> Are you sure you've fully read and understood every ToS for every product you've ever signed up for, and also never violated any clause?

I've seen other posters ask this question, but I don't think this line of argument applies in this situation.

You're comparing a large ($70B Valuation!), multinational corporation, with the average personal consumer. The former is sophisticated, with an entire dedicated legal department of highly trained, expensive, and experienced lawyers dedicated to scrutinizing legal agreements the company enters and hedging against any legal liabilities. Not to mention the teams of engineers - which collectively have decades of real-world experience building and competing in tech.

Yes, the average personal consumer likely has violated TOS agreements, but violating TOS agreements is far from a real concern for most people. The average consumer barely knows how to read - it makes little sense to equivocate Uber's behavior and intentions with that of the average Joe Schmoe.

> I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS

Exactly.

> But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding.

This is why corporations have legal departments and other dedicated departments to handle a host of other issues that the average consumer would find difficult: HR, accounting, etc.

The level of sophistication, and thus the "mentality" of a corporation, especially one as large as Uber, cannot be compared to the average consumer.

> And most of us didn't have an ethics course in university.

Most of us also don't have a dedicated team of lawyers. It's also worth mentioning that new works and veterans alike are often required to go through various ethics courses and workshops as part of their corporate training. Even if this was not the case, the more senior engineers at Uber have most definitely experienced comparable situations. The fact that upper management endorsed these practices is telling and indicative of the overall culture at Uber.

Not all companies behave like this - some large MNCs behave in the exact opposite: extremely conservative when it comes to toeing the line with zero-tolerance policies in place that exact immediate, and harsh, punishment to any employee or manager that violate company policies / guidelines.

> The point is, treating these issues like they're incredibly obvious helps no one. It takes more effort to debate it in good faith than to simply assert "It's obvious," but it doesn't change anybody's mind.

I agree that hindsight is always 20/20 and what appears obvious today might not have been in the "heat of the moment" so to speak. But you have to wonder if at some point over the past few years, someone at Uber spoke up about their practices?

What seems obvious to me is that those involved knew they were breaking Lyft's TOS and that their actions were borderline unethical, definitely in the grey at the very least. That's why they took great pains to hide their behavior and obfuscate their actions. How do you explain the geofence they placed on Apple HQ? That was designed explicitly to hide their violations of Apple's TOS.

Uber is not a naive actor here. Any argument that advances this view is highly disingenuous, especially here on HN. Let's not kid ourselves, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck....