
Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from Airbnb (2018) - jnbiche
https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba
======
sachdevap
Older thread on same post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056)

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blunte
This is a wake up call. Whether it's Apple App Store, Google (which includes
nearly everything else - Play Store, Gmail, Gsuite/Gdocs), Facebook, and even
Amazon (in far fewer cases) - the giants can afford to choose a policy that is
most financially efficient. The business cost to review each case is simply
not worth it financially. Only until a critical mass of angry/banned users
exists, there will be no change.

It's unfortunate that it takes posting to HN or Twitter in the hopes that an
employee of one of those companies will see it and champion the cause of the
user.

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privateSFacct
Airbnb has had problems with people finding out where hosts work, where they
have other business etc and leaving offsite reviews for airbnb stays on those
platforms.

My question - would you rent out a room in your house for a night if someone
starts leaving crappy reviews about you everywhere? Many people would not.

I think Airbnb AND homeowners should carry much more liability for some of the
fraud on Airbnb, so I hope to see airbnb paying big penalty bucks in the
future.

Airbnb likely dislikes third party reservations, offsite payments and offsite
bookings for business reasons as well. I wouldn't be surprised if folks going
off-site are asked not to participate on-site - fair or not.

~~~
awinder
I 100% believe the authors side of this charade, and I think the answer to the
hypothetical goes something like this:

1\. 90% of Airbnb hosts are not going to run into that problem because they’re
going to do everything to make it right, so to fear it would be akin to being
worried about getting hit by lightening.

2\. 10% of Airbnb hosts are psychotically delusional and create problems, do
nothing to fix them, and empowered by Airbnb, leave the only remaining outlet
as off-site reviews. These people don’t have any business renting property.

So that is to say — the “problem” of off-site reviews is a secondary
repercussion of Airbnb letting nearly anyone rent their places, and then not
doing enough to prune bad hosts out. It’s a fundamental misalignment in their
business model to tilt this heavily towards hosts, because hosts have illiquid
property in mostly crowded markets (expendable) while customers have extremely
liquid capital and lots of choice.

~~~
privateSFacct
Having run into nutty hosts (and before that landlords) would you as a guest
feel good if one of those hosts started posting negative reviews about you
offsite based on your stay at Airbnb?

Ie, if their only outlet for a guest that "created problems" "did nothing to
fix them" was off-site reviews?

I've found folks with the approach of I should be able to slam you publicly
react TERRIBLY when they themselves start receiving off-site reviews. And I've
found the nutty hosts / nutty guests often have the most _time_ to pursue
things like off-site reviews as an "outlet" for their aggression.

I have stopped saying at airbnb when traveling except for big group trips and
paying for very premium places because the quality of hosts is problematic as
you describe, and airbnb should ABSOLUTELY shut down the false advertising
hosts (extra charges after / poorly disclosed "rules", cameras in all the
rooms etc). But I do have an outlet, I book a nice room at a hotel - a very
predictable experience! And I'm not the only one.

~~~
awinder
I probably wouldn’t feel great (and I wouldn’t post negatively either), but
who’s running the business and receiving money and who is spending money?
Paying money to get blasted would be a new low yet being a business and
getting blasted is kinda a time-honored situation. This actually is kinda
aligned with what I’m talking about because the bad owners don't realize
they’re running a business when they rent their property, and their problems
are caused by not caring about what businesses have to care about, which is
reputation and value of name.

But yeah overall agreed, esp. about who has the time & energy to go ballistic
about these things and the long realization that this is why hotels are a much
better place to spend money.

~~~
privateSFacct
I'm less confident that an airbnb "business" might not go off-site to slam
customers. We already have regular businesses suing yelp users etc for bad
reviews even if factual.

I'm not a huge fan of the hunt people down across the net and in real life to
destory them modern approach to problems - even if you as a user claim you
need the "outlet".

Someone shows up to your airbnb in Berkeley wearing a trump hat. You're
telling me no Berkeley hosts would go slamming these guests as racists online
if they could?

Someone shows up down south on vacation with their partner but hasn't yet come
out yet as gay - has a bad host interaction with someone bigoted - if airbnb
allowed off-site reviews you are sure no one would out this couple?

I get the urge to publicly destroy people, just realize there may be folks
with opinions different than yours who may then want to spend time trying to
destroy you.

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sombremesa
> But let’s call it like it is. This policy leverages the company’s power over
> the individual user to a cruel and unprecedented extent.

As a host, when I listed on AirBnB I was completely at their mercy in terms of
where I'd show up in the listing ranking and they also had a rule that you
can't be a superhost if you decline some percent of bookings - i.e., they
decide who you host, not you. After declining a string of suspicious bookings
(and having to list at a giveaway price just to be anywhere near the top of
the rankings), I decided to just give up completely on the platform.
Craigslist is better, where I can at least interview someone.

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svacko
I got blocked from accessing a Gmail account half year ago during a long term
stay in another continent and despite knowing the password, answering the
security question I'm still not able to access nor recover it as i can't
recall the date of creating the account (it's too old to recall exact
month/year combo). There is nothing you can do in this situation, nowhere to
complain, whole identity tied to the account is gone. I'm losing belief i can
access it one day..

