
On Safety: A Word From Airbnb - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbnb/
======
latch
There continues to be a major point of conflict between EJ's concerns and
AirBnB's position. In fact, the point of conflict is actually within AirBnB's
safety policies itself:

1 - Private messaging that lets users learn about each other prior to booking,
without revealing private information

2 - Reservation system that allows hosts to accept or decline guests, giving
them complete control over who books their space

I'm sorry, but that just isn't consistent - which is, I believe, a major point
EJ is trying to get across.

How can you have "complete control over who books [your] space" while not
"revealing private information." It's so blatantly inconsistent that it just
comes out sounding like marketing drivel.

The fundamental issue, as I see it, is that as long as private information is
withheld, you not only have very limited control, it also simply isn't safe.

What are AirBnB's reasons for blocking the exchange of private information? Is
it their form for DRM? Or is there really a good reason that isn't about
protecting AirBnB's revenue stream?

~~~
trjordan
Before booking, AirBnB does not allow you swap personal information, primarily
so you can't go outside their system to make your arrangements. There are both
financial and community-building reasons for this.

Once the payment has been made (well before the guest arrives), the host gets
access to all of the private information of the guest. I believe they could
chose to rescind the offer of hospitality at this point -- they haven't
received the money, so if they are uncomfortable with the individual, they can
still do something about it.

I know this is an emotional issue, but their response was hardly "blantantly
inconsistent ... marketing drivel."

~~~
latch
Can you elaborate though on the exact timing of the exchange? EJ's story makes
it sound insufficient:

"Thus by the time this reservation was confirmed and I was given Dj’s email
address and phone number, I was on a plane heading East, and he/she was armed
with my welcoming instructions on where to pick up the keys to my apartment."

For the rest of it, I'm not saying that the response is inconsistent. I'm
saying that keeping information private is inconsistent with safety (which is
what EJ's argument was). This is especially true (and concerning) when they
say that keeping information private is a safety feature, but it seems
everyone thinks its a driven by financial motivation.

It's slightly frustrating when someone says "we do this for safety", but the
reality is they do it for money and it reduces safety.

~~~
untog
_Can you elaborate though on the exact timing of the exchange? EJ's story
makes it sound insufficient:_

I used to work for an AirBnb clone wannabe, so I can't speak for the exact
site itself, but the way ours operated was that you could cancel the booking
at any point after it was confirmed- if you do it very shortly before arrival
there were financial penalties to doing so.

Of course, if someone sends through a booking for tomorrow, or tonight, you're
unlikely to have the time to sufficiently vet them. Perhaps people should be
able to say "I need [x] days notice for bookings".

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
At least on AirBNB you can always decline a (potential) booking, so if you
always want [x] days, you can simply always decline if the booking is that
soon.

------
spolsky
I can't stop thinking that this was a top-secret hit job by some shady
character working for the hotel industry looking to derail AirBnB's next fund-
raising round. Heck, if Nixon could do it, why couldn't The American Hotel &
Lodging Association?

So my question to you is: am I _quite_ paranoid or merely _rather_ paranoid?

~~~
Vivtek
Whatever you are, I'm the same, because it's the second thing I thought of.

But the first thing was that there are a lot of privileged young people out
there whose friends might very well have thought a week of utter abandonment
and breaking _every_ possible rule would be the height of fun. And yeah, I can
easily see that privileged young asshole finding it the height of humor to
email the owner every now and then saying how nice the place was - more than
likely laughing at how nice the owner actually found the place, if you see
what I mean.

I've been a landlord. There is nothing, and I mean nothing at all, that will
destroy your faith in humanity more quickly. Seriously. Even though the
majority of tenants are perfectly wonderful people, and even though I only had
a grand total of six tenants before giving it up as a bad idea, there were
some that were just ... well. It's really like a bad dream.

