
Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder - dabent
http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/27/airbnb-spam-allegations/
======
stillhatin
If asked to name the top three people I'd be most unlikely to work with, I'd
only be able to name one: Aaron Greenspan. I am so tired of the constant
stream of whining (on his blog, HN, twitter, quora, etc) about how everyone is
against him and everything is not fair. And now he's bad-mouthing more people,
all as part of his overall theme of whining about how Facecash is a brilliant
idea that _obviously_ can't get any traction because of the big bad unfair
regulators who don't get what he's trying to do.

Aaron, please, _please_ , for everyone's sake, find something more
constructive to do with your obviously impressive intelligence. This is just
sad.

~~~
blairbeckwith
I had never heard of the guy until today, and within about five minutes of
browsing his site and Google, I found the same thing.

He's just a child.

------
grellas
The theme of the original blog post upon which this article is based is that
"Silicon Valley criminals should be held to account for their actions" just as
those who are the focus of Occupy Wall Street's protestations should be. This
is, in essence, a political argument supported by the blog author's view that
an elite few control and dominate society and are able to abuse its laws in
order to promote their economic gain.

A few thoughts on this:

1\. The subject matter here concerns the idea that laws are selectively
enforced to favor a few elites and, whether one agrees with this or not, this
is really political subject matter that is not proper for HN.

2\. The "crime" allegedly being committed by Airbnb today rests solely on the
blog author's assertions that: (a) Airbnb and many other prominent tech
startups are handling money in ways that violate California's money
transmittal statutes and (b) that fact in turn violates federal laws that make
it a crime to commit such violations. While it is conceivable that the laws
mentioned _might_ some day be interpreted in this way, it is a huge stretch -
indeed, even a frivolous assertion - to say that Airbnb is committing "crimes"
simply by operating its business in accordance with its prescribed business
model. As matters now stand, however, this is only a layman's conclusion about
a complex body of laws - and one that is not supported by the actions or
interpretations of those charged with enforcing such laws. In this context,
there is no basis for calling anybody here "Silicon Valley criminals" unless
it is in a generalized political sense (e.g., the robber barons were "looters
and criminals") - that is, through use of the word "criminals" in a
hyperbolic, non-specific manner. This is really another way of saying that the
subject matter of the post was as much political as anything else.

3\. It is irresponsible for VentureBeat to take this underlying material and
concoct a headline stating that "allegations of past and present Internet
crime haunt Airbnb co-founder." The clear implication of this headline is that
there are serious allegations of criminal misconduct currently affecting this
particular individual and that is objectively false. No crimes of any kind
have been charged. No activity is being engaged in by this individual that has
even remotely raised concerns by the public authorities of criminal activity.
The relevant activities are said to be "criminal" based solely on a lay
interpretation of laws that is not supported by the relevant regulators, by
existing case law, or by any criminal enforcement actions of prosecutors. The
picture painted by the headline, then, is plainly misleading if not false.

4\. The factual background as recited by the blog author may be true or not.
Only the persons involved really know. Taken as a whole, the facts themselves
are here dwarfed by the problematic legal conclusions set forth as fact by
this piece. I would therefore call it a "hit piece" or unfair attack as
presented by VentureBeat. The blog author made an essentially political
argument in his piece; this follow-on piece, though, attempts to recast that
argument as legal fact about alleged crimes and this goes way over the line in
my judgment.

Anybody who thinks I am being unfair in so describing the VentureBeat piece
need only imagine like allegations being made about you simply because you ran
a successful Silicon Valley venture that handled money in some manner, whether
as payments or deposits or otherwise. If you don't mind being called a
"criminal" when there is no hint that you are doing anything at all to violate
current laws, then more power to you. For the rest of us, I think "unfair" is
a very understated way of describing it.

------
chubot
So he's right? Every response on this thread seems to be ad hominem. No one
seems to be defending AirBNB guys.

It is relevant because any online business necessarily has a lot of
information about its customers. Spamming is both illegal and immoral (free
riding on the commons), so I would choose not to give my business/info to
people with a known history of such activity.