Anyway, this was a wake up call and since then I'm in progress of migrating
all my services outside big players..

~~~
haecceity
They’re really going overboard with these security questions. This is why I
use ProtonMail.

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hknd
Getting banned, and not getting any explanation from support sucks big times.
Hope someone from Airbnb Support reads this and can help out.

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mnm1
The truth is that he doesn't know why he was banned. Could have been a bug.
Could have been something he did. Could have been the host knows someone at
airbnb and got the guest banned. It doesn't really matter. Amazon does the
same thing. Google does the same thing. Uber does the same thing. Yeah, people
can argue companies can do business with whomever they want and blah blah
(blah blah because the argument simply boils down to everything legal is fine)
but the reality is that many of these services are essential for some people
and we as a society need to start treating them as such. We should require
clear explanations from such businesses at the very least. Otherwise, how do
we know they are not breaking the law? Maybe they banned the author because
they didn't like his ethnicity or gender or some other protected status. I do
not see why we should give corporations such rights of refusal when we cannot
police them to make sure that the rights are being used properly. I don't
understand why we as a society don't make the corporations work for us rather
than making us, the people, a slave to the corporation. In theory, we can do
either. Reality is another story, of course.

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seemslegit
I'd suggest lawyering up but even banks in the US routinely close peoples
accounts without offering any explanation or recourse so it would be
surprising if such arbitrariness could be successfully fought in court.

~~~
Finnucane
More and more businesses are trying (as gets discussed here from time to time)
to force you to 'agree' to private arbitration and give up your right to sue,
including class actions suits. You might be able to laboriously opt-out, but
it hard to just say 'I won't use those services' because it almost universal.

~~~
tmaly
I helped my son open up a toy for Christmas. Inside the box was an arbitration
agreement. I am wondering how they think that works when I have not signed
something.

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rkagerer
_We’re becoming increasingly dependent on a handful of major tech giants to
get through our basic daily routine._

Well there's your problem right there.

------
scbrg
> Moving forward, I question whether these types of suspensions should be
> allowed from the tech giants without any oversight or regulation.

There is an industry based on providing short term lodging for people that is
subject to oversight and regulation. Businesses operating in this industry are
usually called "hotels".

~~~
drstewart
And yet hotels can and do permanently ban guests from their property all the
time with no recourse, so I'm not sure what your implication is.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25243594/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/h...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25243594/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/hotels-upgrade-their-no-stay-lists/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Just as with cryptocurrencies ("What do you mean my net worth just evaporated
and I have no recourse!?"), it's somewhat humorous to witness platform
enthusiasts demand the very regulation platforms subverted to grow to what
they are today.

Your point stands though; businesses have the right to turn away customers for
any reason that isn't discriminatory or class protected.

Perhaps there's a reason to consider regulating certain platforms as utilities
once they reach a certain scale? (Not referring to AirBnB in this case)

~~~
drstewart
I don't consider myself a platform enthusiast, but I do find myself annoyed at
people who call for regulation of tech companies because its trendy.

People are outraged Airbnb can ban you without recourse -- tech must be
regulated! Not a peep against hotel giants who can do the same thing

People are outraged that Amazon wants to build an HQ2 in NYC because it'll
displace people and must be stopped! Not a peep that it's home to the
headquarters of 52 Fortune 500 companies already and grows by tens of
thousands of people a year.

People are outraged that Apple paid little in income tax on a huge profit last
year and tech must be regulated! Not a peep about Chevron, Delta, or
Halliburton.

It's just populism. People know and interact brands like Google, Apple,
Airbnb, etc so they're easy targets, and as a result we're going to end up
with regulation that narrowly targets that high profile offenders without
doing anything to solve the broader root cause issues. California's AB5 is a
perfect example -- it's basically meant to target Lyft/Uber/etc and exempts
many industries for no reason: hair salons, insurance brokers, real estate
agencies, photographers, fishermen, and more. Why? Because they want to
specifically target the big bad tech companies without fundamentally fixing
the problem of ensuring all workers get a living wage.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Even if you think the complaints are due to "trendiness" or "populism", there
a more non-tech folks than not. It's plain math (tech is a vocal minority),
the regulation will get here eventually (as has happened with Uber, Lyft,
AirBnB, and is likely to happen to larger tech firms in the future). As a tech
professional, I believe more regulation over tech in general is long overdue.
With leverage comes responsibility and oversight.

------
joeberon
There's no way that companies should be allowed such total and irreversible
control, especially if they effectively control so much real estate

~~~
seemslegit
Airbnb controlls zero real-estate, it's a coordination and payment mechanism,
that's all.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I believe the word effectively is used in the parent comment to indicate the
control is through coordination and payment mechanisms.

------
quotemstr
This isn't about economics. This is about power. We used to understand that
power is an incredibly dangerous thing. This country was founded on the
principle of diffusing power: no one person should have unilateral authority
over the lives of millions of people. Consequently, our government is set up
to pit ambitious people against each other and make them accountable to the
public. It's worked for hundreds of years.

