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How The Hell Is This My Fault?

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Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#11

Post by Confusion »

Well, that's a non sequitur drama queen title if I ever saw one. A straw man in so few words: cunning. No one is faulting Arrington for what happened to EJ. Arrington is being faulted, rightly or wrongly, for bad journalism. Bait-and-switch.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#12

Post by bugsy »

That's extremely interesting. When the victim EJ posted (was it Thursday?) about being intimidated and lied to by Airbnb, it was obviously very different from what they were saying publicly. I figured though she is very very upset about everything and overreacting. However, this new report is a second witness that Airbnb is playing dirty behind the scenes while acting all nice guy in public, and PG defending it. Probably he believes what they say, but the fact is that it's Arrington that ends up being right on these articles, but even if it wasn't, we already know the story came from EJ the victim and not Arrington anyway, so PG either didn't do proper diligence in checking before posting or is outright lying to protect his investment. I think PG is honest and just didn't check up on things, but believed what he was told by his unnamed contact at Airbnb, who is clearly angry at the victim. The unnamed Airbnb contact's attitude of anger corroborates EJ's story that she was intimidated by them. What a mess. It's obvious at this point both that PG should apologize to Arrington and Airbnb is basically done for. I am sure they have many people there trying to do the right thing but they have at least one person there in CYA mode who has basically both destroyed the company and lied to PG.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#13

Post by grovulent »

It's he said - she said - kinda stuff that ultimately we'll never get to the bottom of.

But Arrington so often finds himself at the centre of these idiotic exchanges and personal attack-fests that it's very hard not to believe PG about this.

It's just a real shame that the reputation of a really cool company rests on that level of exchange between folks. It must be really frustrating for them.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#15

Post by Legion »

>> Airbnb has been offering to fix it

EJ said as much in the first post. But offers without follow-through are worthless. And the problem is that, from EJ's perspective at least, there has been absolutely none. And swinging a bat at Arrington won't change that.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#16

Post by jamesgagan »

bugsy wrote: post #12

That's extremely interesting. When the victim EJ posted (was it Thursday?) about being intimidated and lied to by Airbnb, it was obviously very different from what they were saying publicly. I figured though she is very very upset about everything and overreacting. However, this new report is a second witness that Airbnb is playing dirty behind the scenes while acting all nice guy in public, and PG defending it. Prob…

I can't imagine that AirBnb are "done for" after one such incident. I think the real issue here is that HN readers, the kind who root for startups to "stick it to the man", so to speak, are disheartened to see their champions acting like the old regime. That's why this topic, and the public bun fight in the aftermath have generated so much discussion.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#17

Post by mindcrime »

mahmud wrote: post #9
mindcrime wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of that, but this part of the story seems to have evolved past that. I'm only referring to the "Arrington vs. pg" sub-story that's fallen out of this. I certainly don't mean to make light of what happened to the lady who's home was ransacked.

It's a "sub-story" only if you make it to be. What you can do also is not give a shit and not look for debacles, existent or otherwise. I'm more interested in how the issue is resolved, not how it's escalated. Does the women get compensated? what does this mean for the future of online business that, literally, makes its way into our living rooms? will legislation result? new insurance products? etc.

I'm more interested in how the issue is resolved, not how it's escalated. Does the women get compensated? what does this mean for the future of online business that, literally, makes its way into our living rooms? will legislation result? new insurance products? etc.

I suspect that most, if not all, of us are interested in those things. That doesn't mean one can't also appreciate certain sub elements of the story from other angles. But to be fair, maybe it's still too early and maybe emotions are still too raw (especially since the woman in question still hasn't had this resolved to her satisfaction) for any indulgence in the possibly humorous aspects of this. If so, I was wrong to post my original post, and I and apologize to anyone who is offended.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#18

Post by sriramk »

I can't believe I'm defending Arrington here but for once, I think PG is off and Arrington is right.

Arrington's editorializing has been fairly tame in this story. A lot of the mess has been due to EJ's posts and Airbnb's attempts at damage control.

If you look through the original post, there are only a couple of lines where Arrington says Airbnb isn't financially responsible and that is, imho, a fair interpretation of what the spokesperson/Lukezic told him. TC has also done a fair job of publishing Airbnb's side of the story - guest posts, updating their posts, etc.

Airbnb's real problem here is EJ, not Arrington. Airbnb's image isn't getting tarnished by posts on TC, it is getting tarnished by EJ's blog posts which make Airbnb's people seem cold and insensitive.

If you look at PG's comments on the earlier thread, he seemed to imply that Airbnb disagreed with EJ's version of events (they called her before her second post, etc). That could be Airbnb's big problem - it seems to me they want to say EJ is lying but can't in public.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#19

Post by coffeemug »

The way many people here jumped to conclusions after the initial AirBnB story based on almost no information is really disheartening. Insulting the founders of the company, the victim, and concocting conspiracy theories based on a few paragraphs of information with barely any evidence is a really poor way to conduct oneself. Most decent people wouldn't do it in face-to-face conversations without getting to know a person at least slightly, and it's unfortunate that our psychology is built in a way that an extra layer of anonymity afforded by the internet enables a large number of people to drop all sense of tact and respect, and jump into personal attacks with very little information about the actual incident. If you're one of the people that engaged in this type of behavior, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're doing real damage to real people, while knowing almost nothing about what's actually going on, but more importantly, you're damaging your own reputation.

I had the opportunity to hear the founders speak a number of times. They're one of the very few founders that are incredibly genuine about bringing a positive change into the lives of their customers. They live and breathe positive change they bring to the world, to the point where they carry letters from customers that thanked them for saving their lives because the bank would have repossessed their home if not for AirBnB. Jumping on them because they didn't have a chance to give a complete response while handling a crisis is really uncalled for.

I don't know the victim but it's easy to misinterpret events after going through an emotional trauma. Most likely it's a misunderstanding, but even if it isn't, it's really inappropriate to insult people given the information currently available. In fact, it's never appropriate to insult people, and it's best to hold back criticism until more information is available, lest you do some real damage to real people.

There are some valid concerns about where personal responsibility ends and liability begins (legally and ethically), and how AirBnB's service will evolve to address these issues, but there are different ways to discuss these concerns, and discussions here so far have been nothing but poisonous.

EDIT: I posted this comment in the other thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825045). Sorry for the crosspost, but this is getting ridiculous.

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