How The Hell Is This My Fault?

Once it became clear yesterday that the empathically-challenged kids in charge at Airbnb had no clue of how to manage the problem, and that the company was hemorrhaging tens of millions in notional value every time Brian Chesky opened his mouth and a bunch of lies and half-truths came tumbling out, the investors called an emergency meeting and tried to figure out a way out of this mess.

Clearly, as the situation had been left to rot for a month, giving the victim plenty of time to become more upset and alienated, it was too late to pretend that the situation itself had been handled in any way properly.

There was also no longer any subtle way to silence to victim - that bridge already been burned by the ham-fisted attempt to bully her into deleting her original post... attempts made, incredibly, OVER THE PHONE!

And, as those attempts were now part of the another blog post, it was too late to act like fucking professionals, meet her in person, put her up in five star luxury while they arrange and pay to have her home cleansed, fumigated, redecorated, refurnished, blessed by a witchdoctor, whatever it took to shut her up.... it was too late for all that.

So, Paul Graham, an intelligent man with a good eye for small details, noticed the one and only sliver of a chance Airbnb has to get out of this mess with it's valuation above the billion mark, rather than far below it: the universal antipathy towards Michael Arrington!

So, now, the course is set and, from here on out, Airbnb and their investors are going to completely ignore the truth that it was the victim's own account which contradicts Airbnb's rapidly shifting assertions, and, instead, they are going to pretend that the whole controversy is a link-bait concoction by Silicon Valley's favorite super-villain, Dr. Arrington. What actually happened will not matter and, right now, you can bet the Paul Graham is down on his knees praying that Jason Calacanis will take the tasty Arrington bait and run this story in the other direction.

Of course, the only reason this story has legs is that Chesky's article turned out to be so astonishingly and needlessly untruthful that the victim felt compelled to sit down and write a practically line-by-line rebuttal. It was truly one of the most remarkable own goals I have ever seen and, if you weren't already questioning the sanity of the CEO of a supposedly $1.3bn company not identifying, a month ago when it happened, that this could be a serious IPo blocker and, as such, promptly nailing it down, you have to wonder just how psychotic he is to have written something so bold, to have put himself in the position of being publicly exposed as a complete and utter bullshitter.

So, that is why Micheal is getting it in the neck and, on this occasion, undeservedly so... but you shouldn't let that spoil your enjoyment of it ;)

I think the reason they don't do anything to really fix it rather than lip service and lawyer wrangling and dirty PR tricks is they are afraid of setting a precedent. However, they should have thought that through a bit more. They are saying they've had a million rentals or some such with no incident. If that is true, covering someone's damage for the 1 in a million case should be something they can do. Let's say it costs $10,000. That's nothing compared to their profit for those million cases where it didn't happen. By not doing this they are sending several possible messages. One is that they believe that a lot more robberies are going to happen and they have been lucky so far. It's not going to be 1 in a million it's going to be 1 in a 100, and they can't afford to fix 1% of all stays that turn into robberies. This message also means they believe it is impossible to fix, they give up on the idea of ever being able to truly identify renters (the rentees are not as big an issue to identify since their names are on the deeds). I think that's crazy since it's really obvious they have been severely legally negligent in not actually acquiring real identities of renters, though they have certainly implied to rentees that it was safe as if they had. That's probably going to end up being determined by some court or consumer advocacy agency like the FTC to be a misrepresentation. The other bad message they send with this is that if they truly believe it is 1 in a million and they don't want to help her out by finding a place to stay and fixing her apartment, then they are obscenely greedy. There are costs to doing this sort of business after all, you can't just starve the business and take it all for yourself. Some money needs to be set aside for these sorts of 100% predictable and inevitable occurrences.

Whoever is on their hack legal team is should be fired and they should get some real lawyers in there. Obviously they are obsessed with CYA and avoiding responsibility. If that is where they want to be fine but then they have no business running this sort of business. This business is going to have robberies, rapes and murders from time to time. They should have had a plan. Yelling "it's not our fault", threatening the victim, playing the hypocrite, and attacking people who reasonably comment on the story (and through a third party, what cowards) is absolutely not the right approach. What you mentioned is pretty good though, but it's pretty clear that was brought up and dismissed as something that might cost a couple hundred bucks they were too greedy to let go of.