Lemmy, federation and activity pub have taken my brain to some weird places in these last few months.
What if the world had a federated, activity pub based, passenger transport and delivery app?
Anyone with enough tech literacy to have their own WordPress blog could also start their own local (as in, for their neighbourhood) instance of uber/lyft/doordash, effectively for free. Moderating and establishing quality and trust between customers and providers on their own communities.
Customers could use fronted like jerboa to add as many local instances as they’d like. Or drivers could subscribe to multiple sources of passengers. Or, anyway, networks between restaurantes, delivery and customers.
Some form of opencollective project/format could be use to fund development teams working on it.
I know it’s a huge endeavour. Can you please challenge my initial thoughts? Is the logic sound? What am I missing? Do you know of anything like it?
It’s an interesting idea. I’m guessing the largest hurdles would be: trust, funding, and legal. A large part of it I think depends if it’s being run altruisticly or as a business.
Uber/Lyft and others have come under intense legal scrutiny all over the world. The drivers typically need to purchase & obtain a license to be able to drive, and come into agreement with local taxi operators.
What motivates the drivers to drive, ie is this a job or are they volunteering? Does each ride cost or are the rides free? If the rides are free, are the drivers doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, or are donations covering the rides? If rides aren’t free, who is processing those payments? Who decides what drivers get paid and what customers get charged?
Lastly, as a ride-operator, how do I build trust with my drivers? As a customer, how can I trust the instance I am with? If something happens in a ride, is there someone I can contact? Can I get refunds? What if something even worse happens, who is on the hook?
For not depending on altruistic action, I like the opencollective model. Both for self financing but as a platform too. If you use their platform to provide paid services, you share revenue for development. And then development/processing is charged from the collective fund through open recipes.
I expect most drivers to already be legal drivers. And the main point is to empower organisations that are already in place. Legally, I suppose the difference is that this is actually a technology project, with technology goals? The legal responsibility would be of actual operators.
Drivers drive as a job. Fees defined by the operator. Processing through payment modules. I was thinking each would need their own stripe API keys, for example. Split is also defined by the platform.
Trust would be built through moderation and finance. Operators can make some screening of customers and drivers, to increase trust between both groups.
I expect operators to provide support for any problems, since they choose the drivers explicitly. Including refunds. They got full control over finance.
If anything worse happens, I’d expect the operators to be in the hook. This is their service, actually. They have finance, they have actual full control.
If someone makes online stores with WordPress and doesn’t delivery their goods, or deliver harmful goods, I don’t imagine WordPress can be held accountable.