

A Billion Dollars Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Basic Human Decency - joshfraser
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/humbug/

======
atdt
I think it's very important that readers and contributors of this site
scrutinize their emotional response to this article. Moral criticism is very
hard to swallow. When it is leveled against a community, it is natural for the
community to close ranks and lick its wounds. If you prick us, do we not
bleed? etc. So you should expect to find eloquent and moving defenses of the
current state of the vocation, and you should expect to find them compelling.
But I think a far more useful response to this article is to do a bit of soul-
searching.

The amounts of money pouring into the industry are staggering. There are
extremely powerful incentives for us to avert our attention from the warping
influence it has had on our values. Many of us -- myself included -- consider
ourselves very lucky to be shielded from the economic chaos and instability
that is destroying so many lives in other industries, and the thought of
forfeiting this safety is exactly as terrifying as the thought that it is
rightfully ours is seductive.

There is a lot in this article I disagree with, but like the author I am also
scandalized that so much talent is squandered in pursuit of an IPO. There is
so many astonishingly brilliant and creative people on this site whose time
would be much better spent on problems of real social and intellectual
significance, problems of lasting significance for the well-being of our
species.

In a free society people have a right to choose in which direction they spend
their energies. But we cannot, in the name of individual choice, ignore the
enormous shaping influence of social forces on the course of human life. Much
of our behavior over these past few years has been driven by the fact that
money is the surest measure of success in our industry, and I would bet a
kidney that a lot of people here are nagged by a suspicious that there is
something deeply perverse about this. And if you're one of these people, I'd
like to propose to you that one way to change things is to start having more
honest discussions about this with colleagues, and to be a little more
courageous about recognizing success when its measure is lives bettered rather
than money raised.

I've been a complete coward about this, and I feel gross about myself as a
result. But I'm committed to changing.

~~~
Groxx
But isn't this true of _every_ point in time? I'm in no way claiming their
observations are incorrect, but what about _now_ is so different from the
past, when IBM (for example) employed massive numbers of such brilliant and
creative people for their economic gain? Or how governments have and continue
to employ brilliant people to build better weapons? What evidence is there
that there are fewer altruists out there now, or fewer "cool" people?

This article isn't about how this _is_ and _always has been_. It's about how
it _wasn't_ , and how it is _now_ , and how we need to "get back to the good
old days". There's no question that selling out for profit is "uncool", but
that isn't the central point of the article.

~~~
atdt
I basically agree: the article loses a lot of credibility making Heroic Age /
Iron Age comparisons, and I think you & others are right to call them out. But
I do think there are things that are uniquely worrying about the present
moment. IBM has a lot of skeletons in its closet, but for many years one of
its biggest clients (perhaps the biggest -- does anyone know?) was the US
government, which made IBM at least minimally responsive to public needs. IBM
was paid very handsomly by government clients to keep the US in the lead in
science and technology, and that meant that a lot of people at IBM had the
necessary leisure and latitude to think about some serious problems, some of
whom went on to win the Turing prize and invent things like relational
databases.

I don't think these people were smarter or more virtuous than us. (The
comparison is specious on many levels, but bear with me.) I simply think that
things were set up in such a way that it was possible for them to follow their
natural creative and intellectual impulses and in so doing gain a measure of
social respectability and pride that we all basically crave.

I think the startup world is different. The shoestring budget and (even more
critically) the highly compressed timeframe in which startups operate create
powerful incentives to take up easy problems that could be monetized quickly.
I'm struck by how much of the advice that is offered to young people here
amounts to something like, "stop thinking so god damn much and build a
business." That seems so toxic! It creates an atmosphere of scorn toward big
ideas and impatience with moral and intellectual reflection, with lasting
consequences on the life-choices people make. I suspect a lot of young men and
women internalize this ideology and develop a real sense of shame about being
thoughtful or conscientious.

