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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

#251

Post by bitL »

hackuser wrote: post #244
bitL wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about WhiteBnB. It's about WhomeverIWantBnB. I am white, European, affluent, from a popular country and was rejected many times by AirBnB hosts (most of them blacks or women), so what? I looked elsewhere. It's really their right to provide accommodation to whomever they wish, it's their property. If AirBnB doesn't want them, they'd go elsewhere and AirBnB will go the way GitHub is going. Most hosts are featu…

This comment doesn't provide a substantive basis to any of its claims, and unfortunately, whether the author means it that way or not, it reads like a lot of racial propaganda. Spreading that kind of idea has historically led to very bad results, with many people getting hurt, killed, and oppressed. I hope we can be very careful and apply scrutiny to what we write on the issue; words have serious impact. Nobody shoul…

Why would I want to attack you? I'd love to see you achieving the utmost goodness potential you can reach without the need to bow under senseless political currents. Coming from a society ranked amongst the highest in equality scale, it comes naturally to me. Frankly, I was writing about my experiences while I was traveling around the world for roughly 2 years and using mainly AirBnB for accommodation. Do you really think white people get automatically pass when they try to do anything?

What I think you are talking about and see is more fight for belonging to the upper echelon of society, the ones that seem to make decisions affecting all of us. Well, news for you, vast majority of whites don't belong there. If you also want to be more nasty, i.e. singling out Jews, a historically popular scapegoat nation, another news for you - most of them are poor and uneducated, hence disadvantaged. Simply the goal of all these fights is power and nowadays equality turned into another mean how to acquire power, causing yet another slew of injustices, sadly.

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

#252

Post by Unklejoe »

eropple wrote: post #210
Unklejoe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[If you have personal preferences about whom you conduct business with, you shouldn't be allowed to conduct business with anyone.] Why? If someone chooses to discriminate, why not let them suffer the consequences of lost potential revenue naturally? It gives people who don't discriminate a chance to step in and gain market share. It reminds me of the story of the bakery who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay coup…

You're assuming a lot here. You're assuming there are multiple bakers. You're assuming the bakers aren't colluding. You're assuming that the homophobic baker isn't being rewarded through additional patronage or via other methods, i.e., the GoFundMes etc. for their nonexistent plights. And you're assuming that a normal-person baker who doesn't hate gay people would not be shunned for their support. The market will and…

I see your point. I guess for something like this to work, bigotry/racism/whatever would have to decrease in popularity to the point where you would be shunned harder if you were a bigot than if you were a person who openly objected to bigotry. We may not be there yet, but I do feel optimistic that we will eventually get there. Things were much worse only a short time ago. One thing that makes this ("this" being the idea of the market “handling” the problem) harder to accomplish is the fact that many people who may not be discriminatory themselves tend to have a passive attitude towards discrimination as long as it’s not happening to them. For example, many white people aren’t racist, but would they all agree to boycott a store that was openly racist towards black people? Probably not.

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

#253

Post by ebfe »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #202
ebfe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of dudes are convinced that society is "anti-male", you can get some examples in the "Ask a Female Engineer" thread currently going on.

Right. I have no idea whether it's a majority like it is with whites, but I would also disagree with a claim that very few men feel discriminated against.

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

#254

Post by hackuser »

Chronic9q wrote: post #229
hackuser wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US. I'd stay away from these issues on HN unless we really have something valuable and new to add. I'll just say that there's another side to this and many strongly disagree with this notion. To sum it up and just put both sides out there (hopefully not starting a debate), people facing widespread dis…

It's my home and I do what I want. If you're black and I don't like you, I have every right not to let you into my house, no matter your history. You cannot debate this statement.

I disagree with how the question is framed, around whether someone can do these things:

People can do all sorts of bad things; they can mentally abuse their children, they can gamble away all their family's assets, cheat their co-workers and customers, they can hate and do many other things to ruin their lives, their family's, their neighbor's, their country's and the world's. People have the right to turn the U.S. into a broken state like Somalia. People have a long history of causing death, destruction, and pain to each other; I think that amounts to the same point in your comment, and I agree it's irrefutable.

But who cares what I can do? Once we mature past childhood, it's meaningless; it doesn't inform our decisions. The question is not what can we do - who wants to do 99.9% of those things? - but what could we be doing? What are our obligations to our families, our neighbors, our societies and the world? What do we care about? What do we do well, where are we causing harm, and how can we do better?

Saying we can be racist - well of course. But it distracts from the real questions: What harm is being done? There is very well-established, serious widespread harm being done to tens of millions of people because of racism; it's gone on for generations. What can we do to make it better?

In most of the world, people (or at least some leaders) have chosen poverty, ignorance, and violence over liberty, and justice. In the U.S., people chose to do better - they could have chosen otherwise; I hope they continue to do so.

