Skip to Content
Smart cities

Ride-sharing apps Uber and Didi equate surveillance with safety

After a passenger was murdered on May 6, Chinese ride-sharing provider Didi Chuxing says it’s considering recording trips made using its platform.

How it would work: Passengers would trigger the audio and video recordings by pressing an SOS button in the Didi app, and a customer representative would monitor them in real time.

Backstory: The move is a response to public outcry after a young woman who used Didi’s carpooling service was found dead after her driver allegedly propositioned her. Didi’s app had social features designed to help people identify fellow commuters, but drivers reportedly used it to gauge physical appearance when selecting passengers.  

Why it matters: Chinese consumers tend to accept surveillance technologies more readily than those in other societies, but driver assaults on ride-sharing passengers are a global problem. If Didi adopts recordings as a safety measure, other ride-hailing companies are likely to follow. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently told the Washington Post that his company is considering capturing video of Uber trips to convince consumers that it’s “the safest mobility platform around.”

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.