I'm not suggesting we all apply for a job at Big Blue. There are a great many
wonderful things about the present moment, chief among them the enormously
expanded access to creative computational tools and its concomitant, the
wonderful increase in the geographical/cultural spread of creative work with
technology. But there are also some very worrying trends, and I think we ought
to confront them.

~~~
Groxx
If you're going to argue morals though, why ignore the morality of working for
Big Blue while they have (and continue to create) so many skeletons? By
working for them, you are _actively encouraging_ that behavior.

Is the ability to do research worth it, when doing so creates a world you're
ashamed of? If anything, it seems more like a form of escapism - retreat into
the world of research and theory and creativity, and ignore the consequences
(helping a giant, where giants are responsible for the crushing speed
necessary to grow past obscurity). Where does _that_ fall on the moral line?

------
TY
TL:DR:

Paul mourns

 _" a not-too-distant past where technology entrepreneurs created things to
make the world a better or more interesting place, not just because they
wanted to make a billion dollars."_

And this is in the past because:

 _"To make money — real money — at this game you have to attract millions, or
tens of millions, of users. And when you’re dealing with those kinds of
numbers, it’s literally impossible not to treat your users as pieces of data.
It’s ironic, but depressingly unsurprising, that web 2.0 is using faux
socialization and democratization to create a world where everyone is reduced
to a number on a spreadsheet."_

And finally:

 _"In the final analysis, a billion dollars isn’t actually all that cool.
What’s cool is keeping your soul, whatever the financial cost."_

Sometimes Paul has an interesting insight, but it's buried so deep in multiple
layers of ranting that it's impossible to get there without a significant
amount of willpower and spare time.

Please feel free to insert the "short letter" quote here...

EDIT: and please do feel free to add a comment why you are downvoting my
comment.

~~~
cageface
The term "rant" is so wildly overused lately that it's lost virtually all
meaning. Whether you agree with it or not, this is an _argument_ , not a rant.

~~~
Groxx
What's the argument they're making? And even if there is one, it's lost in the
"the past rules, the present sucks, and the future will suck more" that
permeates every sentence. Heck, arguably, _every_ rant has an argument -
_having_ one doesn't make it not-a-rant.

edit: I'm actually curious what you think it is, I don't see one aside from
"don't lose your soul" - but that's not an argument. That's advice. Who, or
what, are they arguing against, and what is their counter-argument?

~~~
cageface
Really? Is this so hard? The argument in a nutshell: technology is wonderful
but the initial promise of "web 2.0" has encouraged corporate greed and
unethical behavior instead of empowering users as many of us had hoped.
Specific recent cases of this phenomenon were cited in support of the
argument.

Help yourself to some rants here:
[http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classicrants/classi...](http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classicrants/classicrants.html)

~~~
Groxx
So they're arguing against a straw-man? They're _extremely_ naive if actually
believe that money _wasn't_ a goal for others while they had un-sustainably
idealized hopes. And they're forgetting the history of _all_ technology. Bow
and arrows - great for hunting! Great for war! Atomic energy - great for
power! Great for powerful explosions! _Electric lights_ \- great for reading
at night! Great for keeping people working through the night! Factories -
great for improving everyone's quality of life! Great for reducing large
portions of the population to near slavery to their jobs!

It's "guns don't kill people, people kill people" all over again. You're a
_fool_ if you think something won't be corrupted by some, and equally foolish
if you think _everyone_ is corrupted. And if Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and
4chan aren't "web-2.0 social-empowerment", I'm not sure what is.

~~~
cageface
Congratulations! You've now presented a counter-argument.

~~~
Groxx
Sweet! That was easy. Look out, Internet, here I come! I'm sure some of you
out there are wrong IMO, and you _must be told!_

Maybe I'm just more irked than I should be at people who have rose-tinted
glasses on (and they certainly do. to what degree is debatable, I'll leave it
at that here). But I've encountered a number of people who seem not to, and
they typically have _incredible_ drive to mold the world into what they want,
and rejoice in the changes they've lived through. They're almost universally
fascinating, happy, energetic people. But maybe their glasses are in fact too
blue(?)-tinted.

Still, I'd choose that over growing bitter and immobile.

~~~
cageface
FWIW I agree that "web 2.0" has brought a lot of good along with the bad. I'd
be very sad if rd.io, gmail, boomkat and netflix went away.

------
murz
"We take it for granted now that the most popular online publications rely on
search engine traffic for their survival."

"..blindly approve any headline that name-checks a trending topic or two."

"..we are reminded of the grimy truth: making money with online content is a
question of attracting millions of eyeballs, whatever the moral cost."

I can't believe I just read that on TechCrunch.

~~~
jamesteow
Talk about being in a glass house...

~~~
panacea
I encourage introspection. Even laced with irony.

------
Groxx
> _Worse than that, I’m nostalgic._

Good lord. He _says_ it, but I don't think he _knows_ it. Those glasses aren't
just rose _tinted_ , he's looking _straight into the flower_ and believing
he's looking at the world in the past.

