn't work that way. Wasted about 5 to 10 minutes of my day because of that.