The app switched drivers off. No person checked first.

On 21 August 2026, the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), fined Uber €824,990,000. It found that between 2018 and 2022 Uber’s software tracked drivers’ behaviour and customer ratings and, when it detected suspected fraud or ratings that were too low, automatically deactivated their accounts: temporarily, or permanently for persistently low ratings. There was no human assessment before those decisions took effect.

The AP said this broke the GDPR’s ban on fully automated decisions that significantly affect people, and that Uber did not properly tell drivers how the decisions were made. Uber has stopped the practice and has appealed the fine, so this is a regulator’s decision that is still being contested, not a final court ruling. The investigation began after 171 French drivers complained to the French human rights group Ligue des droits de l’Homme, which took the case to the French regulator; the Dutch AP led because Uber’s European headquarters are in the Netherlands.

When the platform is also the manager

Platforms describe drivers and couriers as independent, but the app still decides who can work. A rating threshold or fraud score that switches an account off is a management decision made at scale, and without a person in the loop it is also a decision nobody can explain or be persuaded out of. “A computer should not make decisions on its own that have major consequences for you,” AP deputy chair Monique Verdier said.

It is the fourth AP fine against Uber, after penalties of €600,000 in 2018, €10 million in 2023 and €290 million in 2024 for transferring European drivers’ data to the United States. Uber is contesting the last two as well. The pattern is the familiar one: the business model depends on data about the people doing the work, and the protections arrive through complaints and regulators years later.

What to do

If a platform deactivates or restricts your account, ask in writing whether the decision was made automatically, what data it relied on and how to get a human review. In the EU and UK, data protection law gives you the right to request your personal data and, for significant solely automated decisions, to obtain human intervention and contest the outcome. Keep screenshots, messages and earnings records from before and after the decision, and consider a union, workers’ group or data protection complaint if the platform will not answer.