If he'd been born ±X years ago, he'd be saying the same thing about 32+X years
ago. It doesn't mean the world's going to shit and all you people suck except
the ones that don't, it means you've discovered something crappy about the
world you didn't realize before, _and you've failed to apply it to the past_.
Just because you didn't notice it before doesn't mean it didn't _exist_
before. Jeez, if you're going to have an epiphany, go all the way with it;
otherwise it's worthless.

~~~
jblow
I think it actually is different now.

When I was in college (1989-1993), people did CS stuff because they thought
computers were cool and could do things that were kind of amazing. Some were
more visionary than others, of course. There was a vague idea that you could
make a lot of money doing it, but it wasn't why one did things.

Now it seems the opposite of that. Especially here. Everyone is all startup,
startup, startup. Honestly it makes me feel a bit ill, because there is very
little talk of why one might do things and what is ultimately important.

I do think the support network built up by YC is great, and it is really
exciting to see that young people just out of school can find support to go
and do something new and interesting. But I think the actual projects coming
out of this process are usually kind of bankrupt when it comes to things that
I value.

I went to YC Demo Day a year ago with the intention to definitely invest, but
I got so disheartened by the projects being presented that I never ended up
investing anything. (Actually I wanted to write a check to Leftronic but they
never returned my email.)

~~~
Groxx
I had a different response written, before I decided to start over due to a
realization.

The problem is that your (and the OP's) social circles have changed, and you
haven't sought out new ones. For some reason, you expected [x], _as it existed
at [time y]_ , to stay the way it was, for all time.

Change happens. Expecting otherwise is foolish in the _extreme_. What is
around you has changed, and has changed you, and you haven't sought out
something better, so you blame your surroundings.

You went to YC Demo Day - why didn't you go somewhere else? Why did you wait
for _them_ to come to you, at an extremely famous conference no less? If you
want to re-experience the good old days, _find_ the ones who share your ideals
- you had to do that in the past. That's how YC started (I'm idealizing it, to
serve as an example - I don't know the facts). People didn't simply show up
and beg to do something good the day PG was born, they had to be _found_ , the
culture had to be _grown_ , until it grew into the behemoth it is now and
started attracting _all_ kinds.

 _Your surroundings have changed_ , why haven't you changed your surroundings?
You had to do that to get to the good old days, why aren't you still? Or did
you simply coast into a seemingly-ideal world, and are now forgetting /
ignoring that your colleagues (and slightly earlier) essentially _created_ the
dot-com boom? Were their intentions really so pure?

If the culture you entered into is what you wanted, but you don't want to do
the work necessary to continually re-create it, why are you surprised that you
can't find it now? Think about all the time and effort that went into creating
it prior to your entry - if _you_ aren't exerting similar effort, why are you
blaming others that it changed? If the YC-of-old is what you want, why are you
going to the YC-of-now, and not working to create what you want? That kind of
risk and effort went into creating it in the first place, if people aren't
willing to do so _it will not happen_.

And _that_ has not changed. And more people than ever are putting in that
effort, by sheer virtue of an increase in raw quantity. That you have drifted
away from that world doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

~~~
jblow
And then I guess the question is, if I avoid stuff like this, why am I posting
on Hacker News? I guess the answer is that Hacker News used to be more in the
vein of things I liked, but recently is too full of "be a man and launch your
me-too web service" kinds of things. To which you might say I should stop
reading this site, and to that I would likely agree.

------
rguzman
Arguing against the supposed behaviors of a "current breed of silicon valley
wunderkinds" seems, at best, like a straw man. Do Paul Carr or Sara Lacy
really know founders and their companies that well? Pieces like this make my
blood boil a little bit -- Carr, Lacy, and the like profit from being the
peanut-gallery for the "wunderkids" while taking cheap shots against them
without complete information. So much for basic human decency.

~~~
jcc80
The point was that he doesn't need to know the founders and companies that
well - asking the woman to take down her blog post or change it was a sleezy
move.

