#DeleteUber vs. Deleted Uber: Is hashtag activism a farce, or a force?

It was that moment in time, right after Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had defended his choice to be on President Trump's business advisory council which inspired this tweet: 

It wasn't the first time the #DeleteUber hashtag was used—but it was one of the first tweets that looked like it could fuel a movement. Then, Uber turned off surge-pricing during strikes in airports across the country later that same day. 

And that's when #DeleteUber started trending. 

Uber made a decision to stand with Trump, it seemed, and Twitter just wasn't having it. 

More than two months—and oh so many Uber-related scandals later—it's worth asking: 

What effect did the hashtag boycott have? How many people actually deleted Uber?

Does hashtag activism actually have a palpable effect on the real world? Or is it all just hot air and bluster? 

It's hard to determine. Uber, for one thing, isn't up for publicly sharing its numbers—well, at least, related to the number of deletions. Uber has more than 40 million monthly active users globally. 

The company also touted new statistics last month: business in the U.S. grew faster over the first 10 weeks of 2017 compared to the first 10 weeks of 2016; several weeks in 2017 have been the busiest weeks for Uber in its history; and more riders took their first trips over the past month than in any previous month. Uber declined to provide more metrics. 

But we have our hints. 

For example: The New York Times reported that 500,000 users requested to delete their accounts in the week after the travel ban protests, writing:

With that number in mind, and the sentiment on social media, we can begin to pull out a signal the noise. Crimson Hexagon, a social media analytics company, compiled this chart of Twitter data, referencing the number of unique users who tweeted #DeleteUber on dates related to Uber scandals: 

Image: crimson hexagon

According to Crimson Hexagon: 

• 49,325 unique users on Twitter tweeted #DeleteUber from January 11 to March 29. 

• The loudest day was January 29, the day of the airport protests, with 10,610 posts. 

• Only 13 individuals were tweeting about #DeleteUber the day prior.

• The following days had 8,596 tweets, 6,804 tweets, 3,666 tweets, 3,254 tweet, 3,951 tweets, and then dropped to the lower 800s on February 4. 

Since then, the hashtag's seen numbers in the low 100s and even far lower than that—except for Feb. 20 with 2,016 tweets (the day after former Uber employee Susan Fowler Rigetti published a blog post on sexism and other issues of toxic workplace culture at Uber).

Overall, the #DeleteUber campaign generated more than 220,000 total posts on Twitter, according to Crimson Hexagon. 

More than 134,000 posts were sent on January 29. Looking into the sentiment, the analytics say 30 percent of the tweets resonated with joy while 25 percent had anger. 

It seems that people expressed happiness with deleting their accounts. Others simply showed rage over Uber's policy and practices. 

But the question still remains: How many people actually deleted their accounts? To stop using Uber officially, you have to submit a request, which until the #DeleteUber campaign, was not an automated process. And again, outside of the Times three sources, we'll never know the truth.

But as it is, if those numbers are true, a substantial win for hashtag activism.

Crimson Hexagon also compared the number of Twitter users who were talking about joining Uber versus the number for Lyft:

In the first week of January, far before the #DeleteUber campaign began on Jan. 29, people talking about joining Uber had 85 percent of the share of the conversation compared to joining Lyft.

However, that statistic flipped during the week of January 29. Joining Lyft had 84 percent share of the conversation on Twitter. 

Lately, the conversation's been fairly even. From February to March, discussions about joining Uber had 56 percent compared to conversations about joining Lyft, at 44 percent conversation share. Lyft did indeed see a real bump, though—according to data Lyft shared with TIME, from January to February, the company saw a 40 percent increase in app installations, and more than a 60 percent increase in activations (i.e. users entering credit card details) compared to the common single-digit increases over that same time period prior to it.

In other words: Given all of the problems at Uber since the #DeleteUber hashtag started, they might not be hearing your voice, but your fellow riders definitely are—and they're acting on it, too. 

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