Uber Investor Ashton Kutcher Defends Slandering Critical Journalists

Ashton Kutcher is a walking conflict of interest. He invests his acting fortune into startups like Uber and then promotes those companies without disclosing his financial ties. Now that Uber's culture of sleaze is making headlines across the country, Ashton's back out there defending Uber's exposed plans to discredit reporters who dare criticize Uber.

The actor-cum-capitalist, who has invested in Uber through his venture capital firm A-Grade Investments, tweeted that he doesn't see what's so bad about snooping on "shady" journalists:

Of course, Uber wasn't just targeting "shady" muckrakers. BuzzFeed reports that the company can use their "God View" to spy on any customer:

Tracking customers is easy using an internal company tool called "God View," two former Uber employees told BuzzFeed News. They said God View, which shows the location of Uber vehicles and customers who have requested a car, was widely available to corporate employees. Drivers, who operate as contractors, do not have access to God View.

Early this November, one of the reporters of this story, Johana Bhuiyan, arrived to Uber's New York headquarters in Long Island City for an interview with Josh Mohrer, the general manager of Uber New York. Stepping out of her vehicle — an Uber car — she found Mohrer waiting for her. "There you are," he said, holding his iPhone and gesturing at it. "I was tracking you."

Even Uber—which has not held executive Emil Michael accountable for threatening to leak the information about a female reporter's personal life—distanced itself from the "oppo research" revenge strategy and claimed to be disturbed by the abuse of "God View." They're investigating the general manager who reportedly abused the technology.

But privacy violations that the bad bros of Uber disavowed don't faze Ashton. In his view, we're all public figures—a planet full of internationally-known actors with millions of dollars and a few dozen startup investments under our belts.

Then he got back to the point: corporations funded by $1.5 billion in venture capital and another billion on the way can't possibly explain their behavior without smearing reporters. The corporations are powerless:

Ashton quickly backed down. Towards the end of his apologist meltdown, he made sure that his ridiculous views did not reflect the views of company he is financing.

That's right, Ashton. Don't let reality get in the way of a good tweetstorm.

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Photo: Getty

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