These guys have looked very hard at the okcupid postings. Interesting stuff, but it doesn't really show how prostitution and alcohol ended up making uber better in some tangible way. Only that there were some interesting correlations.
Uber is able to decrease the average wait time by strategically placing cars wherever alcohol and prostitution are prevalent, thus making the service better.
They imply that looking at crime data reduces average wait time, but they don't actually present any data to show that this is the case, or to quantify how much better their demand prediction model can do when given access to the crime data.
That would require a 'before' and 'after' with some numbers that prove that they've managed to decrease the wait time in a statistically significant manner.