Why shouldn't we apply the principle of separation of powers to corporations
that can harm millions of people? Once a company becomes so large that it
becomes an integral part of society (and I think Airbnb now qualifies) it
should be subject either to regulation (to diffuse power and make the company
accountable to public via the state) or split up (to diffuse power and make
the company accountable to the public via the market). Consider it a lifetime
achievement prize. The overriding principle here is that no one person should
have the amount of power of individual lives that the CEO of an essential
monopoly has.

~~~
Finnucane
>This isn't about economics. This is about power.

What part of economics isn't about power?

~~~
quotemstr
> What part of economics isn't about power?

Economics is about power in the sense that chemistry is about particle
physics. I mean, yeah, sure, that kind of analysis is technically admissible,
but it's not _useful_ because there are important emergent phenomena in the
higher-level system (economics, chemistry) that become impossibly cumbersome
modeled directly in the language of the lower-level system (individual
incentives, particle physics).

It's not particularly productive to apply the language of political science to
things like Ricardo's examination of land rents. My point is that as companies
become very large, the high-level phenomenon start to break down and we need
to begin using the lower-level machinery to make sense of the problem in the
extreme space. For example, the interior of neutron star is best understood by
referencing physical effects directly. Likewise, when an economy has
consolidated to the point that we basically have one giant company per
economic sector, it starts being more useful to look at the situation through
the lens of history and politics than through the lens of pure economics.

------
usr1106
For a user in EU it should be possible to work around such ban.

First make a GDPR request to have your data deleted.

After som grace period, register again. If they tell you that you are banned,
they show that they have not deleted the data. File a complaint with data
protection authorities and have them fined.

Of course the better answer is just not to do any business with shitty
companies.

~~~
eropple
This "clever hack" isn't how the GDPR works at all. In the first place,
sufficiently pseudonymous data--that is, data that cannot by itself be used to
reveal a specific, non-anonymous user--need not be deleted. (Hashing a ban
list based on the personal and immutable information required at signup is an
example of this, though discarding that information _is_.) Beyond that, the
GDPR includes protections for companies against "manifestly unfounded"
requests; while one must use this as an affirmative defense, a request to
delete the record that that user has been banned from the service is a prime
example of such things.

I do wish that software people sometimes bothered to extend a baseline level
of competence to other people once in awhile, though. Like--do you think
nobody thought of this situation?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I guess the hashed ban list is reasonable solution. Actually looking at Airbnb
you can register three ways - via FaceBook, Google, or via Email address.
Signing via Email requires Email, first name, and birth date. I suppose if
someone wanted to beat the ban they could do it at least 3 times.

~~~
eropple
Without even looking I can bet that they require identity and email when you
log in via a social provider too.

The better option is likely a set of hashes of various permutations of data,
though, with some set of hits prompting for further information (such as an
e-mail or a full name match requiring proof of identity before allowing
usage).

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Maybe but given that probably your verification at some point will involve an
email account I think you could use GPDR to remove all personal info, and then
use a new email address to sign up and get through.

However if they could do something like use your credit card info to identify
you and have a hash of that - until you changed bank etc.

At any rate I don't think it is impossible to beat the ban.

~~~
eropple
Of course. It's rarely, if ever, impossible to make a perfect ban on an online
services. You just make it sufficiently difficult. Requiring some real hard
identification information if a user trips your "maybe" filter is enough
effort for the 99.9% case.

------
awinter-py
I like how 'catered eggs benny' is the dispute resolution go-to. The new
millennium has really come of age

This will keep happening as long as there's no cheap 3rd-party dispute
arbitration. E-commerce has gotten super cheap and transactional but
arbitration needs to catch up

~~~
pmiller2
s/arbitration/ _voluntary_ arbitration/g and you would have my upvote.

------
usr1106
The point is really company size and/or monopoly. If I don't like my barber's
service I go the next one.

But if I don't like Google and don't have an iPhone there there a many things
that I cannot do because every business assumes you can run their apps.

If I don't like Airbnb, renting holiday accommodations can be quite limited
because many properties are not available on alternative channels.

Boeing has failed badly, but they are considered too big to fail. The problem
is not limited to digital services.

I think the only solution is what happened to AT&T decades ago. If a company's
market share is too big, they need to be split up by government intervention.

------
bjustin
Companies with monopoly power[1] shouldn’t be able to be people without some
appeals process. That said, I don’t know what that would look like or if
Airbnb even should be subject to it. Other services and hotels are still
viable alternatives for most cases.

By contrast, Google banning people is more of a problem due to the wide
variety of services they offer. The traditional approach of breaking up large
companies seems sufficient if one wanted to address what a problem it is to
get banned by them.

[1] With 40% market share as the threshold for possible monopoly scrutiny,
like the European Commission suggests.

~~~
drstewart
>Companies with monopoly power[1] shouldn’t be able to be people without some
appeals process.

>Other services and hotels are still viable alternatives for most cases.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25243594/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/h...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25243594/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/hotels-upgrade-their-no-stay-lists/)

Why are you singling out Airbnb and not Hilton, IHG, Marriott, or Hyatt?

