I had read [1] to [4] (maybe [5]-[6] too, but I don't remember) when they were posted, and I did think at the time that BlaBlaCar was a bad thing. But these are only blog rants, and I shortly changed my mind after that. I perfectly remember the (IMO) shitty UIs all carpooling websites had at the time, and I do remember people being doubtful about it in general. I was too. Now, there's nothing less common than carpooling, and you have to admit it serves ecology well. This is one of the things those blog posts couldn't or didn't see, four years ago.

[7] is a collection of problems people encountered. I had read a few of these long time ago, and re-read them now : these seem to be situations any service linking people together would encounter, and I don't see how any other website could avoid those entirely.

[8] I can't read; [9] is quite general.

> I've been doing carpooling for years and had no issues with cash payment or direct contact with other users, but suddenly blablacar marketed these as undesireable and risky and pretended there was a need to move to less freedom for more security by making them the unavoidable middleman and upfront payment, obviously the need was actually on their side and was about putting them in position to maximize profit.

You are personnalizing BlaBlaCar as a sneaky fox whispering into people's ears, playing on their fears and need for security. BlaBlaCar's position was the result of people's acceptance of their services in free will. You cannot change that. Also, it is very clear in some of your links that BlaBlaCar targeted the conductors (this "critical" mass) with economical incentives in order to bring the market to the next level, which, again, succeeded like nothing had before. I'm not sure destroyed is really what would describe their rise if you take a broader point of view.

> I'm not saying anything about bad practice (good or bad is a relative notion), I'm saying that blablacar destroyed the social component of carpooling to turn it into an economic one.

You are appealing to relativism, and then clearly implying that social and economic components are mutually exclusive, and I'd go as far as to say you also implied which one is evil and which one isn't. I just wanted you to notice that.

Also, it's not because something isn't free that you have to be an ass about it and that it's not social; and the inverse is also true. That's not something very common in France, but you can actually charge people and, at the same time, give them a good social experience.

> That blablacar put artificial barrier preventing people who need carpooling the most (people who cannot afford a smartphone or a credit card) from having access to it.

There are no people who need carpooling the most. Everyone needs to travel around for cheap money. It kinda feels like virtue signaling from your part to imply that you think about the poorest users, as if the person talking to you wasn't.

Also, this is quite untrue. On Leboncoin you will find older or used smarpthones from 10 euros, to 100 if you want fancy ones, while the cheapest phone plans, including internet, start at 2 or 3 euros a month. This extends worldwide with 3 billion smarpthone users in the world [1]. The magic of capitalism...

Technically speaking, to counter BlaBlaCar's existing monopoly on carpooling users, you'd have to create an open-sourced meta-platform for carpooling where people can register, and choose to use either BlaBlaCar as a middleman (that's what they do best), or not, or any other company or system that has been built to do just that. Over time, you would acquire an open database of carpooling users, which would serve for the greater good. This, and only this, improves free choice and resources efficiency, without the abuse that might come from a centralized platform such as BlaBlaCar. In my opinion, destroying or hating the business that built this carpooling community (I&...