This experience was worse than any of mine, and it was compressed into a
single frenetic week of probable partying, but it's the same genre as one
particular tenant I'm thinking of. She meant well. Her friends did not. And in
the end, I was the one left with the holes punched in the wall, with the dryer
stolen, with the garden shed piled to the roof with months-old garbage, with a
kitchen floor that could easily have been a bus station, with evidence of a
three-inch flood of water from the washing machine, with fleas in the carpet
and holes in the yard after she'd signed a clear no-pets clause. (A friend and
neighbor of ours owns several apartments in the neighborhood. One of the
tenants she evicted had stabbed the refrigerator multiple times. Apparently on
a lark.)

So even though it's more fun to imagine it as a conspiracy, I'm afraid the
gritty reality is that there are people out there who just don't give a shit
about who suffers from their actions, and who think it's fun to damage things.

~~~
X-Istence
I was recently talking to the home owner for the property I am renting and
they told me that out of everyone they are renting to I along with my room
mates are the most patient and most caring and following up than any of their
other tenants. I actually care about the property, I talk to them when
something happens, I follow up and make sure work gets done that is supposed
to be done.

The homeowner was telling me about one of their tenants who they are currently
attempting to evict, would call up and leave a voicemail and just about 5
minutes later would send an angry email and not even 20 minutes later have a
lawyer call them regarding a simple issue (screen door broke, house has AC and
perfectly good functioning windows). When they last went by the place it was
packed full of all kinds of crap (à la hoarders).

~~~
Vivtek
Oh, yeah, my experience as a landlord makes me a fantastic tenant. Last place
I rented before buying the current house, I was working on fixing the roof in
my spare time - mostly because I really like to be fixing houses in my spare
time anyway and, as we were in Puerto Rico, the roof was concrete and thus a
really new and fun experience.

All it takes is just a teeny bit of responsibility. Landlording somehow
filters out some of the people who really have _none_ and drags them through
your life.

~~~
singular
I've heard similar horror stories from friends who rent places out, however it
does cut both ways - for myself, despite going absolutely out of my way to be
a good tenant, I have had landlords try to rip me off (several times), scream
at me because I dared remind them that it'd been > 6 weeks since I'd asked
them to look at the faulty gas boiler (!), etc.

I think some landlords need to learn to appreciate good tenants as well as to
be wary of the bad ones.

Note: I don't mean to imply you, or even _most_ landlords are like this, it's
just that there are some out there and they need to learn how to behave
decently just as such tenants do too...

~~~
Vivtek
Oh, absolutely. But remember - a lot of landlords aren't very good at it. God
knows I wasn't. If they don't have a property manager, your boiler being out
is just one more thing they have to remember, and can't, because they're just
trying to make a little extra cash on a house they maybe can't sell - or
somebody told them rental management is easy, when it's not. They may be
working a regular job and simply _can't_ get the focus for your issues. It
sucks, but it happens a lot.

In situations like that, I usually send them a letter or call them, explaining
that I know exactly what they're going through, and I'd be happy to arrange
maintenance for them as long as they reimburse me. I've never failed to get a
response of, "Oh God, could you please?"

Depends on the landlord, too. If you live in a low-rent building, they have a
really high stress level for not a lot of return - it doesn't take much to set
yourself apart from the jerks they normally deal with, though. Get on a
friendly basis with them and it'll go a long way.

Once you've had a couple of the really bad tenants, I think it's very, very
difficult to learn to see the good in people again as opposed to the enormous
risk exposure.

~~~
singular
You sound like a great landlord, to me it really comes down to whether they
are actively acting maliciously, for example the landlords who screwed me out
my deposit were clearly trying to steal the cash - one when I was at uni made
up loads of costs despite us having spent a day cleaning, painting and getting
the place spotless, another kept on promising to pay but then suddenly dropped
all contact, in the end I had to threaten legal action (after a couple
months).

> Once you've had a couple of the really bad tenants, I think it's very, very
> difficult to learn to see the good in people again as opposed to the
> enormous risk exposure.

Absolutely, I can understand that - sorry to hear you've experienced that.
Seems unfortunately quite common. Who are these people?!!