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

#255

Post by ndarilek »

criddell wrote: post #175
ndarilek wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm blind. Would you not rent this property to me because you fear for my safety therein? Would it make a difference if I've said I've skied, biked solo, rock-climbed? If so, why should I have to do so when others don't, and are trusted to make up their own minds as to whether your property works for them? Do you feel more confident than I am in determining my own limits? Disclosure: I've been denied many opportuniti…

Do you see any problem with home owners saying no to those that require the assistance of a service animal?

Yes.

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

#256

Post by CJefferson »

Chronic9q wrote: post #229
hackuser wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US. I'd stay away from these issues on HN unless we really have something valuable and new to add. I'll just say that there's another side to this and many strongly disagree with this notion. To sum it up and just put both sides out there (hopefully not starting a debate), people facing widespread dis…

It's my home and I do what I want. If you're black and I don't like you, I have every right not to let you into my house, no matter your history. You cannot debate this statement.

We can debate it, and many countries have many laws on the topic. However, you clearly are not interested in debating it.

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

#257

Post by untog »

exclusiv wrote: post #200
untog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say someone is bigoted and they own a company - if you're a potential employee in a group they dislike, do you really want to spend your days in their workplace? Also, what are the chances that the bigoted employer is going to provide a good experience or career progression when required? ...so we're cool with dropping employment discrimination laws too?

You're comparing employment with staying at someone's HOME.

If you choose to make your home a place of business, you must comply with business rules.

They're providing a service in return for money, they have to declare the earnings from such for tax purposes... there is no line here. A psychiatrist who operates out of a home office has no legal right to discriminate based on race, either.

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

#258

Post by stcredzero »

guelo wrote: post #246
stcredzero wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: straight white male in one of the most liberal parts of the United States and doing just fine. It's mostly about socioeconomic status. The overarching problem is the conflation of things like race with socioeconomic status. Poor white males being conflated with affluent white males is basically a part of the same phenomenon as poor black males being conflated with affluent black males. The former results in p…

Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks. It's really hard to make the case that white men are systematically disadvantaged in any real world scenarios besides maybe some internet or college social justice activist circles.

Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks.

So if our society mistreats two groups, only the group that gets treated worst counts? No. Suckiness based on discrimination is bad, period. It's still sucks, even if you're affluent, actually. It's this constant background corrosive.

How much interaction do you have with the justice system? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with them. How much do you deal with the police? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with police you don't know. Organizations across society are crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged, period. Heck, even employment is crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged!

The thing to watch out for in the struggle for social justice across history: Letting yourself create a scapegoat. Don't let some sort of salient indelible marker become a proxy for who someone really is as a human being. That's the root cause of the problem in the first place! Just as this goes for the fallacies of "blacks being criminals" or "Asians being good at math" or "Jewish people being business sharks" it also goes for white men being angry "supremacists."

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

#259

Post by usaphp »

I've recently used airbnb services for the first time, I stayed in Pasadena, the apartment was nice and everything but the ceiling fan was installed below safety height of 7', when I was taking off my shirt before going to sleep the spinning fan blade hit my arm pretty badly and broke down falling a feet away from my toddler son, host charged me 160$ (for a fan blade) for the damage and I had to pay it even thought I think host should be responsible for the injuries that your unsafe conditions cause. Airbnb was on host's side stating that I am responsible for damage, but think about it, what if host's apartment has some electric or other problems - will I be also responsible for damages that unsafe installation caused to their apartment? I will not use airbnb services anymore because of that one awful experience I had. The overnight stay that was suppose to save me money - turned into a much more expensive and quite painful experience than what a hotel could have offered me.

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

#260

Post by hackuser »

bitL wrote: post #251
hackuser wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment doesn't provide a substantive basis to any of its claims, and unfortunately, whether the author means it that way or not, it reads like a lot of racial propaganda. Spreading that kind of idea has historically led to very bad results, with many people getting hurt, killed, and oppressed. I hope we can be very careful and apply scrutiny to what we write on the issue; words have serious impact. Nobody shoul…

Why would I want to attack you? I'd love to see you achieving the utmost goodness potential you can reach without the need to bow under senseless political currents. Coming from a society ranked amongst the highest in equality scale, it comes naturally to me. Frankly, I was writing about my experiences while I was traveling around the world for roughly 2 years and using mainly AirBnB for accommodation. Do you really…

The facts are that certain groups have far more opportunity than others, including access to education, jobs, health care, power in their communities - and now Airbnb rooms, among many other things - not just access to upper echelons (though that is an issue too, because it means these groups lack a seat at the table when decisions are made). The extensive, overwhelming research, and centuries of history show which groups these are.

That doesn't mean there is no other suffering in the world; that begs the question. It means these groups face much greater problems, your unsubstantiated claims notwithstanding. Given the overwhelming evidence, why wouldn't you want to do something about it?

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