Electric Scooters Taken Prisoner in the New Class War
Electric scooters are the latest casualties in Silicon Valley’s class war.
Dockless scooters, owned by companies like Bird, Lime, or Lyft, made their debut in a number of U.S. cities last year. But in gentrifying cities like San Francisco and D.C., the sight of a corporate-owned scooter lying across a public sidewalk can forecast a coming wave of cat cafes and rent hikes. So a trend of jailbreaking scooters—overriding their software so users can ride them for free—has taken on a political note, with hackers describing the act as a “cyberpunk” adventure, and one scooter company making legal threats against a journalist who described the process.
An August video shows a teenager hacking the electronic scooters that dot Los Angeles sidewalks. He unlocks the scooter with an app, and a man rides away on it without paying.
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