~~~
Vivtek
Trust me, anybody who's rented to more than a couple of people has experienced
it. Anybody I've talked to, anyway.

As to who these people are: it's a mixed bag. I keep wanting to write some
kind of tl;dr screed here, but ... it's complicated.

I'll say this, though. I went to school with a guy whose dad was the manager
for an American-owned automotive plant in Spain. They lived in a freaking
mansion in Cadiz, although they were basically regular people from Cleveland
or Akron or someplace. But he basically grew up a lot richer than me (and
considered _me_ bourgeois, but damn we were young and foolish).

He told me the story once about how he'd been depressed and visited a friend
of his who was housesitting for their teacher at the American school there.
I.e. another rich kid. So what this friend did to cheer him up, among other
things, was to set up a target and throw knives at it. Except instead of
knives, they destroyed every pair of scissors in the house and used the halves
as throwing knives, you see. He laughed about how the teacher must have been
perplexed about having no scissors when he got back from his trip.

I'm sure that he'd be mortified to know that I remember this story twenty
years later, which is why I'm not naming names (yes, Mr. Google, I'm watching
you!)

OK. So extrapolate that rich kid's behavior - and this was a good guy who I
really liked - to our original post here. It's _the same thing_ , just a lot
more extreme. There are just people who think that kind of exploitation of the
vulnerability of others is funny and fun, although I'm sure the vast majority
grow out of it at some point.

It's kind of like sociopaths, I guess, as abused as that concept has gotten
lately. I think there are those of us who would never have considered finding
all the scissors in the house they were entrusted with, and tearing them in
half for knife throwing. I'm one of those people. You probably are. And sadly,
AirBNB is probably made up exclusively of that category of people. And
probably the vast majority of users of AirBNB also fall into this category.

Now, one didn't. Honestly - I think the only way AirBNB is going to weather
this is to have some serious, serious talks with an insurance provider and
have some kind of blanket coverage they can extend to their hosts, perhaps
with an additional fee - but they're not going to get through it with just
being nice guys. Which arguably they are.

So that was really more than I intended to write. Sorry.

~~~
Vivtek
In light of today's developments, I no longer think they're nice guys.
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2820615>)

------
physcab
I want to believe that people are fundamentally good as well and there is
definitely evidence that supports that.

But this incident has left a bad taste in my mouth, and their response hasn't
made me feel any better. It's not like Ebay where if you have a bad
experience, your loss is stemmed to the material good you have given away. On
AirBnb, the potential harm in the worst case for both a guest and a host are
massive -- total material loss or even rape or death.

I'm sure many people find value using their service, but after today, the risk
is so clearly present that I don't think you can pay me to use it.

~~~
statictype
_It's not like Ebay where if you have a bad experience, your loss is stemmed
to the material good you have given away_

If you're going to play the rape-or-death card, then why not also say that an
EBay package you receive could contain a bomb or anthrax spores?

Personally speaking, AirBnB always baffled me, even before this incident. I
would never have given my home for others to use and would find it weird to
use that of a strangers' when travelling, but that's just me.

Other people clearly find value in it.

