Just when you thought we might get through the week without another irritating tidbit about Uber, we have news of a study of Uber drivers in New York and London that suggests there may be widespread gaming of the Uber app to force surge pricing, and therefore get higher fares paid to drivers. Also, the study found, drivers have found ways to avoid UberPool, which they hate.

The study by researchers at the University of Warwick Business School and New York University found that drivers engaged in mass "switch-offs" in which they would log off of the Uber app in order to artificially raise demand in a given area and force prices to surge. Surge pricing was created, in part, to serve as an incentive for drivers to log on and earn more money, thereby creating more available to cars to meet rising demand. But it seems as though human behavior and ingenuity, coupled with drivers' longstanding gripes about how much they're paid, have found a way to make the app work better for drivers' bottom lines.

"Drivers have developed practices to regain control, even gaming the system," says Dr Mareike Möhlmann from Warwick Business School, speaking to the UK Telegraph. "It shows that the algorithmic management that Uber uses may not only be ethically questionable, but may also hurt the company itself."

The study's authors relied both on interviews with drivers and evidence on a message board used by drivers called UberPeople.net. In one exchange on the site, drivers were seen having this discussion:

Driver A: “Guys stay logged off until surge.”
Driver B: “Uber will find out if people are manipulating the system.”
Driver A: “They already know cos it happens every week. Deactivation en masse coming soon. Watch this space.”

Uber responded to the Telegraph with a statement saying, "This behavior is neither widespread or permissible on the Uber app, and we have a number of technical safeguards in place to prevent it from happening."

Further, as CBS 5 extrapolates from the study, drivers can keep a 30 percent commission on UberPool rides rather than the usual 10 percent by logging off after picking up the first passenger and not picking up any other passengers.

And though drivers all sign an agreement that they will participate in UberPool, drivers found they could avoid getting assigned Pool rides by simply ignoring them. Said one driver, according to the study, "After about 2-3 days of ignoring them you will not receive anymore. I have not received an uberpool request in months. I guess uber thinks they are punishing me by not sending me any more… poor me. LOL."

In this thread titled "Uber Pool Sucks," drivers can be seen complaining about how Uber Pool is a "charity service" due to how low the fares are, and how Uber appears to take as much as a 50 percent cut of Pool fares. Also, one driver suggests simply never accepting an Uber Pool fare unless the first passenger picked up is "at surge pricing, preferably 1.7x and above."

Some savvy Uber customers have long known that they can game the app in certain ways too. As the Telegraph reported, an earlier study out of Northwestern University found that one can avoid paying surge pricing in some cases simply by crossing the street, or waiting five minutes and checking again.

Related: Uber's Two-Minute Wait Limit Comes To SF This Month