All I'm seeing in this article is a few people trying to get that dopamine rush of engagement by dunking on "landlords" (not that all AirBnB hosts are landlords, some are just folks renting an extra room out), and sfgate happily obliging them.
At least the tweet I saw on the article had thousands of likes. I've seen some articles where a person said something on Twitter and there's 12 likes and the writer is trying to make it sound like a trend.
Airbnbs are, by definition, short term rentals that don’t follow the rules imposed on the hotel industry, so how are they not landlords? Apparently one third of their hosts own 25 or more units, which I imagine is quite a bit more than the average small-time landlord.
Consider this one a features story. No so much need to follow an assembling crowd and seeing what they're griping about in person anymore, trending will show it.
Fact of the matter is that momentarily twitter reflects general public discourse and has to be engaged with. Not to say that the whole public discourses through twitter, but that it generally reflects public discourse. As in, even the broadcast segments that are watched by technophobic grandparents show it on screen, reference it, and then talk about it.
I think I should have said "full-time" or "professional" landlord. I had thought that the word had a connotation of it being a full-time gig, but I was wrong.
Two popular HN pieces have recently touched on how journalists and newspapers give twitter too much weight:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833267
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23827073
All I'm seeing in this article is a few people trying to get that dopamine rush of engagement by dunking on "landlords" (not that all AirBnB hosts are landlords, some are just folks renting an extra room out), and sfgate happily obliging them.