I’m reminded, when I read this, that according to librertarian types, the mechanism that is supposed to curb this sort of unethical behavior is reputational damage. People will hear about this shit and then vote for Lyft with their dollars I think there is way too much head-in-the-sand, uncritical acceptance of this mechanism. Uber does not give a rat’s ass about the threat of reputational damage because it has lawyers, reams of NDAs, and a busy/otherwise unwitting public unaware of these tactics.
You're forgetting the stupidest assumption in the homo economicus: that all is known and is acted upon rationally. If I were to make a guess I think for each person accepting Uber as a to-them-necessary-evil, there are two people not even aware of all of this.