Being able to order a rental vehicle with driver (VTC) through an app seemed to revolutionize the market, regulated in the taxi sector until now. Once these new platforms have been established in large cities, they later leave behind a trail of suspicions about the functioning of their algorithms. Several studies have shown that these types of companies take into account the condition of the battery and the model of the mobile phone from which the service is provided to define prices. The administration, always slower than technology, tries to make the variables on which the final price is calculated public. However, experts warn that this may not be enough.
“Algorithms are presented to us as if they were something neutral that only discriminate based on supply and demand, but that is a lie. “Algorithms respond to the interests of the companies that create them, whose objective is to achieve maximum profit at whatever cost.” It is explained by Tito Álvarez, spokesperson for Taxi Project, an organization that has studied in depth the darkest points of the system on which platforms such as Uber, Cabify and Bolt are based.
Álvarez and Sergi Cutillas have commissioned a report in which they analyze data processing by Uber. “The algorithm used to calculate the price of the trips is one of the company’s most protected assets,” the document introduces. Despite this, and although the data used by the algorithm and how it is used are unknown, it can be seen that the final result is the regulation of supply and demand by modifying the price, they say.
To reach some conclusions, Taxi Project experimented with how the algorithm responded to requests for similar Uber trips, just varying the model of the mobile phone and its battery percentage. The variations were minimal, they point out, “but whenever they occurred the price was higher for the device with a lower battery, especially when the route ended in a stadium.” “They do it this way to play with the client’s desperation,” explains Álvarez. In addition, they verified how the price increased if the service was requested from a higher-end mobile phone.
Possible “algorithmic cartel”
The awareness that Taxi Project tries to instill in society about the dangers of using these technologies could not take effect without the computer scientist and hacker they have in their pay. “Thanks to their research, we saw the correlation between Uber and other VTC services. It seems that when Uber raises prices, Cabify and Bolt do too. We don’t know if this is a kind of price pact between algorithms or that companies use the same indicators to raise and lower them,” explains the spokesperson for this group.
For its part, Taxi Project has already informed the National Market and Competition Commission of its investigations into a possible “algorithm cartel.” Álvarez, as a taxi professional, adds that the most worrying thing about the issue is that these companies belong to investment funds that “drive prices to eliminate competition, and once achieved, they raise them without any type of regulation.”
Uber, an extrapolated system
Víctor Riesgo is a researcher in the Critical Urban Studies group associated with the UNED and his thesis was titled Control, consent and resistance in platform work. Driving for Uber in Spain. From their point of view, the algorithm is capable of discriminating between workers based on hidden variables. In this sense, the consulting firm Games Econ determined that during the Mad Cool festival in Madrid in 2023, the prices of these companies rose by up to 250%.
This expert looks beyond the cost of the trip. “We use these apps without knowing very well what permissions we are authorizing. They know our shopping habits, where we travel, our schedules, even what we eat, if we use Uber Eats,” he illustrates. In any case, for Riesgo there is another more worrying indicator than that of the final consumer: “In the case of the workers Everything is more complex and complicated because they are required to reach certain billing levels, in addition to the fact that they often use their personal cell phone to work.”
In the eyes of this researcher, the concept of “Uberization of society” would not be very far from reality. In his words, “Uber’s aspiration, I believe, is to become a kind of bits that can be managed and processed from binary codes.” In this way, the company would be carrying out “a long-term workforce management project, since its system can be used in other services to evaluate the workload, distribute it and assign a price.”
The workers, oblivious to the profits of the algorithm
On the same side of the screen are the drivers of these large companies, whom the platforms also use to make money. “We do not interfere in the algorithm at all, but my perception is that there must be some type of price agreement between them, because when there is high demand in Uber there is also high demand in the rest,” says Juan Fernández, Uber driver and union delegate for CC OO in the Moove Car group in Madrid, one of the three companies that take over the VTC licenses in Spain, managing up to 85% of them in the capital through salaried workers.
“I don’t work with incentives, so as a worker I don’t care about price increases. That goes to my company and Uber, which earns around 25% for each service provided,” emphasizes Fernández. The Moove Car works council has demanded to know the algorithms, but the response has been negative. “They tell us that this does not depend on their company, that it belongs to Uber and they do not have access to it, which is still a way of blocking demands from the legal representation of the workers,” says this union member.
Companies defend themselves
Uber assures that its rate “is defined based on the combination of the base rate, the time and distance of the trip.” “The algorithm in no case discriminates taking into account factors such as the battery of the mobile phone from which the service is requested or the model of the device,” he adds. In addition, they have defended these “dynamic prices” to increase the supply of drivers at, for example, large events, and “guarantee that users have access to a vehicle,” in their terms.
When asked about this question, Cabify assures that their technology “calculates the price of a trip based on time (minutes) and distance (kilometers)”, taking into account “concepts that are duly published and available to users on their page.” web and in the application. They also deny that the company takes into account factors such as the battery or the phone model to establish the price of a trip, nor any variable related to personal, social or other aspects.
From Bolt they respond something similar: “Bolt’s dynamic prices depend mainly on circumstantial factors such as location, duration of the journey and market conditions at the time of booking,” they explain. In addition, they deny that their system takes into account “the specific device or device manufacturer from which the order is placed, nor data related to the customer’s previous behavior or the battery of the phone model.”
While this company works with more than 8,000 VTCs and taxis in Spain, Cabify has preferred not to provide this information, at the same time that Uber has done the same “for competition reasons.” None of the three companies have responded to the percentage they earn with each trip made.
Make algorithms public
Sumar has registered an initiative in Congress aimed at regulating these algorithms. They want the platforms to have “published and updated, available to the user and in a manner sufficiently understandable for the citizen”, in the words of deputy Tesh Sidi, a description of the variables that determine their operation. On the other hand, they ask the CNMC that these companies cannot determine their prices based on aspects such as nationality, place of residence, place of establishment or request for the service or type, age or charge level of the electronic device used.
From Taxi Project they welcome the idea of making public the variables on which the algorithms of this type of platforms work. “They say it is a business secret, but in reality it is a consumer right,” defends Álvarez. In any case, the spokesperson for the group does not have much confidence that this measure will materialize: “They are going to fight it tooth and nail because there is the mother of the lamb, their entire business.”
Riesgo, for its part, considers it somewhat “naive” that the publication of the algorithms, which is not even what Sumar demands, could substantially change reality. “The machine learning models of these companies are of such complexity that it is very difficult to be able to interpret the variables,” he explains.
This expert advocates the creation of a public platform for this type of transportation. “The idea is that the State creates a platform from which these companies could provide their services under common norms and rules, although that would be going against the neoliberal logic in which we live, where the train has been liberalized and some buses Lines also sell their tickets based on demand and supply,” he concludes.
The Administration, behind
Álvarez, spokesperson for Taxi Project, states that “technology is far ahead of the Administration’s regulation.” Furthermore, whenever they have met with public organizations to denounce the system through which these platforms operate, they have ended up with a feeling of strangeness. “They look at us as if we were aliens. They don’t see that we are going towards a hyper-technological society. In the era we live in, unions should have more computer scientists and fewer lawyers,” he comments.
Riesgo, the UNED researcher, considers that the administrations are “in tow, without any initiative and, unfortunately, following the interests of the large platforms.” Although some progress has been made in terms of transparency at the European level, he believes that little by little “private companies are being granted the ability to regulate social and public life, as happens in ‘X’ regarding what is spoken at each moment and from what position it is done,” he exemplifies.
#Diving #VTC #algorithms #Uber #Cabify #Bolt #raise #prices #trip