~~~
badclient
Spamming is not illegal. That is the biggest lie out there, actually. You just
have to adhere to some specific requirements when sending unsolicited email.

Also, spamming may be against many company's TOS but that does not make it
illegal.

Go read the CAN-SPAM Act.

~~~
chubot
Whatever, that's splitting hairs and not relevant to the main point.

If someone is writing a program to send out unsolicited e-mails on behalf of
other parties, it's pretty unlikely that they're doing the due diligence. I
don't know what happened but I think it's funny that all the responses are
"Aaron Greenspan is a whiny loser".

Also, I don't read any company's TOS when deciding whether to do business with
them. Do you? I go by their reputation. If a company has a bad reputation then
it makes me less likely to do business with them.

~~~
badclient
_If a company has a bad reputation then it makes me less likely to do business
with them._

Except if I read a bad review about a company from someone who has a record of
bad experiences with companies, I do not take that person's review into
account and discard it as an outlier. Aaron Greenspan has a _pretty solid_
history of being that guy who has a problem with almost everyone of stature
that he has come to know.

------
badclient
Does anyone know what year this was in?

I was pretty active in the spam world in high school circa 2002-03. Of course
we all had nicknames so I wouldn't know. Learned much and glad to have moved
on from days of Dark Mailer and fighting "antis" :)

That aside, the bigger news is that Aaron Greenspan continues to a bitter man
and a constant dick. Grow a pair and build some shit of your own instead of
peddling gossip to valley blogs. Seriously.

------
Gaussian
An 18 year old would have to engage in some pretty dark stuff for me to indict
them later in life as a subpar founder, partner or person. Spamming and porn
don't even come close to qualifying.

~~~
daeken
When I was 15 or 16 (can't remember exactly), I ended up doing contract work
for an "Internet Marketing Firm" (read: spammer). I built a ridiculously
scalable email crawler and learned a whole lot in the process. I wouldn't do
it again -- I would rather not make money than assist spammers -- but at the
time it seemed like a good decision. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

~~~
dmix
Same here, I was 17, learning web dev at a small company and the founder had
me creating spam-blogs (splogs) back in 2004 when it was effective for gaming
SEO. I know better now as an adult.

------
jcampbell1
I have seen Aaron spam mailing lists for FaceCash. When I search his name in
Gmail, I see a few of gems like this:

"Aaron, this is not an appropriate posting. This is not a list for
advertising."

Pot meet kettle.

~~~
ers35
Aaron posted one day later claiming that the message was mistakenly sent to
the list:
[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.devices.blueonyx.user/6...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.devices.blueonyx.user/6810/match=)

Do you have another example of him spamming a mailing list?

~~~
jcampbell1
Yes, I have another:

"I realize this is blatant self-promotion, but hopefully it won't ruin
anyone's day...

In case anyone is interested, I've recently published a book that's pretty
directly related to PHP, as well as issues of programming, intellectual
property, and computer security and privacy. It's called "Authoritas:... "

And now I think Aaron also uses sock puppets.

------
jwingy
I'm not sure what this will do for the AirBnB founder's reputation, but the
pattern of incessant whining from Greenspan certainly has lowered my opinion
of him.

------
microarchitect
I fail to see how ad hominen attacks on Greenspan are adding to the
discussion. If you feel that he's whining too much, downvote and move on.

Onto the article itself, I find it concerning that some people can break the
law and get away with it while others can't.

~~~
badclient
I find it appalling that you have reached a conclusion that a law was broken
based almost entirely on the words of a bitter gossip peddler.

What law was broken? You do understand that merely sending spam isn't illegal,
right? Please read the CAN-SPAM Act for yourself.

------
redthrowaway
>Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom
hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per
week

At _millions per week_ , that would make him just slightly less effective than
a 12 year old Chinese skiddie. Given that there are 604800 seconds in a week,
even 100M emails is just over 150/s. Not much of an ROI for "custom hardware
and software".

~~~
alsocasey
When I read custom hardware within the same line as 18 year old I assumed it
should be read as "assembled his own PC".

~~~
redthrowaway
The same guy saying that, however, is now co-founder of FaceCash. You'd think
he would know better.