Carr is saying that they could be awesome people but that they clearly lost
their way here. Unless you think the woman is a complete liar...which I for
one - with incomplete information, do not.

~~~
rguzman
> The point was that he doesn't need to know the founders and companies that
> well - asking the woman to take down her blog post or change it was a sleezy
> move.

My point is that he does not have complete information about the situation.
Neither do I. Neither do you.

I don't really get why airbnb is on trial here. Something very unfortunate
happened. They might've made a PR blunder. Maybe they could have a system with
more emphasis on security, probably at the expense of volume. Whatever... it
is their company, it makes us hosts good money and us travelers have better
experiences. Nobody is obligated to use airbnb. We the users are not the
victims of startup founders, like Carr dramatizes in the post, we're just
users. We use the services because we derive more value from them than they
cost. There is no "social contract" between founders and users.

~~~
jcc80
Personally, I do not need "complete information" - whatever that is. I doubt I
could express another opinion again if that was the standard.

Airbnb is on trial, I think, because people think they acted like jerks in
trying to get someone to be quiet. Internet folk generally do not like people
who try to silence others.

Regarding their actual obligations - as far as I'm concerned and legally, the
risk is on the host. Of course, for their own benefit it'd probably be a good
idea to help her out.

------
trotsky
It's a rather compelling monologue until you realize it's published at Tech
Crunch, a division of AOL that demonstrates much of the same behavior that
AOL's Huff Post does, is run by a wanna-be Angel / VC, and regularly shills
for vacuous startups who happen to have met the right TC writer over drinks.

Sure, there are problems in SV tech - and there always will be when people are
making a lot of money. But when your paper is for the most part happy in a co-
dependent relationship with all of this and only cries foul when your editor
gets his feathers ruffled by someone like Paul Graham disputing their
reporting - you're not doing any of us any particular favors.

~~~
domador
And yet the author chides the Huffington Post itself. It's harder to cry out
"hypocrisy!" in this case. (I don't know to what degree Paul Carr would
represent TechCrunch in general. At the very least Mr. Carr is not a corporate
cog--or so I hope.)

------
jjmaxwell4
What about all of the great things that AirBnB has done for people? Think of
the savings travellers have experienced, the revenue people have been able to
get for empty apartments. On the scale of it, nearly all of AirBnB's users
benefit from the experience.

So while the founders have made millions and millions of dollars, society in
general has also greatly benefited from the service. That's how most
industries work; the people who use the service win, as does the company.
Value is added.

Its horrible that this person's house got ransacked, and maybe the founders
handled it poorly, but on the whole they have created a great service that
makes "the world a better or more interesting place".

------
temphn
For those just tuning in, Paul Carr has been bashing AirBnB since last summer:

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/25/fawlty-logic/>

And has a vested interest in their failure:

    
    
      Disclosure: I like hotels a lot – and I’ve spent much of my 
      life in them. Both of my parents are career-long hoteliers, 
      first managing large corporate chain units and now owning 
      their own hotel in the UK.
    

And now he's accusing these poor guys of "losing their souls". This whole
internet lynch mob thing is scary. Let's remember that they didn't trash the
apartment, they just set up a CRUD site with a good UI that got really
popular. How exactly are they more responsible than Faith Clifton, the
criminal who ransacked the apartment and who they helped SFPD arrest?

Seriously, some extreme hyperbole here.

~~~
carbonica
> And now he's accusing these poor guys of "losing their souls".

When you call up the victim and ask them to close down their blog because or
restrict access because you don't want it to affect your round of funding,
you're not "poor guys" anymore. When you ask her to add some positive spin to
the story when there's no positive spin to be had, you're not an innocent
bystander anymore.

Nobody's saying the founders are responsible for the damage, they're saying
the way the founders treated the victim is deplorable.

~~~
tptacek
You have no idea what happened on whatever call you're thinking of. You have
no idea what's been offered to the victim. You have no idea, basically,
period. But you're OK passing judgement on them. Good to know.

What's the win to a comment like this? Even if you're eventually shown to be
right --- and that's still an if --- why go out on the limb at all?

~~~
carbonica
I see no reason to doubt what EJ has said so far. AirBnB/pg have made several
conflicting statements, called reporters liars for repeating official
statements, and in general, proven to be less consistent/trustworthy than
"EJ", which considering her anonymous status, really says something.

The only reason I can see to doubt EJ's story is if you're in the "this is a
conspiracy against AirBnB" camp.

~~~
temphn
You don't have to believe in a conspiracy. You just have to believe that there
are some extremely difficult customers out there.

Given that AirBnB offered her money and she isn't picking it up or returning
their calls, but _is_ talking to reporters, the most plausible explanation is
that she's looking to get a huge payday in a lawsuit.

She didn't have to think of the idea herself. A lawyer or family member may
have put the thought in her head. "This is a billion dollar company, you
know!"

Do you really think she's not going to go for big dollars in a lawsuit at this
point?

