No, it never did, Uber just made that up. The whole basis of this article is plain false, no other words for it.
(Dito Amazon, who have brazenly been selling and even shipping electronic waste that passes no basic safety standards. No uttering of "marketplace seller" changes the legal reality.)
The pivot to Airbnb and Uber is a strange one, that's for sure.
You can draw them all in as part of a more general narrative of technology companies trying to avoid regulations and liabilities faced by their legacy competition, but the article really doesn't do enough to draw any distinction or justify the mention of these companies.
The intent of TFA is clearer, but it's still false. AirBnB and Uber didn't get some legal limitation of liability, they just started doing something new and asserted that they weren't liable. Turns out some jurisdictions agree, and others don't. But nobody thought that Common Carrier or the CDA exemptions applied to cars or apartments.
No, it never did, Uber just made that up. The whole basis of this article is plain false, no other words for it.
(Dito Amazon, who have brazenly been selling and even shipping electronic waste that passes no basic safety standards. No uttering of "marketplace seller" changes the legal reality.)