~~~
pyre
I don't think that was a direct quote.

------
sireat
While it is easy to focus on the messenger being annoying, his message does
have a reputable citation(found on his blog):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20030512215305/http://www.spamhau...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030512215305/http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/spammers.lasso?-database=spammers.db&-layout=detail&-response=roksodetail.lasso&recno=1145&-clientusername=guest&-clientpassword=guest&-search)

Mind you, innocent or well meaning persons can end up on Spamhaus list, but
this does not seem to be the case here.

All it means is that Airbnb quite likely knew about the Craigslist spamming
done by their affiliates. Legally they seem to be in the clear, but morally is
another matter.

------
forensic
People insulting Aaron Greenspan just don't understand him.

If you want to understand him, just imagine a very sensitive precocious child
raised on a rigid deontological morality by highly rigid and argumentative
parents. This values system is characterized by a rigid logic that mainly
focuses on things that are disallowed. For instance, lying is disallowed,
betrayal is disallowed, and perfect obedience to official rules and legitimate
authority is seen as the highest life virtue. The legitimacy of the authority
though is dependent on the attempt of the authority to enact fair rules.

Aaron, as a precocious and sensitive boy who was mature for his age and
learned logical reasoning early, absorbed his moral lessons very well and set
them up as a set of rigid unbendae rules in his psyche.

When this kind of compex, highly integrated, high integrity, rigid value
system encounters reality it finds outrage absolutely everywhere because the
truth is that most authorities are quite incompetent and very far from fair.
The hackers who are willing to break the rules have an unfair advantage over
Aaron, who is literally incapable of breaking the rules due to his early
programming. To rectify this intolerable unfairness he must demonstrate how
the authorities are not properly punishing the rule breakers and t is hoped
that this will ameliorate the unfairness.

I have a lot of sympathy for Aaron. He is really a victim of his short sighted
parents who deeply indoctrinated him with this ideology that puts him at a
major disadvantage in the modern day. It's not a simple thing to change or
break this ideology even if he wanted to, because there are tremendous anxiety
barriers stopping him from breaking any rules. He would feel extremely guilty
and worried if he used patently selfish intentions and engaged in borderline
unethical behaviour like spamming porn for money.

Aaron did everything right. He never lied, never stole, never even used
deception or committed a lie of omission. He always shared with others and
always engaged brotherly love. He had plenty of chances to betray people's
trust for profit and did not take them. He worked hard and long with perfect
integrity - moral perfection. And what did he get for it? Nothing. Zuck got 4
billion and his name in the history books for lying, cheating, breaking the
rules. That could have been aaron, but Aaron was too morally perfect. It's
just not fair!! And it's all the fault of Authority for failing to punish
those who broke the rules.

Aaron - society is not to blame for rewarding cheaters. Your parents are to
blame for giving you a crippling moral compass that is out of touch with
reality.

~~~
abbasmehdi
Wow! This is really low. Is this the best counter argument to his accusations?

~~~
forensic
It's not a counter argument. I strongly believe Aaron is telling the truth
about the porn spamming. However I also believe it does not make the
perpetrator a bad cofounder.

~~~
abbasmehdi
_I strongly believe Aaron is telling the truth about the porn spamming_

So you agree with Aaron.

 _However I also believe it does not make the perpetrator a bad cofounder._

And disagree with the journalist's image of the airBnB cofounder.

And you make this point by attacking the person you agree with? Makes no
sense.

~~~
forensic
Read closer. It's not an attack. It's an analysis. I have affection for both
Aaron and Nathan. Things are not so black and white.

~~~
abbasmehdi
It's cyber bullying. Don't take my word for it, look it up.

~~~
forensic
Writing a fact based analysis of the personality of a public figure is not
bullying. I have a lot of respect for Aaron both personally and
professionally. In fact I used the words "moral perfection" to describe him.

------
rick888
Spamming isn't illegal. In fact, it can teach you a lot about marketing. I'm
actually impressed than an 18 year old could make enough with it to pay for
school.

~~~
simonbrown
It's illegal in quite a lot of countries.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam_legislation_by_coun...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam_legislation_by_country)

~~~
badclient
How do you tell that it is categorically illegal to send unsolicited emails of
any type?

