Didi Taxi plans to expose sexual harassers happened on the trip, with 90% support

Didi Taxi, the major Chinese online ride-hailing corporation, recently held the 12th public consultating board, inviting  people from  different communities to vote on whether to support exposing sex harassers happened on the trip. The discussion will last seven days and end on 16 May. As of 18:00 on 13 May, more than 60, 000 people had voted, 88 percent of the voters supported exposing and more than 7000 did not.

Sexual harassment is one of the most serious issues faced by online car-hailing companies around the world. Different from illegal or criminal sexual abuse, the definition of sexual harassment is vague, relevant behaviors are also very extensive, thus the public power could not easily intervene in. Even if companies such as Didi try to make a difference in the contemporary situation, the lack of criterion may cause problematic results.

Currently, Didi’s sexual harassment scandal keeps happening. In some of the reported cases, Didi customer service tried to handl incidents quite inappropriately, such as only offering 50 yuan for compensation, which repeatedly caused PR crisises. Due to the dilemma, Didi was unable to act as the adjudicator and had to make the issue go public and give the public an opportunity to determine how to solve the current issue.

Objectively, online car-hailing enterprises have made some technical preparations to prevent sexual harassment, which makes exposure possible from the technical level. For example, Didi Taxi has developed “encrypted video record”, “drunk informing (passenger should inform the driver that they have drunk before hailing)”, “blacklist” and other functions. In addition, Didi also upgraded the alarming system to help polices to collect evidences.

Exposing the sexual harassment event mainly  aims to prevent, or at least reduce the event from happening. Besides, in follow-up measures, perpetrators with extreme poor records, both drivers or passengers, may be blacklisted and banned from using the services in a long time, even perpetually.