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Airbnb removed my negative review

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Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history. Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.

Since when is a social media account required to do online business? You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?

They buy profiling information from data brokers. Cataloging online accounts is one of the services they offer.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#192
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AirBnB's entire business is predicated on skirting regulation. From time to time you spot underappreciated comments here. This is one of them AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, etc - their entire business model is predicated on skirting regulations. Then people are surprised they don't keep honest negative reviews? Why would a company which is knowingly violating rules care about your negative review? They make money from hosts p…

It's not inherently bad. Some regulations are dumb and should be challenged by the market, like Uber and Lyft did to taxi companies and the protectionist regulations that kept them from evolving and improving. It's less about removing the review or listing and more about looking at the belief system in the business. If a local government says "this space is for permanent residents only" AirBnB would say, "why?" and w…

keep in mind why some of those taxi regulations were created in the first place.

In the not so distance past there was a FLOOD of drivers, few rules and regulations and eventually a "race to the bottom" (too many drivers chasing too few fares).

Then the pendulum of regulation swings TOO FAR in the other direction, creating the "medallion" system where these are worth a small fortune.

A happy medium is where the market self-clears with reasonble regulations to protect both drivers and consumers.

AirBnB is in the same boat. It was a good idea when it was individuals renting out unused rooms for some extra cash. now AirBnB is an unlicensed hotel, where people buy up houses specifically for AirBnB.

There are countless stores of people renting property, and then turning around and putting that on AirBnB.

And strongly agree, some rules are dumb, but the correct approach should be to push for change, not run illegal businesses like AirBnB, Uber, etc.

If i called someone to come get me from "A" and drop me off at "B" how is this "ride sharing" and not a taxi service?

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#193
post #180
post #8

Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback. They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested usi…

I'm confused, you think AirBnB should pay random people as employees to let them host short-term stays in their house? And this will help make AirBnB's moderation of reviews more honest?

I think based on context it's clear they mean "regulated like hotels".

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway from dealing with a condo HOA is that condos shouldn't legally exist, because people owning fractional buildings is doomed to result in structural collapse. Elected residents aren't qualified to make decisions about long-term maintenance which becomes more severe and expensive over time, and they have perverse incentives to avoid spending money. Faced with a substantial enough cost, board members can opt…

"People owning fractional buildings" has existed for almost 150 years, at what point should we start to see NYC buildings collapsing due to structural collapse?

This is false. The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old. There's some older buildings that have been converted, sure, but the legal concept isn't that old.

And buildings start needing more significant structural work after forty or fifty years. Which is to say, yes, I expect many more condos to collapse over the next couple decades.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#196

It feels like in the last few years all the beloved, life changing formerly-unicorn-startup offerings came crashing down. They are a mashup of dark patterns, unattractive price hikes, user hostile behavior, lies and trash content. Additionally, the early "mutual trust"/"assume good faith"/"organic"/"non professional"/"human" sentiments disappeared, everything is hyperoptimized by greedy capitalists and uncaring AI. T…

While Netflix has their own issues, I don't think I'd put them in the same grouping as [0]Uber, [1]Airbnb, and [2]FB/Meta. Content that some people dislike is way different than [0]driving taxis out of business, [1]contributing to housing crunch, and [3]driving civil wars/genocide.

Netflix also had a lot of the content that drew people to their service pulled from the platform by content owners wanting to spin up their own streaming services (with mixed results). It's not like they intentionally dropped that content to save money, the licensing agreement ended and wasn't renewed by the IP owner.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#197
post #97

There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them. In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often. Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be…

> people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market. And restrictions on short term rentals have little to no effect on housing prices. It's just another scapegoat (like foreign owned housing) that people like to use because they can't accept the fact that the s…

> From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market

It changes depending on the location.

Some places e.g. Byron Bay in Australia have been significantly affected by short term rentals.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would or should you have a say in what the property owner next door does? What does having a say look like?

Why should you have the unchecked right to disturb the peace of your next door neighbor?

Who tf claimed that? It's two completely different questions.

The issue is not Airbnb or not. The issue is guests etiquette and difficulty to penalize bad/loud/disrespectful people.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#200

There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them. In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often. Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be…

I don't think AirBNB is blameless, but so much of this could be avoided by simply building more homes to allow supply to meet demand. US cities have not been building enough homes for decades--this is the main driver of home values going up because scarcity drives prices up. The fact that the President, Congress, and most governors never really address this means it's not going to be solved any time soon. Even in California we do half-measures like upzoning that will take years/decades to have any impact.
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