Of course, you realize that could, at an extreme, mean that you cannot send a
personal email to someone else you have previously not corresponded with.

Spamming refers to sending unsolicited email. Sending unsolicited emails isn't
illegal; sending unsolicited emails that do not adhere to the law is illegal
in America.

~~~
GertG
In Belgium it is indeed illegal to send unsolicited mails, IF it is sent for
publicity reasons. The law includes a definition of publicity, the gist of
which is "promoting goods, services or a company". It's the sender's task to
prove that promotional mail was solicited.

------
illumen
Controversy. It is definitely a tried and true publicity method. Whenever
someone creates some, I sing it like the prince song and then move on with my
life.

------
proofpeer
What I found more interesting than these allegations was the link to the angel
investor email about the 21.5 million cashout by the airbnb founders.

------
PeterStan
Aaron Greenspan hates people and loves to whine. That's his whole thing.

~~~
dmboyd
It's like a variation of "fight or flight" instinct. You encounter a boundary
and you either "Push through and solve it" or "throw a tantrum and blame other
people".

------
zackattack
Aaron Greenspan, hater extraordinaire.

~~~
martey
I am not sure that this comment adds anything to the discussion. You can argue
that Blecharczyk is reformed, that AirBnB is not currently spamming people, or
even that the only reason he is bringing this up now is to generate interest
in his anti-Money Transmission Act crusade. Insulting him does not explain why
he might be wrong.

Disclosure: I knew Greenspan in college, but I wasn't important enough to be
included in his book Authoritas. Sigh.

~~~
alsocasey
I doubt the personal ethics of founders sway investors much (if at all), but
perhaps the world would be a better place if they did.

Either way, setting up a custom hardware/software stack to spam/peddle
pornography as an 18 year old freshman is a pretty impressive feat of
ingenuity, but it reflects poor judgement - by an 18 year old (whodathunkit!)
Who knows what guy is like now. He might be a saint. Probably not though.

~~~
prodigal_erik
> Who knows what guy is like now

When a spammer gets caught attacking the commons yet again via a new company's
"contractors" who just happen not to have been prosecuted or sued or even
identified, it's pretty obvious he is the creature he always was.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603844>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2610145>

~~~
clukezic
The fact that people assume Airbnb was automating spam is entirely false.

At one point in our past we did have a small team of remote sales people that
we contracted to acquire listings through person-to-person sales, but their
efforts were largely ineffective. To set the record straight this process was
never automated as purported. Our sales team emailed listings on Craigslist
one-by-one and targeted only listings that they thought would be a good fit
for our marketplace. At times they did contact people who did not want to be
solicited to. However when alerted to these actions we ensured that they
stopped immediately.

~~~
earl
Yeah, it's just a really weird coincidence that someone who made a couple
hundred thousand dollars spamming in college later used the same techniques in
a new business? Well, maybe, but you're going to need to do better than say
cross my heart and pinky swear.

Also, stop being a bullshit artist. Let me rewrite your second paragraph for
you in a truthful fashion: "Yeah, we spammed people. Our sales team went
through craigslist and emailed listings we wanted to poach, even if they'd
said they didn't want to receive such emails. We're those assholes. But
please, let me write about this in the passive tense and distance ourselves
from it. What I'd really like is for none of you to hold our admitted conduct
against us because, well, that would be really convenient. For us, that is.
Further, please don't judge our current conduct by our past actions because,
well, again, way more convenient if we can just say random external
contractors <bullshit bullshit bullshit> and start over with a blank slate."

~~~
pyre

      > Well, maybe, but you're going to need to do
      > better than say cross my heart and pinky swear.
    

Are you for real? Is he supposed to personally show up at your house to sign a
contract in blood now because J Random Internet User isn't convinced?

------
rudiger
Aaron Greenspan's constant attacks of other people read like the theories of a
deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of
other people. In other words, complete nonsense.

~~~
rhizome
That's a hell of a reach toward anti-Semitism.

