Uber had a bad weekend. After Uber tweeted that surge pricing has been eliminated in the midst of the taxi strike during the JFK protests, #deleteUber began sweeping social media, with thousands of people urging Uber users to delete their accounts and start using other transportation services instead. But just how many people said bye to Uber?
After people accused Uber of attempting to gain profit from airport customers amid protests at JFK protesting President Trump's Muslim ban, Many also criticised Uber CEO Travis Kalanick for advising Trump on his economic advisory council. On Thursday, Kalanick stepped down from the council. In an email obtained by The New York Times, Kalanick said that there were "many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration, but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that."
However, that didn't stop Uber from taking an impressive hit. According to the Times, over 200,000 customers had deleted their accounts, and Lyft has skyrocketed to the top of the download charts after it pledged to donate $1 million to the ACLU. In fact, Uber had so many requests to delete accounts that it had to create an entirely new process to do so:
"Anyone who requested that their account be deleted will have their account deleted, and reports to the contrary are false. Over the weekend we implemented a new automated process to handle an increased volume of requests and implemented a password check, a security best practice to avoid abuse and fraud."
(H/T The New York Times)