~~~
carbonica
> Given that AirBnB offered her money

There's been conflicting reports about this. Airbnb told TechCrunch - on the
record - that they wouldn't pay for anything, that they didn't want to set a
precedent.

> she isn't picking it up or returning their calls

She says that they stopped calling her after she posted the blog, except to
beg her to take it down and suggest she pretend everything is all better.

> _is_ talking to reporters

She's posted two blog posts - the first one reporting the incident, and
another a month later. That's not "talking to reporters." Your framing is
disingenuous at best.

> Do you really think she's not going to go for big dollars in a lawsuit at
> this point?

I don't think that a lawsuit would do well considering she said _several
times_ in her initial blog post that AirBnB is not at all to blame for her
experience and that she held a significant amount of responsibility.

Here's where you're taking it: she's not the victim, AirBnB is the victim.
She's the "extremely difficult customer," or as Robert Scoble put it, "batshit
crazy" and a "drama queen." She's not a victim, she's just a bitch. Right. I
don't like demonizing victims, but I know in the male-dominated tech world
this kind of framing is an easy sell.

~~~
ThomPete
I think the basic point is that you are talking as if there is certainty
around your claims when there isn't.

~~~
carbonica
Nothing she's said has been disputed by anyone. Why do people suspect she's
been dishonest if nobody even disputes anything she says?

~~~
llambda
Why do you infer she's being honest? That argument goes both ways;
problematically significant however is the fact that we don't have all the
facts therefore there's no use assuming she's lying or Airbnb is lying!

------
pvarangot
At least Carr is straightforward enough to get the get into the underlying
discussion, being in my opinion if current "web 2.0 OMG croudsourcing
community-building" technologies are really better for the people, or only
better for investors.

I'm amazed this point is raised so clearly by a rather trollish and old
fashioned media outlet as TC, and mostly avoided by most HN users, who seem
more concerned about discussing PR and fingerpointing.

------
tholex
Ok. I don't comment on Hacker News much, but this article sent me reeling.
<rant> The sheer hypocrisy in this thing is unbelievable. First of all,
TechCrunch has already stated their opinion on AirBnB, and even published
follow-ups attacking the pro-AirBnB counterarguments. Fine. You don't like
them. We get it, there have been like 10 posts including the words "scandal",
"fiasco", and "the plot thickens", despite an almost total lack of actual
information. Yeah, it's a shitty situation so let the police, EJ, and AirBnB
work it out. You think they won't have a post-mortem? Please.

This article, however, kills me. He bashes Huffington Post's decision solely
on the title. With a title like "You know what's not cool? A Billion Dollars.
You know what's cool? Basic human decency", TC is playing the same game here.
Except they're even cheesier in their delivery.

The only other example of lack of "basic decency" presented in this article is
AirBnB, which anyone coming from HN could probably see a mile away. Same
quotes, same rhetoric. Could you possibly be caring about anything except
getting more eyeballs on your site? Please, go watch some Alexis Ohanian
talks. Make a good product. Engage people. Don't bash your own bread-and-
butter techniques like you're on some higher moral ground.

The AirBnB guys made a big product, and it's been super convenient to me.
They're reaching the point where their popularity leads to difficulty in
control and direction. This just happens to be the same effect touched on in
that Amy Winehouse article. Hey TechCrunch? You are getting really bad at
journalism and your opinions are nothing but twitter fodder. </endrant>

------
keiferski
Not sure why this has turned into another airbnb discussion. It was only a few
paragraphs of the post, which was for the most part valid.

Attacking the author's background or interests is completely beyond the point,
and at some level, only supports his argument; nothing could be more petty.

------
tlrobinson
Oh please, TechCrunch _thrives_ on this kind of controversy.

------
zarify
I'm glad he led with the irony bit, considering the irony of someone on TC
spending a paragraph calling someone out on link bait headlines.

------
Joeri
This article misses the point. Technology is a tool, it's implication for
morality is not decided by the sort of technology we have, but how we use it.
This may sound weird from a software developer, but we don't need more
technology. As a species, we can solve all the problems in the world with the
technology we have today. We just collectively refuse to.

When you hit your thumb with a hammer, you don't blame the hammer company, you
blame yourself. If facebook didn't improve social cooperation, it's not
facebook's fault, it's the facebook users' fault.

------
SeoxyS
I have very mixed feelings about this column. On the one hand, Paul Carr is a
brilliant writer and I'm a huge fan of his work. I also agree with him on a
lot of his argument.

On the other hand, I respect Paul Graham a lot more than I do Michael
Arrington. He loses me at this paragraph:

 _Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we also know for sure that investors in the
company leaned on publications like TechCrunch to stop reporting the story.
Their ludicrous wail of protest: AIRBNB IS RUN BY NICE GUYS! IT’S NOT FAIR TO
CALL THEM OUT WHEN THEY SCREW UP!_

