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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   19435 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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  • While it'd be nice to have a scholarly article about who's delivering food, there's negative incentive for universities to do this sort of research, and I'm sorry: pretending like this isn't true is just too stupid to entertain. Step outside in any major western metro, look around, and then come back to the keyboard. I will concede that "100%" is high :) (EDIT: The fact that the authorities in NYC are specifically worried about hurting immigrants and therefore not acting to improve the situation with dangerous cyclists is another reason I can't take this seriously)
  • You're absolutely right on this point. Another point of regulatory skirting in NYC: Amazon has four wheeled delivery machines with vestigial pedals on them and huge batteries and motors. These seemed to be helmed by slightly more "professional" drivers but are obviously dangerous vehicles hanging out in lanes designed for human-powered transport. The problem is that all of these exist on a gradient, and nobody wants to make the first move of creating an onerous regulatory regime on what was, just a couple of years ago, a simple machine that some nerds started riding as a hobby.

I don't think @gafpromise was necessarily disputing the "immigrant" part, so much as the "illegal". You can certainly look around any major city and see that most DoorDashers are non-white and probably immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants. Bit harder to judge whether their papers are in order on sight. While the number may plausibly be high, I would be fairly surprised if >50% of immigrant DoorDashers were illegals, let alone 100%.

DD says they require SSNs and IDs. Account Sharing seems rampant - their own algorithms flag more than 100,000 accounts right now to have to "reverify identity* every shift, and they're incentivized to maladjust the algorithm in their favor.

You'll almost certainly never get the real data. Instead, I'd use someone's inability to understand English as a sufficient proxy for what I'm suggesting. It's a severe enough problem on Uber (for people driving cars under a regulatory regime) that I just can't reasonably play along with the theory that the problem is reduced or eliminated when it comes to bicycles. I'm going to believe my lying eyes and ears.

From Newsweek

Normally traditional hot "zones" of money-making became overly saturated with drivers out of nowhere, he added. He said he often chats in Spanish with foreign drivers, many of which tell him they are from Venezuela.

"[Us drivers] run into each other all day long at these various businesses and restaurants and so forth," he said. "We chat it up. I chat with the migrants, too. I'm a grandson of an immigrant. I'm sympathetic for them but I'm a rules guy first."

Preston said he personally met countless "unqualified" individuals—estimating that the senators' concerns about hundreds of unverified or illegal drivers could be understated on a national scale.

He alleged "fraudulent" accounts are commonly sold or shared via the dark web or openly in Facebook groups. In August, Preston said he hadn't been re-identified by the app in over two years.

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