Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#41

Post by pm24601 »

DannyBee wrote: post #30
pm24601 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are communities. No, AirBNB is not a community. They can't be a community when participation is subject to veto by a single entity/person. Communities are determined by a collective decision, not a unilateral decision. Anyone one talking about the "AirBNB community" is lying to themselves or to the person they are talking to. If AirBNB wanted a community, they would have visible, due process procedures in pl…

"They can't be a community when participation is subject to veto by a single entity/person." Says who? This is not any requirement of any commonly accepted definition of community. You certainly can just make crap up and define words however you like, but you can't expect others to go along with you :)

I am not making crap up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Community... "who mutually define that relationship (subjectively) as important to their social identity and social practice."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community :

1. a unified body of individuals: as a : state, commonwealth b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society 2 : society at large 3 a : joint ownership or participation b : common character : likeness c : social activity : fellowship d : a social state or condition

Notice that in the dictionary definition of community is that there is lots of references to "group of people", "unified", etc. but no reference that allows for a single entity to determine membership.

Therefore people hosting for AirBNB are not part of a community.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#42

Post by duncan_bayne »

chinathrow wrote: post #16
noonespecial wrote: post #14

An obscure, not fully tested algorithm applies a filter to all users. Maybe it's an internal beta, maybe some integrator that should have considered account history pulled a blank table instead of real values. Whatever. It happened. Your account gets canned. No one at the company knows why. Nobody even can know why. No one has the authority to fix it because it was never supposed to happen like that in the first plac…

If you have algos in place to flag an account and forget to implement the reason why that algo came to the conclusion, you should seriously rethink your setup.

That may not always be possible. For example, if you have a neural network doing the flagging, you might not be able to figure out exactly 'why' a particular account was flagged.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#43

Post by dynjo »

Imagine if they dealt with their employees in the same way.

Your fired, leave. I'm not telling you why.

The unicorn paradox:

  1. Create a small startup to disrupt the corporations
  2. Create a loyal user base
  3. Ride the hockey stick on your unicorn
  4. Treat your users as a commodity as you scale
  5. Become a terms & conditions black box
  6. Congratulations, you are a corporation.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#44

Post by cjg »

vessenes wrote: post #23

This is a tough read, because someone's livelihood and in some part happiness combine with their AirBnB business, and losing it is painful. The hell of it is that there are many circumstances in which the customer would not be allowed to know why the cancellation. I'm most familiar with Bank Secrecy Act rules; some of which definitely apply to AirBnB. So, for instance, an algorithm flags the house as a likely money l…

Anti-money laundering regulation was my first guess as to why, but it doesn't really fit because companies are not allowed to do anything to warn customers that they are under investigation. Cancelling their account could certainly tip them off to this and so it seems unlikely that it would comply.

Having said that, I don't know what the Thai regulations are. Perhaps this fits better under those.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#45

Post by taneq »

kriro wrote: post #35

Quick read the AirBnB terms (termination). Seems like they can basically terminate you however/whenever they want. IANAL but that seems rather flimsy. Aren't they essentially an infrastructure provider (website, app, booking etc.) that should have service contracts? That pretty much means you should not and cannot depend on AirBnB as a major source of income. Risk management wise that's just insane. It puts a decent…

The problem here is that this sort of termination clause is basically standard practice these days. For instance, Google's TOS just says "Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time": http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ - That's pretty damn scary given that I (and most people I know) have a Gmail account as their primary contact!

Everyone just accepts it on the assumption that it's a last-ditch protection against 'bad people', and hopes that in their case if anything goes wrong the company will deal transparently and fairly with them.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#46

Post by kkapelon »

"So far the emails have been opened and read over 350 times, from multiple places around the world. Who knows who these email addresses really go to."

1)How can you track this in a reliable way? 2)So 350 read this email and did not answer it? Do I read that correctly?

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#47

Post by lordnacho »

What was the point of having someone phone the account holder but not act like a human being? If you're going to hide behind the algo (and hopefully do an investigation and apology) isn't it better not to have any human contact? If you phone someone, the person on the other end tends to expect some humanity (ability to ask questions, commitment to investigate).

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#48

Post by Dylan16807 »

jarcane wrote: post #28
Dylan16807 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess most communities aren't communities then.

chinathrow is right. A community is a body of people who respect and act in each other's best interests or for the collective good. A company is not a community, it's a for-profit enterprise, and it does not give a fuck about respecting you or your best interests if there is profit to be made, or even if there is internal bureaucracy to be followed. Loyalty to business and corporate interests is seldom well placed.

The company is not a community (arguable) but it has a community.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#49

Post by Lucadg »

I don't like to be the "I told you so" guy. But I told you so.

I wrote this a couple of years ago:

"All Eggs in One Airbnb" http://www.adormo.com/blog/marketing/all-the-eggs-in-one-air...

because I keep meeting hosts who say "I'm fine with just Airbnb". The build a whole business based on a single website, a single failure point.

Disclosure: we help hosts be present in several platforms, including Airbnb.

Re: AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

#50

Post by pm24601 »

drcursor wrote: post #37
bagels wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked it up. "a tenant farmer especially in the southern United States who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges" There are no crops involved in the posted story. Further, AirBNB doesn't own the land so I'm not sure the term even makes sense as a metaphor.

Take a look at http://olivierblanchard.net/stop-calling-it-the-sharing-econ...

perfectly said.
Post reply on HN