I'm surprised that this incident would have left a bad taste in your mouth, in
the same way that I'm surprised when people who store super-sensitive
information in Dropbox find out that maybe its not a secure bank vault.

~~~
physcab
True, but with Ebay, space separates me and the other party, so I still have
(or feel like I have) some level of control. Could I still fall victim to
random acts of hatred? Sure.

Call it a bad taste or a pit in the stomach, but the incident only reinforced
my worst fears about the service. It's something that will be difficult to
forget.

------
ajays
It's interesting that he quoted the positive parts from EJ's post; but not the
negative parts:

My next call was to airbnb.com - I tried their "urgent" line, their email
address, their general customer support line. I heard nothing - no response
whatsoever - until the following day, 14 sleepless hours later, and only after
a desperate call to an airbnb.com freelancer I happen to know helped my case
get some attention.

------
jmjerlecki
This post is in the right direction and I applaud Brian for stepping up, but
this has taken too long for this to happen. If you note in EJ's post, she
states that she would not be compensated for any damages and she was on the
hook. Airbnb didn't step up to the plate until it was posted on Techcrunch.
This has been simmering since June and they really could have gotten ahead of
this and handled this entirely different. Imagine had they come out in June
and fessed up and said this is how we are going to handle it. EJ we are taking
care of everything, we are instituting new policies, looking into insurance
and we will have a dedicated 24 hour hotline for customer support. They would
have set the precedent for how to handle these situations. Instead they did
like everyone else and only dealt with it once it became a much larger issue.

/sidenote if I was Brian I would by no means be quoting EJ's blog post as
proof to saying they handled this correctly. Because they didn't.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
They were hoping nobody would notice. I'm sure they've been working on changes
as a result of this since June and have had a response plan in place as well,
but in their ideal world, this would have never made it to the top of HN and
other sites, and TechCrunch would have never gotten involved.

Why point people towards something that will always give you a black eye when
they could say "see the new features we have to keep you safe" instead?

FWIW, similar to PayPal paying well north of $100M to really learn how to do
fraud prevention, AirBnB should consider the cost of making things right for
her as part of the cost of learning how to rent safely. Not doing so is a very
short-term decision that reduces trust in their ecosystem and trust is
fundamental to their success.

------
kevinpet
AirBNB has a huge asymmetric trust problem. The hosts have real physical
addresses and need to be able to take a payment. Hosts can easily be held
accountable.

The guests on the other hand could be anyone. The company's attitude seems to
be that allowing the host to interview the guest over email is sufficient to
vet the guest. That's absurd. I don't have any special ability to identify a
con artist vs. an honest person, and neither does anyone else.

What would be a good solution? Here's a partial solution: require guests to
make a partial payment on the credit card they intend to use 30 days before
their first booking. This would at least offer some security that the card
wasn't stolen. Also of course ban pre-paid cards.

~~~
AshMokhberi
It really gets on my nerves when I see cases like this and the responses that
follow. As you have pointed out, you have no special skills to be able to
recognise con artists or criminals. As this is the case with most people, how
would having further private information on the guest help you to make a
different judgement.

Unless we start talking criminal background checks, you are no safer than
before. If anything it gives a false sense of security, which might make you
less likely pursue further avenues of safeguarding. Of course criminal
background checks are a completely stupid idea. I'm sure many good natured
people would be hesitant to put this level of info in the hands of someone
they don't know.

The truth is though even criminals can get credit cards, debit cards and any
other method of verification you can think of. So that info doesn't really
help. Worse still they can use fraudulent information just as easily. What do
you do now? You also have to remember those opportunistic types, you know the
person who has never really done anything wrong, but for whatever reason at
that moment they are compelled to break the law or behave in a manner they
normally wouldn't.

In a society that is mostly good, we have the police the courts, the law and
prisons, to deal with bad people. You can not really on airbnb to provide you
with a definitive solution to this problem, if they did then they should be
running the country. Nor should you expect them to put systems in place that
violate the rights of the majority, or systems that provide a false sense of
security. The best they can ever do is provide you with support and advice on
preventative measures.

Your safety should still be your top concern. You should not be relying on
another to provide it for you.

~~~
lutorm
_Your safety should still be your top concern. You should not be relying on
another to provide it for you._

I'm sorry, but I find these type of comments useless. So you're saying there's
nothing AirBnB could do and there's no need for them to worry about it, so we
can just end the conversation right now?

I think the point that was made was that there is an inherent asymmetry in
that the guest can remain more anonymous than the host. Since the guest is
more anonymous, there are less incentives to don't do stupid stuff as you can
more likely avoid repercussions.

I interpreted the suggestion as thinking of ways to hold the guest more
accountable. Maybe by having a verified bank account? Maybe a credit card held
for long enough that it's reasonably not stolen (though could still be a
stolen identity).

And yes, of course any system can be circumvented by a sufficiently motivated
individual. But, like with locking your front door, it's about making it
complicated enough that it's not worth it given the reward.

* Nor should you expect them to put systems in place that violate the rights of the majority*

This makes no sense. How exactly would AirBnB violate anyone's rights? It's a
voluntary service you can use if you so desire.

