Here’s why people are deleting the Uber app | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick attempted to quell a rising tide of customers furious at the ride-sharing app over the company’s stance on President Donald Trump’s ban on immigration from seven Muslim countries, saying in a statement Sunday that the ban is “wrong and unjust.”

Kalanick, who is a member of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum dedicated to counseling him on economic issues, released the statement Sunday afternoon on Facebook and also promised to offer legal and financial aid to drivers affected by the ban. But it may have been too little, too late for many people, as the hashtag #DeleteUber trended on Twitter throughout Saturday night into Sunday morning.

People’s rage at Uber is a result of the company’s decision to continue providing rides to passengers at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, despite a call from the New York Taxi Workers Association to halt service for one hour in protest of Trump’s executive order. Several travelers from the banned countries were detained at JFK Airport.

Instead, Uber sent out a tweet saying that it would halt price surging at the airport, which some took as a message that not only was the company refusing to join the protest but attempting to undercut it by generating more rides for itself.

As a result, many users said they would delete the app from their phones and instead use Uber’s upstart competitor, Lyft, which is valued at less than a tenth of Uber’s worth, per Market Watch. On Saturday night, Lyft CEO Logan Green announced the company’s opposition to the ban and said it would be donating $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union “to defend our constitution.”

Uber, meanwhile, scrambled Sunday to defend itself.

“We’re sorry for any confusion about our earlier tweet — it was not meant to break up any strike. We wanted people to know they could use Uber to get to and from JFK at normal prices, especially tonight,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement to MarketWatch.

Kalanick jalso oined the heads of Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla and Box in condemning the ban. On Saturday, he told Reuters that he believed the ban “would affect many innocent people” and that he would raise the issue with Trump directly when he met with him as part of the economic forum.

But Sunday, the company released an email he sent to his employees promising to establish a legal defense fund for affected drivers, compensate drivers for their lost earnings and press Trump to reverse the order.

Here is a full list of tech CEOs who have voiced their opposition to Trump’s executive order.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Reed Hastings, Netflix

Sundar Pichai, Google

Satya Nadella, Microsoft

Tim Cook, Apple

Aaron Levie, Box

Stewart Butterfield, Slack

Brian Chesky, Airbnb

Logan Green, Lyft

Jack Dorsey, Twitter

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn

Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp

Meanwhile, there are some notably quiet voices in Silicon Valley.

Here is a list of of CEOs who have not issued any public statement on the executive order.

Evan Spiegel, Snapchat

Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Kevin Systrom, Instagram

Ginni Rometty, IBM

Information compiled from USA Today, CNN, The Hill and social media reports.