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

Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 384 posts

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#331

Post by mikem170 »

dorchadas wrote: post #328
drstewart wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the locals feel entitled to housing over non-locals? Sounds like a lot of entitlement, which goes both ways. The issue is that locals feel entitled to corral scary outsiders into certain zones, which is a high level of entitlement that exacerbates the problem. When you realize your argument just boils down to xenophobia and "outsiders bad" it mostly falls apart. Locals don't get special rights because they're…

> Why do the locals feel entitled to housing over non-locals? Sounds like a lot of entitlement, which goes both ways. I mean, if you don't believe that the people who actually reside, work and live their lives permanently in an area are more deserving of the housing in that area than people who come maybe once a year for a week, then we'll never agree. > The issue is that locals feel entitled to corral scary outsider…

> I mean, if you don't believe that the people who actually reside, work and live their lives permanently in an area are more deserving

An area like the beach is an interesting. Do the limited set of people who happened to move there first get to exclude everyone else from a limited desirable natural resource?

Or what about a city that incentivizes job creation but doesn't allow more housing to be built?

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#332

Post by deeviant »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #207
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.

I've never understood this concept. Reddit is the worst, though at least you can argue that they probably have all the figures to back up the idea that engagement is much higher when they push someone onto the app. For a travel app which you are only using a few times a year I can't imagine this holds. It seems like it's product managers justifying their investment in the native applications in a lot of cases.

There is one simple reason: it's harder to block ads in the app version.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#333

Post by Grustaf »

vidarh wrote: post #314
Grustaf wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sarcasm? Obviously there are places in the world where dorms, hostels etc are in exceptionally good condition, like in Japan, or here in Scandinavia.

Hostels in Scandinavia at least, while they may well be in good condition, make up a vanishingly small proportion of accommodation because what they provide is well below the expected standard for most people even for short term stays.

You keep talking about "expected standards" all the time. These are YOUR expected standards. Poor people, students, backpackers and many others have different standards.

And please try to understand what is being discussed. In this instance I merely pointed out that "communal facilities that would rapidly fall into disrepair" is not a proper argument, since there are plenty of communal facilities in excellent condition, just as there are lots of privately owned slums. Your reply has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#334

Post by vidarh »

Grustaf wrote: post #333
vidarh wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hostels in Scandinavia at least, while they may well be in good condition, make up a vanishingly small proportion of accommodation because what they provide is well below the expected standard for most people even for short term stays.

You keep talking about "expected standards" all the time. These are YOUR expected standards. Poor people, students, backpackers and many others have different standards. And please try to understand what is being discussed. In this instance I merely pointed out that "communal facilities that would rapidly fall into disrepair" is not a proper argument, since there are plenty of communal facilities in excellent conditi…

These are not just my expected standards, but also market standards a whole lot of places, and the legal standard many places.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#335

Post by bradstewart »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #186
dsnr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I agree with your “opressive” high-IQ developers spin, but it’s clear that whoever implements this kind of captcha (even the not-so-challenging ones) doesn’t give a shit about user experience and deserve to metaphorically-speaking, burn in hell. I think it’s just an example for how developers should not make decisions about UI or UX in general. It doesn’t really matter how hard to solve the captcha is, it sh…

AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data. They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience. This is what you end up with.

They have a monopoly on STR listings? I use VRBO at least as often (probably more) than AirBnb.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#336

Post by vidarh »

Grustaf wrote: post #329
vidarh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, substandard implies it's below the expected standard, and it is as demonstrated by the fact that the market expectation is to have bathrooms. How many places do you see on the market without a private bathroom exactly? EDIT: In fact, many places you'd struggle to even get approval for places with communal bathrooms without special exemptions, as it's so far below expected standards that these expectations now oft…

> expected standard The places you see on the market are not free housing, so it doesn't really say anything about what we are discussing. > entirely unacceptable to impose it on anyone This is just silly. Nobody wants to impose anything on anyone. We are talking about housing that is provided for free, I don't think anyone is proposing round up people and force them to live there.

> The places you see on the market are not free housing, so it doesn't really say anything about what we are discussing.

They tell us what is the expected standard of housing. You're of course free to believe that poor people should be subjected to conditions most people opt out of, but to argue that this is not the expected standard in developed countries like the ones discussed is disingenuous given that this is demonstrated both by the lack of any serious volume of alternatives most places, and the fact that in many markets it is not even permitted to offer housing with lower standards.

> This is just silly. Nobody wants to impose anything on anyone. We are talking about housing that is provided for free, I don't think anyone is proposing round up people and force them to live there.

If the alternative is no housing, it's disingenuous to suggest there's no pressure involved. Lower the standards, and many people will be without a choice - this is part of the reason why it is outright illegal to provide the kind of substandard housing you're arguing for, because it'd encourage a situation where more people are left without a real choice.