~~~
AshMokhberi
`So you're saying there's nothing airBnB could and there's no need to worry
about it`

No I said

`The best they can ever do is provide you with support and advice on
preventative measures.'

AirBnB should worry about the who-har going on in the media yes. About the
crimes committed to an individual, bluntly no. Not beyond a empathy, support
and goodwill. The rest is for the police and courts to deal with.

`And yes, of course any system can be circumvented by a sufficiently motivated
individual...it's about making it complicated enough that it's not worth it
given the reward.`

Hmmmm prison is the known punishment, if that isn't enough to stop people, my
guess is knowing their name isn't going to deter them either.

* Nor should you expect them to put systems in place that violate the rights of the majority*

`This makes no sense. How exactly would AirBnB violate anyone's rights?`

By putting in requirements for overly intrusive personal information. To
satisfy the rants of an irrational mob.

`It's a voluntary service you can use if you so desire.`

That is true, so while the irrational mob thinks that it's a good idea as a
response to a bad individual. In practice, when confronted with handing over
such information they will be less than eager to comply. For that reason it
marks a very bad business decision for AirBnB.

The best suggestion I have heard is that AirBnB should look at providing some
form of insurance policy to Hoteliers/Guests.

They have already stated that they are ramping up customer service and
providing support areas on the AirBnB site.

Don't forget that the problem of criminal activity is not one way. It is not
only criminals who can attack Hoteliers. The reverse is also true, and it is
far more dangerous for a person to give their home address, name, telephone
number etc, to someone posing as a hotel.

If your booking a hotel it's an irrelevant argument, it's a matter of fact
that you need to know the address, telephone number and point of contact for
where your staying.

Please think rationally....

------
walkon
Generally, people are _not_ "fundamentally good". Generally, most people are
only good when they believe the reward for being so is >= the required effort
or discomfort (rewards aren't always monetary and could be as simple as
feeling good about yourself for helping the crippled-orphaned-widow-beggar
across the street). An example of this is airbnb's own policy of not
disclosing renter contact information. Despite what they say, airbnb believes
that people are not fundamentally good as their concern of users circumventing
their payment system is greater than their concern for the safety of said
users (at least to the extent that stories such as this don't hurt their
business more than payment bypassing would).

