Whenever an Uber user opens the app on their smartphone, they’re greeted with a map indicating the current drivers circling their location. However, according to a report from Motherboard, these car icons representing drivers may in fact be figments of imagination, phantom cabs designed to make a user decide to order a car through Uber instead of a ride-sharing app competitor.
Motherboard spoke to one Uber driver who noticed discrepancies regarding the driver positions, mainly that there were cars around her residence, but that the nearest driver was almost 20 minutes away. This driver emailed Uber about this, and a staff member replied, saying some very illuminating things.
“The app is simply showing there are partners on the road at the time. This is not a representation of the exact numbers of drivers or their location. This is more of a visual effect letting people know that partners are searching for fares,” the staff member said in the email, which was published by Motherboard. “I know this seems a misleading to you but it is meant as more of a visual effect more than an accurate location of drivers in the area. It would be better of you to think of this as a screensaver on a computer. Once a rider request a trip there will be actual information about the partners [sic] location showing up in the app."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Uber drivers regularly open the passenger portion of the app to see where their competitors are congregating. While no map is the territory, having driver clusters misrepresented on the map like this, with the assumed — according to Motherboard — intent of convincing possible users to order a car, is throwing a major wrench in how Uber drivers need to work.
The San Francisco Chronicle spoke to researchers from Data & Society who investigated the issue, and these researchers report that Uber told them the map is supposed to represent a zoomed out view rather an accurate depiction of the driver positions. Apparently Uber followed up with these researchers to say that they were working to make the map more accurate in real time for the future.