Most of the comments in this thread also makes no mention of free housing. Indeed the comment that started this whole sub-thread made no mention of free, but about providing housing for the poorest cheaper. Your answer to that person made no mention of free, but simply argued there was nothing wrong with sharing bathrooms. My responses have focused on the fact that there are clearly a whole lot of countries where this is considered so far below acceptable standards that it's either not allowed to even provide such housing, or that there's minimal demand for it.

You're of course free to argue for changes to such standards and the provisioning of such substandard housing to poor people rather than to provide for them what is considered the minimum bar of acceptable housing in these places today, but don't pretend you're not arguing for lowering the standard well below what is in many markets the worst housing possible to legally offer.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#337

Post by wutbrodo »

deeviant wrote: post #332
VBprogrammer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this concept. Reddit is the worst, though at least you can argue that they probably have all the figures to back up the idea that engagement is much higher when they push someone onto the app. For a travel app which you are only using a few times a year I can't imagine this holds. It seems like it's product managers justifying their investment in the native applications in a lot of cases.

There is one simple reason: it's harder to block ads in the app version.

Does the airbnb app or website even serve third party ads?

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#338

Post by deeviant »

wutbrodo wrote: post #337
deeviant wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one simple reason: it's harder to block ads in the app version.

Does the airbnb app or website even serve third party ads?

It's less useful to focus on this single example, and more on the industry. Once these types of ideas gain momentum, they just become to be accepted as truth.

"If everybody else pushes users to their app over web, there must be good reasons to do it, we should too."

Expecting companies to rationally analyzed whether that is actually the case, is, well, expecting too much of companies.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#339

Post by vidarh »

Grustaf wrote: post #327
vidarh wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, a very tiny proportion of people are middle class while they are students or young professionals. Secondly, nobody here that I have seen are suggesting that it's a "human rights violation", but there is also a huge difference between people making the choice of living in a more central location or a higher standard flat and sharing a bathroom with a few people vs. establishing sharing bathrooms with str…

Millions of people, like myself, grow up comfortably middle class, and yet have no problem adapting to dorm life. What is objectionable about expecting people who receive free housing to live under the same conditions as students? Are students lesser humans? And where exactly do you draw the line, how high standard does free housing have to have? Middle class? Upper middle class?

The issue is not your ability to adapting in a situation where you're already engaging in privilege, but about whether it is reasonable to lower standards for the poor.

No, students are not lesser humans, but neither are poor people forced to deal with the effects of any policy changes to allow the lowering of expected standards of the housing provided.

Many places - such as in Norway where I grew up - the provisioning of housing units without bathrooms is only permitted in very limited situations exactly because it's consider unjustified to create a situation where even private landlords can exploit lack of choice for the poorest to coerce them into tolerating situations we'd not want to impose on others.

As for students, checking student housing for Oslo now, the largest amount of sharing of bathrooms I can find in "dorms" is sharing with one other person in the very smallest housing that is explicitly not considered suitable for e.g. couples or families. But in Norway at least, the norm is also not to push students into dorms, and people don't live in them for the long term.

So I expect that housing for the poor should at least not be worse than the standards we've come to see as the bare minimum to consider a housing unit intended for the long term to be habitable. Yes, the standards are lower elsewhere, especially for students, largely on the basis that it's a choice that often involves a good deal of privilege, and when/where dorms are expected or required it is often at least sold as part of the socialisation. In places where dorms are often expected, you're free to not apply to those universities or pick ones with higher standard dorms without losing the ability to go to university.

Poor people often face a significantly reduced opportunity to realistically choose without facing sleeping rough, and the notion that they have a genuine choice itself tends to come from a highly privileged attitude.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#340

Post by drstewart »

dorchadas wrote: post #328
drstewart wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the locals feel entitled to housing over non-locals? Sounds like a lot of entitlement, which goes both ways. The issue is that locals feel entitled to corral scary outsiders into certain zones, which is a high level of entitlement that exacerbates the problem. When you realize your argument just boils down to xenophobia and "outsiders bad" it mostly falls apart. Locals don't get special rights because they're…

> Why do the locals feel entitled to housing over non-locals? Sounds like a lot of entitlement, which goes both ways. I mean, if you don't believe that the people who actually reside, work and live their lives permanently in an area are more deserving of the housing in that area than people who come maybe once a year for a week, then we'll never agree. > The issue is that locals feel entitled to corral scary outsider…

>I'm saying tourism shouldn't come at the expense of the people who literally live and work and provide the amenities those tourists so desire when they visit

No one is forcing locals to provide those amenities - they're taking them in exchange for the dollars they so desire from the tourists who visit. Locals are free to deny all tourist dollars and turn down money for Airbnbs in exchange for renting it cheaper to other locals.

But they feel entitled to tourist dollars for some reason, without having to put up with tourists. Can't have it both ways, no matter how "special" you feel.

Post reply on HN