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Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#161

Post by TeMPOraL »

st3v3r wrote: post #110
spaceflunky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did Airbnb for my personal residence for a few years, I was a "Super Host" three years in a row. These policies, while officially new, have been slowly edged in for a while and is the reason why I no longer use Airbnb. Why? 1.) Airbnb is still a new concept to a lot of people. Hosts need to time to work with a guest to make sure they know how the arrangement is suppose to work. Airbnb use to have a 'respond within…

Hotels don't get any of that. Why should you?

If we judge AirBnB hosts by hotel standards, then AirBnB shouldn't get to pretend they're "sharing economy".

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#162

Post by kevinpet »

brightball wrote: post #136
guelo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US. Freedom is a relative thing. Here we have AirBnB's freedom to not want racist hosts vs white supremacist's freedom to use AirBnB. The only freedom the ideal of USA is supposed to grant you is freedom from too much government meddling.

That's really the crux of what I'm getting at here. People who are using AirBnB to rent space in their homes will also have the freedom to stop doing so if they are no longer comfortable losing any say regarding who they are willing to let stay. If anything, AirBnB is really opening the door for a competitor who totally defers to the property owner to cut into their market share.

Which would probably be pretty unsuccessful. Who's going to use and recommend WhiteBnB to their friends?

Well, yeah, neo-nazis. But that's a pretty niche market and AirBnB only works if they are big enough to make the two sided market work.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#164

Post by JonFish85 »

spaceflunky wrote: post #114
st3v3r wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels don't get any of that. Why should you?

Because I'm renting out my personal residence. Why should we lump hotels and my apt into the same bucket? They are different types of businesses. I think it's unreasonable to say that all home-sharers must act like hotels.

Ok, maybe a better analog is that Airbnb should have rules adhering to the laws for landlords?

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#165

Post by vkou »

brightball wrote: post #148
guelo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'ideal', it's not true in practice, but I was responding to the comment about the hypothetical "point of the US".

What I meant by that was individual liberty and the ability to make your own choices and decisions. Government meddling in that in this case is forcing people to do something they are uncomfortable with simply because they paid money while simultaneously running the risk of legal action if at any point you want to abort the transaction. The most basic example is akin to forcing somebody to sign a contract without kno…

We've tried allowing this kind of thing, and what we got was redlining, "No colored allowed" and "Dogs and Irish keep off the grass."

If complying with anti-discrimination law is a problem for you, you should generally not be in this line of business.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#166

Post by oh_sigh »

ritchiea wrote: post #138
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they're attacking whites only here. What if blacks wanted a black person. Or a Chinese person who only speaks Chinese and writes only in Mandarin wants the same. The left will give these people exceptions for "cutlural" reasons. They just want to regulate race and commerce on their unquestionable terms. This has nothing to do with equality. Its just a power-grab by political opportunists and misguided idealists…

Have you considered the fact that whites discriminating against blacks is commonplace in the United States (as well as many other countries) while accounts of whites feeling discriminated against by people of color is much more rare?

Which makes sense, because whites constitute 60+% whereas blacks constitute 13%. Even if everything in the world was exactly equal, including percent of racist whites and blacks, blacks(or really, the group with fewer members) would experience more racism because of the disparity in population numbers.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#167

Post by ebfe »

ritchiea wrote: post #138
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they're attacking whites only here. What if blacks wanted a black person. Or a Chinese person who only speaks Chinese and writes only in Mandarin wants the same. The left will give these people exceptions for "cutlural" reasons. They just want to regulate race and commerce on their unquestionable terms. This has nothing to do with equality. Its just a power-grab by political opportunists and misguided idealists…

Have you considered the fact that whites discriminating against blacks is commonplace in the United States (as well as many other countries) while accounts of whites feeling discriminated against by people of color is much more rare?

The majority of white people believe that discrimination against whites is more common than discrimination against people of color, actually.

Ask your average middle class white person about affirmative action, preferential access for minorities to grants/loans, etc.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#168

Post by jessaustin »

orthoganol wrote: post #125
nicolas_t wrote: post #107

As an host, I'll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity. When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who's disabled (the building is 300 years old, there's no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn'…

> a host who was nice to me when I met him and then wasn't as nice 5 minutes later once my wife arrived I don't doubt the presence of racism in our society, but this seems like an overly subjective and crude way to label someone a racist. Off the top of my head they could be threatened by the other's attractiveness (surprisingly common), they find the person awkward to speak with or annoying/ out of touch, they are s…

It's fine to analyze potential racism experienced by oneself in this fashion, but it really is out of bounds to analyze potential racism experienced by other people in this way. Perhaps that isn't fair to those of us who rarely experience potential racism, but so what?

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#169

Post by dragonwriter »

jasode wrote: post #145
dragonwriter wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why going after the "broker service" angle would be a weak approach in changing homeowners' minds about discrimination. I'm not suggesting it as a way to change homeowner's minds, which isn't even something I'm interested in doing [0]. I'm interested in enforcing the existing law prohibiting discrimination. If hosts wish to discriminate, I'd prefer they'd be limited to doing so only in the limited circumsta…

>I'm interested in enforcing the _existing law_ [...] I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of the "brokering services"[0] law you cited previously. That extensive enumeration of brokers/agents/salesman/employee is a person that does the matching work on behalf of the client. If other reasonable people don't think Airbnb's "self-service" approach is brokering , then the word "existing…

> I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of "brokering services" law you cited previously.

Well, yes, obviously. I was responding to your claim, which was about the utility of the position as a tool to convincing people about whether they ought to discriminate, and pointing out that that wasn't the point.

> That extensive enumeration of brokers/agents/salesman/employee is a person that does the matching work on behalf of the client.

I've done both sales (on both sides) and rentals (on one side) through brokers, and in no case have they performed matching for me, in every case they provided a variety of administrative support services, including assisting in the search for matches (though, in the present case that I am currently working on, I hope they don't need to even do that -- if things go well, the match we handed them at the outset will be the final one.)

Which is to say that I think your idea of what a broker/agent/salesman or any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings does is excessively and unjustifiably narrow.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#170

Post by chimeracoder »

spaceflunky wrote: post #114
st3v3r wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels don't get any of that. Why should you?

Because I'm renting out my personal residence. Why should we lump hotels and my apt into the same bucket? They are different types of businesses. I think it's unreasonable to say that all home-sharers must act like hotels.

> I think it's unreasonable to say that all home-sharers must act like hotels.

First, Airbnb hosts are not "sharing" their homes. They're renting them out for financial profits.

Second, the name is literally Airbnb, as in "Bed and Breakfast". Most B&Bs don't get anything close to that amount of information, and it's illegal for them to discriminate on the basis of protected classes, just like hotels.

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