If airbnb believed what they espouse, they'd quit trying to outsource their
trust in humanity to their customers whom they aren't liable for and instead
actually _trust_ that _people in general_ won't sidestep the payment process.

~~~
walkon
When down voting, please explain (seriously).

------
bambax
> _...a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good_

> _Private messaging that lets users learn about each other prior to booking,
> without revealing private information_

The reason why Airbnb doesn't let people "reveal private information" prior to
booking / paying is so they won't circumvent their system and exchange money
without paying Airbnb's fees.

So in fact Airbnb isn't so trusting of people's "fundamental" goodness and
honesty; the matter of fact is that _Airbnb assumes every single one of its
users is a potential cheater_.

Instead of the marketspeak / ass-protecting / legalese response we've
witnessed so far from Airbnb about this incident, an interesting experiment
would be to lift this restriction and let people exchange personal information
from the very beginning: how many would actually try to game the system?

------
plusbryan
I love what AirBnB is doing - and I know they'll pull through this. But
there's one policy of theirs that just needs to change: _Stop penalizing hosts
for declining reservations_

My wife and I used AirBnB to rent out our place in San Francisco very early on
in the life of AirBnB. At one point we'd booked about 60 reservations and were
making a killing. It was simply wonderful having the freedom of place that
AirBnB afforded us. Trip to Hawaii for the weekend? Our rental earnings for
just the weekend easily paid off the flight.

We stopped using AirBnB (and renting out our place in general) for a variety
of reasons, but the primary reason was safety. We were finding that 9 of 10
reservation requests were from people without AirBnB ratings nor profiles, but
the moment you decline a reservation, for any reason (even if you _know_ the
person isn't legit), your search ranking drops considerably.

The way AirBnB determines your search ranking for a particular area is
directly related to how many successful bookings you've had over a trailing 60
days. This is why the top 50 places in SF right now on AirBnB are "full time"
or professionally-managed rentals, and not normal people just renting on the
weekends. At one point we were renting out our place consistently almost every
weekend, and because airbnb's search interface is so poor, making it into the
top 20 for an area resulted in a twentyfold increase in reservations.

The problem then becomes, as a host - do I decline reservations from people I
know nothing about and take a rating hit that may prevent me from renting
again, or, do I accept the reservation and "trust in humankind" that
everything will be ok?

We obviously took the latter road, and for the most part had great
interactions with the people we met. However, after a couple of "close calls"
- an elderly couple who almost burned our place down and an obviously high-
functioning crazy person, we decided that it wasn't worth the risk anymore.

I _really_ want AirBnB to work - and I understand why they maintain this
policy of penalizing you for not being generally available, but in light of
the recent incident, I hope they rethink it and help promote "real" hosts who
don't do this as a business.

------
pallinder
I once rented out my apartment privately and it turned out to be a major
mistake. I had just come home from surfing the Caribbeans and was sitting on a
train going home from the airport when I got a job offer that would entail me
moving halfway across the world.

I took the job and was basically on a plane in a week or two. I decided to
save time by renting my apartment out fully furnished. My mom met some dude
she thought looked OK and we rented it out to this guy. Turns out this was one
shady guy. First month comes around, no rent. I call the guy and he comes up
with an excuse, not wanting to really deal with this at the time I bought the
excuse and was expecting two rents the next month. Next month comes along and
no rent again so I get my friend to go into the apartment and he opens the
door only to find basically everything I owned stolen.

After calming down I found the guy on facebook and then reported him to the
police, they couldnt do much seing as the guys excuse was that he had left the
apartment and dropped the key into the mailbox so someone else must have
fished it up and opened the door and stole everything.

tl;dr I rented out my apartment and got everything I own stolen and the police
didnt manage to do anything.

What did I learn from this? ALWAYS get a deposit. 2-3 months rent up front.
Have insurance, have friends that are able to go check up on the place from
time to time. And dont leave anything valuable in the apt when renting it out.

And this is why I will never ever use a service such as Airbnb, no control.

------
scottkduncan
> Creating a dedicated Trust & Safety department.

This sure is where things start to get tricky in managing the organizational
growth of a company. Something like this happens and the reaction is to create
a new department. That's understandable and demonstrates commitment to
tackling the issue at hand. But then another adverse event (inevitably)
happens and people will complain complain that the "Trust & Safety" department
was isolated from the rest of the company and that those topics now have to
get mainstreamed (or insert other buzzword) across the whole company.

Just one of the many challenges that comes with great success.

------
thom
Bruce Shneier often talks about terrorist tactics only being worrying when
they are reliable enough to build a plot around - if a someone gets through
security checks by random chance, it's sad, but not a fundamental flaw in the
system because nobody could plan to exploit the same situation in the future.

My worry about this case is that this does seem an entirely reliable and
repeatable method of nastiness. I'm happy to assume that any given random
person is fundamentally good, but now that it's been demonstrated that
identity fraud + Airbnb = swag, fundamentally bad people will be actively
planning ways to exploit it.

I'm glad someone's in custody, but I don't see anything announced in this post
that is going to dissuade wrongdoers from looking at Airbnb as a massive
opportunity.

------
jsherry
Here's what you see when you search the term "insurance" on airbnb.com:
<http://www.airbnb.com/help/search?q=insurance>

Something like this would be more reassuring:
[http://support.getaround.com/kb/insurance-infractions/how-
do...](http://support.getaround.com/kb/insurance-infractions/how-does-
insurance-work-when-i-use-getaround)

~~~
mattbee
The article says they are working to offer an "insurance option" to hosts. So
what, if it happens again to a host who hasn't taken this option, they're
screwed? What would have been more reassuring is saying "airbnb will of course
fully indemnify hosts against guests damaging their property" - as they've had
to do in this recent case. He seems to say that airbnb are working in the
opposite direction in future though.

