Given that the entire Airbnb model involves the host, guest, and the company splitting the profit that comes from pushing externalities onto everyone else it’s hard to have sympathy for any of them. No honor among thieves and all that.
Airbnb and security camera disclosure
41–50 of 406 posts
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#42Airbnb is nobody's friend except the CEO and stockholders. Have a problem, tough. File a lawsuit, now we're communicating. This is how Capitalism works.
I feel like we need some sort of hub for consumers to get together and share cost of initiating legal action. When you're solo, you are indeed powerless in this system.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#43I just assume that there will be camera constantly recording when I stay in airbnb, or anywhere really. They way I never have to worry about whether it exist or not. As recording technology becoming more and more advance, it's less and less reasonable to expect privacy. I rather adapt my life to fit this new culture.
I think expecting privacy will always be the reasonable approach. Giving bad actors an out because "oh well the technology's so advanced now let's just accept it" is giving creeps a pass.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#44There are two reasons I’ve decided to not use Airbnb again - specially when I’m overseas. 1) fear of getting locked out of Airbnb. I stayed in an Airbnb in Dublin in late 2017, place was OK, not too great -cheap ikea bed, cheap ikea couch, heater that was either tundra or Sahara. However getting in to this place required memorizing 8 digit number or having your phone on you. After that stay I genuinely appreciated 24…
Why not just write the number on a piece of paper?!
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#45Should have replied "Yes, I disconnected it so you wouldn't record our naked 2 year old.". Any discussion after that point surely becomes pointless.
This was my first thought as well. If you’re an Airbnb host and capture video of a minor without clothes on, you could be in a world of legal trouble.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#46Not sure I would agree to that. It’s one thing when they understand what I’m doing, and it’s quite another when they’re watching it closely. I was somehow watched, or rather, by my actions. With the help of SoftActivity, the management of the company where I worked supervised my employees. At first it was very inconvenient, but later everyone got used to it, for that they gained a lot of benefits thanks to such contr…
> At first it was very inconvenient, but later everyone got used to it, for that they gained a lot of benefits thanks to such control.
I almost want to laugh (and maybe cry)...this could've been ripped right from an early edition of 1984 or Brave New World. I can't decide which.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#47I just assume that there will be camera constantly recording when I stay in airbnb, or anywhere really. They way I never have to worry about whether it exist or not. As recording technology becoming more and more advance, it's less and less reasonable to expect privacy. I rather adapt my life to fit this new culture.
That's because you don't really care about privacy. If it were something else 'you cared about' you would be saying something completely different and wondering why others don't share your concern.
These things are generational and accumulated wisdom about privacy, surveillance and their cascading consequences into other aspects of society including sleepwalking into a police state are well known.
For those on the other side of the police state or who gain from these shifts, and there are many apart from many who 'just accept', these are merely to be hand waved away, 'normalized' as 'inevitable', 'not such a bad thing' or 'accepted' with quiet resignation but perhaps those with a greater appreciation of history, evolution of human societies and the perpetual quest for freedom and democracy and what it entails can take a wider view.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#48I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…
I have switched back to hotels too, due to my recent experience.
My friends and I were staying over at a 4-subroom Airbnb during the summer. The apartment looked great, and we really could not complain about the price either.
However, we started noticing that none of the furniture match; there we no more than two of the same chairs, the beds were all different, the cutlery was bent and visibly used, etc.
When two of my friends sat on the edge of a double-bed at once, the whole frame collapsed. Puzzled, we inspected further only to find custom fitted planks, badly mounted by too small screws, legs made of cheap wood, and so on.
Contacting the host, we were told that we had to reimburse him for a completely new bed, as well as the transport and installation costs. Meanwhile, we could just "sleep on the floor".
It became all to clear that the host picked up furniture from some kind of recycling station, and expected the guests to pay for it when it inevitably breaks. This way, he could continuously replace the furniture for new one, and having the guests pay for it!
Luckily, we could prove to Airbnb that the furniture was not original, and that it was modified multiple times, badly. After the whole vacation spent worrying about the communication between the host and the Airbnb, we managed to avoid having to pay.
It scares me that the host was willing and able to ignore the safety of his guests, and he got away with it without any repercussions from Airbnb.
PS: While my bad review of the host did not even put a nudge in his almost perfect 4.5/5 score, mine fell so drastically that most decent hosts might now reconsider housing me.
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative here would be a meet in the middle type system where venues could opt into a private regulatory body that entailed obeying a system of rules and regulations, and accepting adjudications of the body in case of conflicts. In return, entities could advertise membership as a selling point, and the regulatory body itself could provide lists of participating entities to anybody who'd like to find, for instan…
Or, how about one rule: No cameras in living spaces. If you want to make money using AirBnB, you understand that you can't use cameras inside living spaces. I don't think we need to invent a new bureaucracy to deal with this.
The system I described was much more akin to something like the Better Business Bureau than a new bureaucracy. It tends to be a way to get things done in a way where both consumers and businesses want to obey them (as is rather the definition of opt-in systems). For instance I just checked the BBB entry for AirBnB [1]. It turns out that even though they aren't affiliated with the BBB, they are rapidly responding to complaints and seem to be resolving most issues. Many of the complaints/resolutions are publicly displayed. Feels rather voyeurish reading them, but it's all quite interesting!
You tend to get much better results with using a third party company (such as the BBB) since the company's action towards the company stands to have much more weight than a single consumer's. It's similar to governmental regulation, except it tends to scale more appropriately with size. E.g. 'Ma and Pop BnB' are generally not going to end up facing BBB complaints since they can resolve things 'locally.' Whereas with governmental regulatory systems 'Ma and Pop BnB' is treated in many ways the same as multibillion dollar multinational "BnB" and inadvertent noncompliance can be devastating, even when such inadvertent noncompliance in no way negatively affected anybody as you invariably end up with some rules that make sense for multinationals, but not necessarily e.g. a couple of retirees renting out a spare room.
[1] - https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/rental-listi...
Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure
#50I just assume that there will be camera constantly recording when I stay in airbnb, or anywhere really. They way I never have to worry about whether it exist or not. As recording technology becoming more and more advance, it's less and less reasonable to expect privacy. I rather adapt my life to fit this new culture.
I think expecting privacy will always be the reasonable approach. Giving bad actors an out because "oh well the technology's so advanced now let's just accept it" is giving creeps a pass.
I didn't say giving bad actor an out. Just because you have information doesn't mean you are allowed to use the information to harm me. Its still illegal to do so.