Horrific harassment story is giving the internet a new reason to #DeleteUber

The hashtag is back before it really went away.
 By 
Marcus Gilmer
 on 
Horrific harassment story is giving the internet a new reason to #DeleteUber
The backlash against Uber is back. Credit: Mori/AP/REX/Shutterstock

It's been less than a month since ride-share company Uber faced a heavy wave of backlash that led to the "#DeleteUber" hashtag and now, after the publication of an employee's allegations of sexual harassment and HR bumbling, the hashtag is burbling back up.

On Sunday, Susan J. Fowler posted about her experiences while at Uber and alleged a long list of institutional sexism, HR incompetence and organizational disorder and the story spread quickly across social media.

Specifically, it gave users a chance to resurrect "#DeleteUber" to take more shots at the tech company.

Programmer and influential tech figure David Hansson took to Medium to call out Uber, not just for this latest incident, but for a pattern of behavior since its founding.

There is nothing aberrational in either of those two incidents from either the Uber modus operandi or the broader Silicon Valley culture that has encouraged it. It’s completely expectable and predictable behavior. You only feign to be surprised or shocked when you seek to prevent any deeper soul searching from occurring. Because, oh the horror, it may reveal that our cherished ideals are looking a little rough after being fully realized.

When the app faced the mass deletion a few weeks ago, they had to change the process of deleting accounts because the company's initial process required manual deletion, causing a huge backlog in the system.

Some even joked about reinstalling the app just so they could delete it again.

On Sunday evening, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick released a statement saying that he had instructed the company's new chief human resources officer to conduct "an urgent investigation" into the allegations.

Topics Uber

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Marcus Gilmer

Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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