Getaround Hostile to Sharing, Trust

Getaround is a new service that allows people to share their cars. The company installs software that locks and unlocks the doors using their app, enables the car to drive. I have used it twice now, it works well

But Getaround does something truly un-sharing-economy friendly: they force everyone, including car owners, to log in using a Facebook ID. There is no ability to log in using an email address. This goes against any kind of “sharing” that might take place between the car sharers themselves, as Facebook accounts go to a single person. A family, or car co-owners, cannot share their car on Getaround, unless they all use the same Facebook account. Having a Facebook account used by more than one person violates Facebook’s terms of service.

Worse, forcing people to subscribe to other company’s products in order to use their service–and sign the terms of service with another company, especially one with a dubious record of respect for their users–is user hostile behavior.

When asked, Getaround says they are doing this because they don’t want to be responsible for trust and safety themselves–they want to rely on Facebook to do that for them. The makers of Getaround don’t really understand how reputation systems work–reputations can’t move from one system to another. You can be an ax murderer in real life, but if you ship quality products on time, you can maintain an outstanding A++ WOULD BUY AGAIN reputation on eBay or Etsy. Nothing on Facebook determines if someone is a reliable driver, there are no mechanisms for feedback on someone’s honesty or responsibility, cleanliness or consideration of others. And you can make a new Facebook account as easily as you can make a new email address.

You can tell what company’s values are by what they focus on, and what they take the time to build. Getaround doesn’t seem to value user sharing and user reputation. Other sharing services put a higher value on users ability to share and on their users reputation.  AirBnB, for example, allows email logins, and has built their own advanced and thorough reputation system specifically addressed to the needs of their community. Getaround car owners cannot share responsibility for a car on their service and absolve themselves of trust and safety responsibility as to their users reputation.

A better sharing economy service would not do that.