Thread

DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why

349 points · 189 comments · vrganj

dayvid · 1790201069 · focus · HN ↗
Ever since it was found that they took part of driver's tips for themselves, I didn't trust the company <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/doordash-new-york-tips-delivery-workers" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/doordash-new...
1. BeetleB · 1790203785 · focus · HN ↗
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  1. altairprime · 1790204064 · focus · HN ↗
    Extrapolating from DoorDash scale to ‘your favorite local restaurant’ scale is inappropriate. Fraud at an exponentially higher scale deserves a similarly exponential increase in mistrust. Yes, bad actors individually exist, but when megacorporations scale up bad actors to national and international levels, it’s appropriate for mistrust to scale up accordingly. I have not been able to determine which of the restaurants I frequent are bad actors in this regard, but I have absolutely been able to determine that DoorDash is an unrepentant bad actor, as many consecutive “we fucked you over and paid pennies on the dollar to do so” settlements have confirmed. So changing my behavior to avoid a corrupt megacorp does not automatically correlate with contradiction and hypocrisy in my local behaviors.
    BeetleB · 1790206789 · focus · HN ↗
    > Fraud at an exponentially higher scale deserves a similarly exponential increase in mistrust.
    It was never determined to be fraud. Keep in mind that what they were accused of was never actually tested in courts.
    Also keep in mind that this practice is explicitly enshrined in the laws of many states for restaurant workers. If the worker got a tip, the restaurant owner was allowed to pay below minimum wage for that hour to that worker (as long as wage + tip met the federal minimum wage).
    Which is why I was asking. If you're in one of those (many) states, chances are high that most restaurants are doing what people find so despicable of Doordash. So yes, it is "at scale".
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790210014 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok, so let's imagine that it's common that mom and pop stores cheat employees by adjusting timesheets. Let's say we also find that Walmart was doing this as official policy accross all their stores.
    Are we supposed to just say "welp, that's ok Walmart, keep doing it, because we can't stop every other mom and pop store in the nation from potentially doing this."
    It's an absurd position to take.
    altairprime · 1790215818 · focus · HN ↗
    This. The three conversational branches in reply to the question posed are “yes”, “no”, and “TIL”; none of those three branches ends up in a conversation that excuses DoorDash, nor in one that promotes increased tolerance of DoorDash. If anyone feels otherwise, then present the case for why we should tolerate Doordash’s behavior, rather than asking one-sentence leading questions and then arguing about the indirection layer of the leading question.
    In this instance, for constructed example, one might present a straightforward claim that we should not direct moral outrage towards DoorDash for those behaviors they voluntarily paid money an apology for. I’m certain that’s not the correct phrasing of the argument intended, but since that claim hasn’t been made yet to us, of course my constructed example is wrong! That’s why it’s so essential to present one’s views as sentences, rather than through leading questions.
    Above, no claim is presented for why discussing local restaurant behaviors has any bearing on how we interpret, moralize, and respond to the behavior of the faceless megacorp DoorDash. Without that connection having been drawn, this is a functionally irrelevant tangent into businesses not comparable to DoorDash in either scale or function.
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790217369 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, the comment is a variation on this common thought ending cliche: <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
    And these people are always so smug about it, like they're Columbo at the end of an episode doing the big reveal of your moral hypocrisy or whatever.
    altairprime · 1790242762 · focus · HN ↗
    My issue is with rhetorical methods such as that, yes, but let’s not cross the line into mocking the people using those methods. Rhetoric is often taught in morally-neutral terms in the schools underpinning tech — especially at Stanford, the big one next door to YC/HN in Palo Alto! — and the seeming insult of that comparison (I’ve never seen Columbo) will make people less likely to reconsider their rhetorical choices. Whether they want to be heard more successfully or (as I hope) they realize that rhetorical methods are morally-charged in real-world communities or they’re asocial like me and this offers a method-hack for social interaction efficiency, it’s the method that matters here, not the person behind it.
    (One benefit of being nameblind at HN’s community size is that it’s easy for me to treat everyone the same, because I lack any recognition for whether I’ve spoken with someone previously or not. I acknowledge it’s not that easy for other people, but certainly it has the upside of forcing this ‘method, not person’ approach I describe into every interaction I have here :)
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790252849 · focus · HN ↗
    You may be treating everyone equally in your mind, but prose like the above reads as pretentious to most people, so I don't think your approach is particularly persuasive.
    Additionally, when I make comments like the above, I don't think the person I'm responding to is actually persuadable. It's not some sort of good faith socratic debate.
    altairprime · 1790319747 · focus · HN ↗
    > I don't think the person I'm responding to is actually persuadable.
    Yeah, that tends to be the case, but an attempt to persuade that goes nowhere counts more towards bans for such behaviors than insult and dismissal — so long as they're not a VC, anyways. The alternative is the Bystander Effect and that seems somehow worse.
    BeetleB · 1790257080 · focus · HN ↗
    > The three conversational branches in reply to the question posed are “yes”, “no”, and “TIL”; none of those three branches ends up in a conversation that excuses DoorDash, nor in one that promotes increased tolerance of DoorDash.
    Nothing related to any of my comments was meant to excuse DoorDash. What gave people that idea? It was meant for people to question their views on tipping to begin with.
    BeetleB · 1790258544 · focus · HN ↗
    > Are we supposed to just say "welp, that's ok Walmart, keep doing it, because we can't stop every other mom and pop store in the nation from potentially doing this."
    No, you're supposed to say "Let's stop everyone from doing this" and stop making it legal for mom and pop stores from doing it.
    And this has strayed from my original comment. I'm not asking about legality. The person I responded to found it so terrible he refused to use them. I'm merely suggesting they keep the same moral high ground when they go to eat at a restaurant.
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790286653 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't seem to understand what DoorDash did wasn't legal. They violated NY's minimum rate law which has provisions specific to gig economy delivery services.

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