~~~
nl
_Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we also know for sure that investors in the
company leaned on publications like TechCrunch to stop reporting the story.
Their ludicrous wail of protest: AIRBNB IS RUN BY NICE GUYS! IT’S NOT FAIR TO
CALL THEM OUT WHEN THEY SCREW UP!_

How does that lose you? By all accounts that is pretty much what has occurred:
AirBNB staff have contacted both EJ and TechCrunch asking them to go easy on
the coverage. No one denies that, right?

~~~
SeoxyS
Maybe I have a lingering hope that Airbnb staff couldn't possibly be _that_
stupid…

------
lawnchair_larry
It's true, Craig Newmark is definitely the coolest founder.

------
ajj
Come on folks, how is all this half-information bashing better than trial by
media?

We don't know exactly what happened. There are various incentives for both
parties to say things that may / may not have happened. AirBnB needs to be
careful to make sure they are not the target of a lawsuit. The conversation
that they had with EJ can be misrepresented. Or they may even be worse than
what this shows.

Who knows? Why are we, a bunch who would normally need citations to believe
that humans need water to survive, engaging in such ludicrous trial-by-media
with hardly any validated information?

------
Hyena
This all seems pretty blown out of proportion. EJ rented her house to a
stranger. That stranger trashed the house and robbed her. The listing service
botched their PR badly and only got around to doing the right thing after some
missteps. This was all pretty inevitable and unfortunate.

How is this not _the_ story of every corporate disaster? How are we switching
from "a firm is a way to turn very smart people into a very dumb organization"
to "these people are soulless"?

------
sorbus
"Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we also know for sure that investors in the
company leaned on publications like TechCrunch to stop reporting the story."

How the hell is he getting that from the article linked there? It's a long
rant about PG posting something on HN claiming how the article it was a
comment on is inaccurate. In no way is that "investors ... lean[ing] on
publications ... to stop reporting the story."

------
da5e
Carr's phony sentimentality is exactly what ej didn't do. She wrote measured,
balanced prose, which was very convincing for me.

------
toisanji
this is getting quite old

------
Gatsky
On top of all this, as far as I can tell, Airbnb is not doing anything to help
the Somali famine. The cheapest listing they have in Kenya is $10 a night,
well beyond the scope of any of the thousands of refugees pouring out of war-
torn Somalia. I think we should criticize Airbnb for their lack of action in
Somalia.

Corporate 'ethics' is one of the greatest modern disasters. The most powerful
and wealthy people in society routinely crush individuals, wreak ecological
havok, sell harmful products, manipulate the law and just plain cheat, lie and
steal. By those standards, it doesn't seem that Airbnb has done anything
particularly unexpected.

------
Vivtek
I dunno - this is a pretty hysterical piece. Weren't there capitalist bastards
in the world before the Internet? I guess Standard Oil isn't a concept any
more.

------
JSig
For me, this whole situation comes down to personal responsibility. It was
EJ's decision to let a stranger stay in her home. No one made her do this.
While it is unfortunate that this happened to her, she should have realized
the risk. If others don't like the risk/reward they should not use the
service.

If AirBnb were to bail her out, it would send signal that any future/past
cases like this would be met with a similar reaction (hello US GOV!). I don't
think this is a road they want to go down.

EJ's problem is her own. AirBnb's problem existed long before EJ.

~~~
stonemetal
_If AirBnb were to bail her out, it would set a send signal that any
future/past cases like this would be met with a similar reaction (hello US
GOV!). I don't think this is a road they want to go down._

in that vein:

If EJ were to bail them out(alter her blog as they requested), it would send a
signal that any future/past cases like this would be met with a similar
reaction(hello nuclear waste site!). I don't think this is a road she wants to
go down.