------
mcantelon
None of this sounds like it addresses the underlying problem: you're relying
on them to vet the guest yet you're the one with the most to lose if they get
it wrong.

~~~
hullo
Well, yes and no. For the sake of argument, let's accept that AirBnb is worth
$1.3 billion dollars. I can only imagine that a large portion of that
valuation is based on the potential upside that would come with becoming a
consumer success and disrupting the hotel industry etc etc etc.

What portion of that valuation will disappear if the perception that AirBnb
"isn't safe" takes hold? To make the math easier, let's guess 10% (although
it's potentially 100%). 1.3 billion / 10 is 130 million dollars, which is
probably much more than the value of the stuff in your house. All of which is
a long way of saying that AirBnb is actually heavily incentivized to get this
right.

------
commanda
Unfortunately, no matter what safety mechanisms Airbnb puts in place, messes
like this are still going to happen. Even if there were a reliable rating or
karma system, and you could exchange messages with a potential renter before
accepting them, you will still have the "Ebay problem" - where a malicious
party gains access to a trusted user's account and uses it to fool people into
renting to them.

------
efader
This already happens within regular hotel environments people have to be
realistic and more sensible when renting out their living areas.

Additionally, Airbnb or another company should start to offer, FOR A Fee, a
form of insurance to cover situations like this unfortunate scenario.

------
DanielRibeiro
From these efforts, I get the impression that AirBnB really epitomizes the _Be
Good_ argument (where Don't be Evil isn't enough)[1]

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/good.html>

~~~
MisterMerkin
You've got to be kidding me. Are you not aware of AirBnB's history and how
they built their userbase?

~~~
pg
I replied to the other comment you made saying the same thing elsewhere on
this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2815183>

~~~
MisterMerkin
Thanks.

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ajays
Since this is the third story on this topic on the FP today, I figured a
wisecrack is in order.

EJ's blog has the tagline: _I leap, the net appears. Every time._

Apparently not this time...

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hdeo
I am sure Airbnb has / is thinking about this already. Still the best solution
is transparency and badging. Much like eBay FB system.

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andjones
First, I do not believe this is the place to make a stand about our trust in
humanity. I believe that is best left to philosopher who has all of human
discourse to use.

My argument rests on the fact that Airbnb is moving closer to the average.
Airbnb is moving closer to the average in the sense that they are attracting
more people. After several million bookings, the general booking population
will look more like the average in terms of disabilities, crime, unemployment,
and many other imaginable statistics. Airbnb may not be quite there, but they
are certainly growing closer.

The question becomes, how to improve trust as Airbnb moves closer to the
average?

One such way is to implement trust systems. One such way is their existing
feedback systems for people who use Airbnb. Hosts and renters alike can rate
each other across several factors. Over time, one can develop a reputation
that is accepted as a "I will do no evil". Heck, Airbnb could even reward
these people with lower booking rates / larger cut as host.

Trust systems are fine for those who have earned trust within the system. How
does one bootstrap trust in an increasing paranoid system? There is a cost
associated with this in the sense of gaining references or examining the
social network of a first time renter. After such examination the
responsibility relies upon some host to have an increasingly long conversation
with a first time renter. This can be done before or after booking. However at
the end of the conversation, one ultimately relies on their own judgement,
which means the conversation can be gamed.

In a future, Airbnb could work with outside systems. Airbnb could work with
criminal databases, social information, along with associated other signals.
All these approaches hint at a big brother approach where Airbnb is the
ultimate judge and jury on who can host and/or rent. I don't see Airbnb being
very popular in this approach.

