201–210 of 406 posts
Market solution: Airbnb just adds a search feature: [ ] Only show properties without security cameras
No, why would any host have security cameras in the living quarters? This is a huge privacy issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. A few years ago all our AirBnB experiences were good, but over time they have progressively got worse. For example, one host housed us in what felt like a derelict hotel/doshouse with all sorts of weird people staying and no working locks or fire alarm. On another occasion we booked a cottage, but it had a blocked chimney and was spewing fumes and smoke in to the living area. And for our tenth wedding anni…
It's hard to trust reviews when it's engineered the way it is. You're almost forced to leave a good review or else you'll get a bad review in return. People also don't like feeling guilty and transactions have been made personal. People do the same damn thing with ridesharing, really bad drivers somehow get 5 star ratings.
For the ridesharing, it depends. Maybe the driver has a route they know well, or has friendly connect. Maybe traffic for you was very bad and chaotic and there was no click.
For ridesharing I played tit-for-tat for a while, until I realized that I don't want to play this game (if my rating drops below a point where less drivers will pick me up, I will switch to Taxi's). For AirBnB: I never leave bad or lukewarm reviews, only good reviews. Getting a host that is actually there for check-in, really acts a host, is getting increasingly rare, so my good reviews are too.
It's also very rare for a security system to include indoor cameras. My own uses motion detectors to provide information about climate control and lighting needs, but absolutely no interior cameras.
It's not clear to me that the object in the picture is a camera. If it is, I do think the host should rethink having cameras in a bedroom, but if that's what it takes for him/her to feel comfortable renting out the home, then as long as it's disclosed clearly, then it's OK.
I'll add my AirBnB anecdote. We were in Hawaii. We checked into the AirBnB, and the first thing my wife noticed was that there were crumbs of food all along the walls of the kitchen. She murmured something about this not being good and attracting bugs. We turn off the lights, and a few minutes later she jumped up, claiming there was something on her. We turned on the lights, and saw nothing. I brushed it off. A few m…
I think that's what bothers a lot of guests who have an experience so bad they have to leave. Is there any penalty for lying in a description or putting guests at the risk of their own safety?
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I wonder if the Airbnb team has ever thought about their profit and its relationship to the externalities you describe. As a customer, I've felt like I pay for something and then bear lots of risk if it goes wrong, but the discount often isn't sufficient to cover that risk. At the end of the day, it may still be a good thing for the temporary housing marketplace if people who want certainty (in general or just for th…
I wonder if the Airbnb team has ever thought about their profit and its relationship to the externalities you describe I'm convinced the majority of "unicorns" ignore (or actively dodge) externalities in favor of lucrative profits.
I think most companies develop convenient ethical blind spots where profit motive conflicts with the ethical problem from generating externalities.
AirBnB takes a strong moral stand on "inclusion" as a principle but has a clear blind spot when it comes to consumer, property, and residential externalities. Facebook takes a strong moral stand on free speech, but it has a clear blind spot for privacy and public discourse.
Other companies don't necessarily take moral stands, but they still develop convenient blind spots. Youtube (Google) and ideological polarization in its recommendations, Equifax and its lack of cybersecurity measures, and so on.
This "as long as it is disclosed" policy invites grey areas like described in this post.
Ok, people suck. Not much we can do about that. For all you know, the host is archiving footage and could use it for whatever nefarious purposes later on. What really isn't okay here is Airbnb's response. Indoor cameras should be explicitly against their policies and finding one in an apartment should immediately terminate all the listings by that host. This is where some regulation actually makes sense, and it might…
They'd end up having to remove like most of the listings in Orlando then. It's pretty difficult to find a nice house that doesn't have cameras. I've opted to just stay in apartment hotel suites instead - ends up being way cheaper anyways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if the Airbnb team has ever thought about their profit and its relationship to the externalities you describe I'm convinced the majority of "unicorns" ignore (or actively dodge) externalities in favor of lucrative profits.
I'm convinced the majority of "unicorns" ignore (or actively dodge) externalities in favor of lucrative profits. I think most companies develop convenient ethical blind spots where profit motive conflicts with the ethical problem from generating externalities. AirBnB takes a strong moral stand on "inclusion" as a principle but has a clear blind spot when it comes to consumer, property, and residential externalities.…
It does?
I've lived in Airbnbs full-time for about 18 months while traveling, and Airbnb has lost my trust repeatedly in terms of reliability, safety, and user-friendliness. - Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it's many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay. - Airbnb support response times are horribly slow. They hide their ph…
I've lived in Airbnbs full-time for about 18 months while traveling, and Airbnb has lost my trust repeatedly in terms of reliability, safety, and user-friendliness. - Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it's many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay. - Airbnb support response times are horribly slow. They hide their ph…
This summarizes why we can't have nice things. As Airbnb scales, the problems scale too. Unless they started seeing serious financial implications putting the investor dollars at risk, Airbnb basically has no choice but to scale to 'sustain the machine' and stay competitive (monopolistic) in the shared-lodging marketplace. Airbnb sounds good in theory - like when the founders described how they came up with the idea…
Some things are no longer valuable when you intend to extract that value as money. That's why the poor king doesn't hire cheap mercenaries to protect his kingdom. Sentiment has nontransferable value.