Dutch regulator hits Uber with €825 million GDPR fine over automated driver suspensions

Dutch regulator issues near-$1 billion fine

The Dutch Data Protection Authority has fined Uber €825 million (roughly $966 million) over its use of automated systems to suspend driver accounts. TechCrunch, citing Reuters, reports that the amount is the second-largest penalty issued to date under Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.

The case grew out of complaints that Uber deactivated drivers through automated processing without adequate advance warning and without meaningful human involvement. Monique Verdier, the regulator's deputy chair, said in a statement that the company had "committed serious infringements" and that "a computer should not make decisions on its own" when the consequences for the people affected are so significant.

Uber disputes the findings

Uber rejects the regulator's core claims. The company argues that most account suspensions are brief, that no permanent deactivation takes place without a human reviewing the case, and that drivers have a route to appeal. The Dutch authority contends that some drivers were permanently removed with no human review at all — a characterisation Uber disputes. Either way, the company intends to appeal, and a spokesperson told Reuters that Uber strongly disagrees with the decision and what it called a "disproportionate fine".

From one suspended driver to a landmark case

The enforcement action traces back to Brahim Ben Ali, a former Uber driver in France whose account was switched off in 2019. According to TechCrunch, he collected testimonies from 170 other drivers and eventually filed his complaint in the Netherlands, where Uber's European headquarters is located, giving the Dutch authority jurisdiction over the case.

He was supported by PersonalData.io, a Swiss digital-rights nonprofit that helped the drivers gather data about how the deactivation decisions were made. Its founder, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, pointed to the imbalance built into the system: a driver "can complete a thousand journeys with satisfied passengers, but if just one person reports a very serious problem, the consequences can be enormous".

A third fine and a planned class action

Dehaye says this is the third penalty the Dutch regulator has imposed on Uber, following a €290 million fine over its handling of drivers' personal data and a €10 million fine over related issues — and that all three stem from complaints by the same group of drivers.

He now plans to launch a class action through which drivers can seek compensation, and is starting a company called StartClaims to support that litigation and further regulatory action. Its first target is Uber, with ambitions to expand into other gig-economy disputes and adjacent areas such as adtech.

The "time clock" counterargument

The ruling has drawn pushback. John Gruber of Daring Fireball argued that it appears to make it unlawful in the EU for Uber to catch drivers who scam customers or simply never show up for pickups, leaving riders stranded. He also took issue with the regulator's framing: saying "a computer" made these decisions is, in his view, like saying "the time clock" decided to fire a habitually late employee — managers set the policies, and devices merely measure compliance.

Dehaye's response, as reported by TechCrunch, is that this "misses the point". Uber is free to use humans to punish drivers who cheat, he argues, but it would then have to take responsibility for those decisions — behaving like an employer rather than a marketplace.

Why it matters

At close to $1 billion, this is one of the largest privacy penalties ever imposed anywhere, and it lands squarely on algorithmic management: the automated systems that decide who is allowed to work on a platform. EU privacy law restricts decisions made purely by automated means when they significantly affect individuals, and the fine signals that regulators are willing to apply that principle to gig work, where an account deactivation can cut off someone's livelihood overnight.

If the penalty survives Uber's appeal, platforms operating in Europe will face renewed pressure to build human review, advance notice and genuine appeal channels into their automated decision systems — not just for drivers, but for any user whose account a machine can switch off. The planned class action adds a second lever: beyond regulatory fines, collective compensation claims could make poorly governed automated decisions substantially more expensive.