In the end, I think Airbnb has the responsibility to make things right in this
situation. In the future I think they have the responsibility to make things
right while their business model relies on the trust of their customers.
Increase awareness and increase their own detection measures to the extent
that they do not become big brother.

Ultimately, I think things like this will continue to happen. However, the
success (or failure) of the Airbnb billion+ business will depend on their
response to such future events. Continue to make the host (the supply) happy
and Airbnb will do well.

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georgieporgie
Credit checks would probably weed out dysfunctional meth-heads. Also, college
students and foreigners, but basic background/reference checks might address
that. That's not easy or cheap, but security never is.

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dreww
i guess i feel like this is totally unsurprising, except that a similar
incident hadn't been publicized already. i felt exactly the same way about
Getaround, which is AirBnB for your car - hobos will definitely rent my car
and defecate and copulate in it.

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axiom
Can we agree that the host here is at least partially responsible for what
happened?

First, let me say that what happened was horrible, and the person who did the
damage should go to jail for a long long time. AirBnB should cover the cost of
all damages as a gesture of goodwill.

It's really a shame that this kind of stuff can happen, but the reality (that
I'd hope most people understand) is that not 100% of the population is good
and decent (maybe it's 99%, maybe it's 98%, but it's certainly not 100%) Given
that every mature adult is aware of this, the way the host acted was pretty
irresponsible and was kind of inviting disaster.

She literally left a key for a total stranger to her home, without doing ANY
due-diligence. Someone basically sent her an email, and she said "okey-dokey,
here's the keys, have fun." What are the odds that if you do that 50 or 100
times that something like this _doesn't_ happen? Also, how many people would
be careless enough to do that?

Seriously, it's pretty tragic what happened and I really feel for the host,
but it rubs me the wrong way that AirBnB is getting this massive amount of bad
press when in fairness they just posted a listing and handled the transaction.
Could they have more security measures in place? sure, but the way the host
acted, I'm really not convinced anything would have made a difference here.

If you give keys to your place to a random stranger without so much as meeting
them or getting basic information about them, then you're going to get burned.

~~~
georgemcbay
"She literally left a key for a total stranger to her home, without doing ANY
due-diligence. Someone basically sent her an email, and she said "okey-dokey,
here's the keys, have fun.""

I don't use Airbnb from either side, but isn't the big problem here that you
_can't_ do due dilligence? As I understand it (and again, as a non-user maybe
I am wrong), Airbnb pretty much blocks you from knowing too much about your
temporary renter as a measure to avoid you using them as a match up service
and then doing the deal directly to avoid paying them their fee.

~~~
chime
I agree with you. I recently took a weekend vacation by the beach and did my
very best to use AirBnB. The fact that email is the only way to communicate
with the host made it really difficult for me to get a good feel for the place
I was renting. I want to use AirBnB, I really do. But preventing me from
typing my phone# in the text field really annoyed me. I don't think that
renting a place is like buying an item on eBay where it is best that the
seller and buyer not bypass the entire auction mechanism.

I don't mind at all if AirBnB gets a slice of my money and in fact I prefer to
pay them than a random person. However, I want to talk to the host on the
phone before I agree to anything. You can't express friendliness and warmth
textually (or at least most people can't) but it is very easy to pick up on
the tone over phone. In the end, I found a wonderful beach cottage via
vrbo.com. If vrbo had a website like AirBnB, they would get my money every
time. I understand the financial mechanism is very different on both sites but
seriously, AirBnB, let me talk to potential hosts before I book anything - I
will even pay a fee to become a premium-phone-enabled-renter.

~~~
marvin
A possible solution would be if AirBnB required hosts and guests to be friends
on Facebook before a transaction could take place..this wouldn't prevent
anyone from making a fake profile in order to seem more trustworthy, but this
is an area where Facebook's privacy situation would be helpful. You can learn
a lot about a person's character by examining his or her Facebook page.

