Mark MacGann said he bears some responsibility for company actions he now condemns, like presenting rosy visions of upward mobility and economic freedom for…
A longtime European lobbyist, MacGann interacted with top global business and government leaders during his tenure with the company between 2014 and 2016 but also came face-to-face with the violent protests over Uber’s disruptive practices.
“I was the one talking to governments, I was the one pushing this with the media, I was the one telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going to benefit and people were going to get so much economic opportunity,” he said.
MacGann is the latest whistleblower who has gone public about a decision to leak confidential documents that have illuminated how some of the world’s most powerful and consequential players operate, including tech giants and governmental agencies.Article content MacGann is an Irishman who speaks fluent French and spent more than two decades as a tech, telecommunications and financial services lobbyist throughout Europe before joining Uber. He began working for the company as a consultant in summer 2014.Article content
In media interviews and speaking engagements throughout his tenure, MacGann declared that Uber was not “anti-regulation” but simply a “tech company” using data to match supply with demand – and that’s why, he argued, it shouldn’t have to abide by the old regulatory models for the taxi industry.Article content
The Uber Files also implicate MacGann, though, along with his former colleagues, in some of Uber’s more hard-charging business practices. They show him personally appealing to Emmanuel Macron, then the economy minister for France, after a local official in the city of Marseille banned an Uber service in 2015, and participating in an aggressive lobbying and influence campaign to try to solidify a foothold in Russia.
In his interview with the Guardian, MacGann said he thinks Kalanick “meant that the only way to get governments to change the rules, and legalize Uber and allow Uber to grow, as Uber wished, would be to keep the fight, to keep the controversy burning. And if that meant Uber drivers going on strike, Uber drivers doing a demo in the streets, Uber drivers blocking Barcelona, blocking Berlin, blocking Paris, then that was the way to go.
Angry taxi drivers who felt their livelihoods were threatened by Uber saw MacGann as the face of Uber and, at times, aimed their ire at him. He said he received death threats on Twitter and harassment at airports and train stations, and that taxi drivers followed him, recorded where he lived and posted photos online of him with his children. “They needed someone to shout at. They needed somebody to intimidate, somebody to threaten,” MacGann said. “I became that person.
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