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

Airbnb and security camera disclosure

jeffreybigham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 406 posts

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#341

Post by matz1 »

throw2016 wrote: post #292
matz1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can choose to care about privacy, but then you have to accept that there will be cost associated with it, you have to worry all the time about every single thing to do. It mentally taxing and the cost is just going to be higher and higher. >These things are generational and accumulated wisdom about privacy, surveillance and their cascading consequences into other aspects of society including sleepwalking into a p…

On the contrary with surveillance there is a 'chilling effect' and people will be constantly wary and not speak their mind. These societal experiences have already happened, are heavily documented and thus we do not have to speculate, we know. The only reason you don't live in a police state and in a democracy is because someone 'cared' about it. Its perfectly valid not to care about these things but its quite anothe…

One way against police state is to fight/demand as much transparency as possible for everyone, including the government. Government want to surveillance the citizen, fine, we should be able to surveillance government too.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#342

Post by woolvalley »

heurist wrote: post #276
dawnerd wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As mentioned by the other responses, you are mistaken. Reviews can't be seen until both parties have submit their reviews or the review period expires. However, as a host I've encountered situations where I probably should have given a lower rating but opted to not submit a review because the guest seemed nice other than some minor poor behavior (had to ask them to be quiet during quiet hours, ignored our house rules…

I feel like rating systems need to simplify to:

- Bad & contact support (thumbs down). Details should be given as to what is bad.

- Good enough (thumbs up), the default rating if you don't do anything

And then have a third tier of "compliments" like you do with uber drivers to denote something exceptional.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#343

Post by dragonwriter »

munchbunny wrote: post #164
philip1209 wrote: post #120

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…

It's almost as if AirBnB's hosts and guests are bearing the externalities that should be priced into the transaction on both sides... For hosts, property damage, etc. is a matter of when, not if, and for those things you get insurance. But as far as I know that's not a standard thing for hosts. Pricing in hidden hosting costs would make hosting look less profitable up front, then AirBnB's market would shrink. For gue…

> It's almost as if AirBnB's hosts and guests are bearing the externalities

If the parties to the transaction are bearing the cost, it's not an externality. It may be a hidden cost, but it's only an externality if it is born by someone outside the voluntary participants in the transaction.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#344

Post by smnrchrds »

megy wrote: post #328
philip1209 wrote: post #120

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…

> The problem was that it was peak Summer in Barcelona, we were there for a long period of time, and the only available units were minimum 5x the price. What can they do then? Build new apartments for you? > We had an Airbnb burglarized Once again, what can they do? They are not a hotel. You accept that when you book somewhere. It is not magic, there are going to be horrible places, there are going to be shitty owner…

> What can they do then? Build new apartments for you?

Do the same thing an airline does. If a flight is cancelled, they don't just refund the original price you paid for the ticket. They have to get you to the destination. If the only available option is a first class seat, it's their problem, not yours. They don't ask you to either pay $1000 for the price difference and get on the next flight or get your $100 back and try to get to the destination on your own.

So in this case, the alternative was not building apartments. It was to eat the price difference and house OP in another listing or even a hotel.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#345

Post by sumedh »

city41 wrote: post #239
philip1209 wrote: post #120

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 consider Airbnb to be a menace to society. The hotel industry exists for a reason. I've been lucky and never had a truly bad experience with Airbnb, but I've had some lousy ones and never a top notch or even good one. Conversely hotels usually provide at least decent service and usually are great in my experience. What I really dislike about Airbnb is the feeling of being an invader in a neighborhood. Doing somethi…

> The hotel industry exists for a reason.

Didnt Airbnb start because the founder could not get a hotel because of some conference in the city and so all the rooms were booked.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#346

Post by muse900 »

blattimwind wrote: post #338
muse900 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally what I've come to realize over the years is that 'Use a startup while its young, get rid of it and get on the next startup once it grows beyond just being a simple pre-seed, 1st round startup'. My reasoning comes from the amount of cash investors pour money into startups, and startups having insane amount of deals at the very start in order to attract costumers like uber had and airbnb to an extend. After…

You don't think that your behaviour (i.e. consciously not just enabling but promoting new & continued "abuse[s of] their staff" etc.) is in any way decent, right? Of course I bought jewelry from the Nazis - it was cheap while it lasted!

No.

Lets be clear about that, using uber is not the same as buying jewelry from war criminals. (hit a vein cause my grandpa was executed by them).

Everyone used uber and keeps using uber no matter what comes into light. Certainty not many of us knew beforehand what uber was doing, and once it was out I think uber tried to cover it quickly by increasing benefits and whatnot for the drivers. So no its not the same and am not enabling any dodgy business or anything, don't misjudge my comment, uber is a multi-billion $ company of course its dodgy as any multi-billion $ company out there.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#347

Post by woolvalley »

decebalus1 wrote: post #88
anc84 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am calling bullshit. There is very little chance that German police in Hamburg would not consider those alligations serious. Lots of Germans have black hair. Few Germans are tall and blonde. German police will file your case in any case.

While an anecdote doesn't prove much, a distant relative of mine with a more Mediterranean appearance was detained by police in Munchen on allegations that the bicycle he was riding was stolen as he allegedly fit the description of a bike thief. After proving them wrong they mocked him saying something like 'how did someone like you managed to land such a high paying job? Do your colleagues like working with you? I m…

What happens if you insinuate that they're going to join the Nazi party next?

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#348

Post by therealdrag0 »

amerkhalid wrote: post #265
bradlys wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal of AirBnB is that there is a much lower barrier to entry. I rarely spend more than $50-100/night on airbnb. (With the $100 being in expensive areas and usually a whole apartment) I can rarely, if ever, find hotels that are below $80/night (short of them being extremely sketchy or in the middle of nowhere). Meanwhile those hotels don't always have kitchens, sizable refrigerators, etc. It's allowed me to tra…

Most hotel we stayed at, cost about $120-150 a night. And these were in Manhattan, SF, Austin, Vegas etc. I would def. stay in AirBnB to save $80-100 a night. Not sure how I missed such options, perhaps we have bias towards hotels that made us ignore these. Trying out our first AirBnB with a few friends in Austin next month. It will cost each couple $175 per night for one room in 4Bed/4Bath house . In the same genera…

Yep, I recently rented a cabin for a group of 5 couples. That was a lot of fun. Having common areas (kitchen, living room) is something you don't get with hotels, and nice if you want to hang around and play board games or something. (Of course home rental has been around before AirBnB)

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#349

Post by tomp »

rickyc091 wrote: post #254
tomp wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never received my money back based off of a technicality That's why try to always pay with credit card (preferably Amex).

Actually, I tried to file a chargeback with Amex! They declined it since they said the cancellation of policy was set to "strict" https://www.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies#strict-wit... . > If the guest cancels less than 7 days in advance or decides to leave early after check-in, the nights not spent are not refunded. ^ I basically got hit with that rule. ---- Edit: Wanted to add that I'm pretty sure AMEX has…

Interesting, I'm disappointed by AMEX... What about this part?

> this wasn't disclosed in the listing

Isn't that basically "false advertising" or "bought something and got a different item"? I thought credit cards/AMEX would cover that... anyhow, very disappointing.

Post reply on HN