What happened to EJ was horrible but predictable. The fact that AirBnb has no
response plan for such a situation is amazing, like dynamite factory without a
ban on open flame or smoking while in the factory amazing.

------
Confusion
Paul Carr fails at being a decent human being.

Three blocks down the street, someone's husband got killed a month ago and the
lone mother can't make ends meet with three children to take care of. Someone
elderly lost all her children, whom she counted on to take care of her in her
old day. Some fourteen year old orphan living on the streets just got raped.
They are all hungry and alone.

That's just down the street. In Somalia, children are dying of hunger by the
hundreds. In between those fates, there is plenty of suffering that's much,
much worse than some incident where someone with plenty of friends, funds,
food and a future had a bad experience.

Basically decent human beings put things in perspective and reserve judgment.
They try to support EJ by calling upon AirBnB to take certain actions and
lament it when that doesn't happen. What they don't do is make this into the
worlds current biggest problem and act as if those not taking their proposed
actions are minions of Satan himself. Someone disagrees with you on how to
handle this case: big deal. If you're so convinced you're right: strike a deal
with EJ to fund her trial costs and be repaired after she gets compensated.
Put your money where your mouth is and preferably instead of where your mouth
is currently. Basically decent human beings don't get their way by shouting
the loudest from a high profile website.

The people that trashed that house suck. Michael Arrington and Paul Carr suck
for their inflammatory and unconstructive reporting. AirBnB sucks for not
handling the situation more gracefully: for God's sake, hire someone
specialized in disaster mitigation. There's dozens of people out there that do
nothing else but resolve such cases. Throw a cool 150K in and be done with it.
Your worst mistake is trying to handle this personally.

But all of this really should not be so important to the vast majority of us
that the top stories for the past few days have been about this case. A
reasoned analysis of the various ways in which AirBnB could (have) handle(d)
this situation and the ethical and business consequences of those ways, that's
something that would be interesting. Mud slinging and shouting matches aren't,
even if some reasonable arguments are being shouted all ways.

------
blackboxxx
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul? --Mark 8:36

------
kyro
A nice read if you've got some extra time to spend on the toilet. If you get
sick of Angry Birds, of course.

------
bmac27
I don't understand the singling out of Web 2.0 as some kind of outlier in the
history of capitalist enterprise. As if the Rothchilds & Morgans of the world
were saintly characters who didn't see their customers the same way while they
were coercing government entities to tip the scales in their favor.

The rest of the piece was fine, if not another instance of piling on. But I
couldn't get over that initial thought.

~~~
potatolicious
Nobody claimed that the Rothschilds and the Morgans were saints - but the
undercurrent that has powered the technology revolution (and the way the
industry likes to be portrayed in the media) is that of educated people,
wielding the powers of science and technology for the betterment of lives.

In other words, these technological wunderkinds were supposed to be _better_
than the robber barons of old - a new breed of entrepreneur... getting rich
and making the world better while they're at it.

This attitude is reflected in the industry's shunning of traditional business
culture, the constant focus on passion (that even bureaucratic giants like
Intel are embracing as a public persona)

Web 2.0 has mostly failed that test, so far, IMO. I'm inclined to side with
the author. I'll buy that Facebook has revolutionized socialization and
communication... but who else is willing to step up to the "dramatically
disrupted and made better" plate?

Funnily enough, I see AirBNB as one of the _better_ startups to come out of
this bubble - they tapped into enormous unrealized demand (for both hosts and
travelers) in an innovative way, put enormous pressure on the slow, lumbering,
and inefficient hotel industry... if anything AirBNB represents the startups
that the author is looking for.

My real complaint is the masses upon masses of "we're like X, with _social_!"
startups.

~~~
OstiaAntica
I don't even buy the Facebook argument. They just made a cleaner, consistent
MySpace.

~~~
veyron
Facebook managed to reach critical mass, which MySpace could never do.

------
nobnoobody
I have NO opinion or interest in this matter other than to sit back and watch
it all unfold. After everything pg/yc related just in the last 24-30 hours, I
just thought people would be interested in seeing pg's only response:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2826570> It was placed after the main
flurry of traffic on that post from what I could tell.

~~~
veyron
The only response that matters is the CEO's response. PG's response is, at the
end of the day, an investor's response. It will always be construed as an
investor's response

