Those who have been paying attention to the maelstrom that's been occurring on Twitter over the past few days amid Trump's sternly controversial Immigration Ban should have seen one unusual element: #DeleteUber as a trending topic. But why?
That's because there's been a rapid-fire backlash against popular ride-hailing service Uber in response to accusation that the company used a protest as an avenue from which it can profit.
Campaign To Delete Uber
After the president issued his executive order on Saturday, a union representing taxi drivers in New York City issued a statement refusing to pick up passengers at the center of the protests, which was at Kennedy Airport, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., according to The New York Times.
At 7:30 p.m., Uber announced via Twitter that it has turned off surge pricing, a feature which purposefully balloons the cost in light of high demand.
Some immediately took the message as Uber's way of exploiting the controversy just so it could attract business, though the message was published 30 minutes after the union's protest. One Twitter user called Uber out, encouraging other users to withdraw from the service. Thus, the #DeleteUber campaign was born.
New York Times claims that more than 200,000 Uber accounts were deleted as part of the protest. The scale is staggering, especially given such a short period, and the mounting pressure even led to Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO, to exit Trump's economic advisory council.
"Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community," Kalanick wrote in a statement. Kalanick said that he has informed the president that he would not be able to join his economic advisory council. He said that jumping onboard the group was not meant to be seen as an endorsement of Trump, but has been misrepresented as exactly that.
Uber And The Trump Administration's Relationship
Uber is seemingly facing both external and internal criticism beyond the #DeleteUber protest. According to The New york Times, a contentious meeting on Thursday had Kalanick dealing with staff grievances over the purported association between the company, himself, and the Trump administration. Some employees even informed Kalanick that they're dealing with an injury in the vein of social stigma by simply working for Uber.
Letters To Travis
The day after that, a 25-page Google Docs file began circulating around the company. The documents, called "Letters to Travis" listed employees' displeasure with Kalanick's handling of Uber's perceived relationship with Trump. Kalanick relented a day later and vacated his post on Trump's advisory council.
The damage, however, is done, and the protest proved too swift for Uber to handle. Uber even had to implement a new system to properly process all incoming requests to have their accounts deleted.
Specific repercussions — financial pitfalls, for example — led by the massive deletion of Uber accounts has yet to be disclosed, if ever. All told, the move was certainly successful in sending out a message. Other companies planning to pull an "Uber" should take this as a template of what might happen.
