

Renters From Hell (Airbnb and the Limits of Trust Online) - bmj
http://www.slate.com/id/2300665/

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nodata
This article has no substance. It's another "omg peoples from teh internets"
scare story.

airbnb has proved phenomenally safe for what it does, and will be safer in
future.

I don't think the comparison with ebay is fair either.

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jeffreymcmanus
It's a perfectly fair comparison; both eBay and AirBnB are marketplace
businesses that facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers and do not
vouch for the trustworthiness of either.

It seems possible that AirBnB will be able to enhance the trust features of
its site over time, for a certain subset of its users. I don't think that day
has arrived yet, and this piece addresses that in a way that's fair (he does
point out "the two horror stories we know about are clearly outliers").
There's very little chance that it's going to disrupt the hotel industry for
the kinds of travelers who use hotels frequently (particularly business
travelers and families).

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nodata
So the insight that the article provides is..?

