Our Commitment to Trust & Safety

I've been critical of AirBnB in the past, but I liked the tone of Chesky's post. If only they had done this on June 29, instead a month later. But: it's never too late.

I hope this is the penultimate word in this saga (EJ's would be the last word; and I'm hoping, after this, her blog would be positive and upbeat).

The lesson to be learnt is: if you're in a consumer-facing business, and a black swan event happens, don't worry about valuations, etc. but worry about the customer who's affected. Fix the root cause, and the outcome will fix itself.

They’ve certainly got on track with this (although the photo struck me too as hitting the wrong chord). But stepping back to look at the opportunity airbnb presents as a business, I’m not so sure there are security measures that could be satisfying to enough people to make this a massive company – assuming that their core business continues to involve people renting their primary residence. In engaging in any activity, people approach it with an unconscious calculus that is something like: the perceived benefits vs. the perceived financial, emotional, physical, etc. risks less any offsetting measures to mitigate these risks. Of course, for any activity, the math comes out differently for different people and often has less to do with actual risks than perceived risks and fears. Thus, fear of flying is fairly common despite low risk of harm – mainly because a bad result is so horrifying and likely lethal and the fact that not being in the drivers’ seat stokes our fear. Conversely, driving is probably by far the most dangerous thing we do and the risks are often underappreciated, but the benefits are not just huge – it’s almost a mandatory activity. Plus, being the driver can give us a (false) sense that we can avoid risk and while we can vividly picture going down in flames in a plane, we can easily not appreciate that driving into a wall at just 30mph is like jumping off a three story building in terms of impact against the dashboard. Because of the nationalization of the media and access to the internet, I now hear about child abductions that I would never have heard of in the ‘50’s. Thus, my perceived risk of that happening to my kids has grown (almost certainly way out of proportion to the actual risk) and so I don’t/won’t do things that my parents did to me such as booting me out into the neighborhood to play on my own at a young age. Applying this construct to Airbnb’s present model, I don’t think I see a billion dollar company here. I would think that the benefit is not huge when weighed against the negatives and risks. Sure, I might make a few hundred dollars or get a cheap place to stay, but as space provider I’m asking myself: will they steal something? Trash the place? Do I want a stranger using my toilet? Will they clean that toilet after they use it? Do I want to clean that toilet after they’ve used it because I don't trust that they did? Where exactly is my backup toothbrush in relation to them when they’re using my toilet? Did they copy my key to burglarize me later when they’re long forgotten me as a model airbnb tenant? As tenant, I’m wondering: how clean is this place? Are there hidden cameras watching me as I change, etc.? The list goes on and on and note that few of these have to do with monetary losses, and some of them are negatives that could exist with perfectly nice tenants/landlords. So with this model I see relatively low reward with a kind of vivid and extensive set of potential negatives ranging from toilet hygiene to what EJ experienced to worse. Plus, the perceived likelihood of some of the dramatically bad outcomes goes way up with each EJ story that comes out and amplifies potential users’ concerns even if the likelihood, like crashing on a commercial flight, is actually very low. Certainly, they’ve proven that there is a subset of people who like the risk/reward math for using airbnb, but I personally don’t see the huge growth potential and valuation that their capital raises would imply (again, assuming no major shifts in their business model).

> "If AirBnB had over-reacted and offered Troy thousands of dollars (as was being suggested for EJ), they would have lost out - because Troy was happy with just a few free nights in AirBnB credit."

Even from a "business standpoint" I do not feel they would have lost out. Because they would have avoided the EJ fiasco, and still garnered the media and public appreciation from the apology, support, and restitution to Troy.

The company may not have been able to know the story of EJ, specifically, would take this path. But it was predictable that at some point a vandalism or safety issue would eventually get picked up in the media.

Agree with you on this step... They've still got challenges ahead, but this direction seems right.

There's a pretty good (if a bit dramatic) analysis of other things that they might want to do at http://blog.agrawals.org/2011/08/01/airbnb-ransack-response-....

I immediately thought of Joey L's logging style, which is similar to Greenberg's. Basically, the really strong lighting on the sides and relatively dark front of face looks like his work for the Twilight movie posters.