How The Hell Is This My Fault? • Hacker News Board

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#221

Post by gojomo » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #169

sunchild wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nagging issue for me is the extremely unusual eloquence of the victim. I wanted to believe this was just another online echo-chamber shit-show until I read her blog posts and found EJ to be a level-headed, articulate and eminently reasonable person. EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. It's one…

EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. I don't think that's factually correct. I believe she says communication stopped after the 30th of June. pg says this, "I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning…

EJ neither said communication stopped after the 25th, nor stopped after the 30th. She said the communication was very frequent and emotionally reassuring before the 30th. After the 30th – about when she wrote her 1st blog post – it was more 'occasional' with a cofounder.

Lots of people (including the parent and grandparent post here) have been treating this as a 'cutoff'. That's how EJ felt. That feeling comes across in how she chose to describe everything, but the real message she's sending is that she stopped liking the communication after June 30th, not that it ended.

My theory is that's because some initially empathetic support people were replaced with a 'just-the-facts' cofounder. Let's say he's trying to help by concentrating on the tangibles – do you have a place to stay? ok. is the perp caught? ok. will you call if you need anything? ok. is there any way we can twist this ending for you so you wrap things up on your blog more positively so people know AirBnb helped? er...

That style of communication could rub a still-stressed victim the wrong way. And a request like the last one could have been intended as a way of asking, "how do we help you so much that you can balance the fear and anger of your June 29th post with something better in an update?"... but instead be misinterpreted as untoward pressure.

That's just a theory, but it's a better theory than the one that AirBnb are jerks, or the false idea (based on various misreadings of EJ) that no offer of financial support was made and no communication happened for weeks. EJ's own posts refute those ideas.

When dealing with contentious, emotionally-charged situations, give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#222

Post by foxit » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #170

skue wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> she chose to make this public But she did this on her personal blog! She didn't go running to the media or fan this story. The story got picked up here then exploded. That was not her choice, and it caused her privacy to be invaded again -- by folks like us trying to figure out who she is, how credible she is, what she should or shouldn't have done, how she's feeling, etc. -- all while she's still recovering from t…

There was actually a considerable effort by friends of hers to get this story promoted. And it worked, very well.

What are you talking about? I posted the story here after a month had gone by with no word of what the outcome was. It was picked up and went from there - I do not know her and nobody who does had anything to do with it.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#223

Post by HardyLeung » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

trotsky wrote: post #163

I wish Arrington didn't try to make himself the story so much - I know it's his schtick but it's very distracting from the actual story here. He's obviously on HN regularly - if he had a problem with the way he was characterized in a HN comment the easiest way to respond to that is right there. Anyone reading pg's comment would see his rebuttal, pg would see it, and people could directlly make up their own minds. Ins…

In his own forum, unprovoked, PG called MA "bullshit", "in typical Arrington fashion", "not cool".

In his own forum, MA responded and made a big deal of out this comment.

I think it is a fair response. Not to mention, why would anyone expect MA to not jump on it?

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#224

Post by 9oliYQjP » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:19 PM UTC

Long term, this kind of problem isn't going away for AirBnB. To ignore it would be as foolish as a retailer avoiding the problem of shrink. To treat this case like it is an isolated, unique event, is also ridiculous. AirBnB might be tremendously safe. But so is flying, and people have irrational fears of flying because the odd disaster happens. Airlines have entire disaster teams in place to handle these rare events.

Honestly, I think a big problem here is that you have men handling a situation in which they were completely oblivious to the feelings of their customer. Men can't possibly appreciate the sense of vulnerability most women have walking down the street alone at night, let alone the sense of violation that occurs from events like this. What the woman in question implied in her blog post was anger that the men were cold and not paying attention to her feelings. My advice would be to find a woman with great customer service experience and give her authority to personally handle this situation, in-person.

That would take care of the immediate problem. Long term, AirBnB needs to develop a strategy for handling these sort of cases. Reports of insurance being offered is a good first step. But they need to think about having disaster teams in place similar to the ones airlines and insurance companies have. They are in the same boat as these companies; when something goes wrong, it goes very very wrong. That leaves people in severe distress and it takes more than just a standard customer service response to deal with situations like this.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#225

Post by HardyLeung » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:24 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #62

Confusion wrote: post #11

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.

Well, it seems I'm getting massively downvoted for calling out the inappropriateness of a title. How the hell is this my fault?

In case you don't know, this is the appropriate title for this story because this is how Michael Arrington titled his. In most cases, using the original title is the way to go.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#226

Post by jpdoctor » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:32 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #154

Sounds to me like Paul Graham has made a fairly fundamental and common mistake, which is to say believing the AirBnb people when they reassure him that everything is under control and there's no fire here. Paul, if you actually read the statements made by the CEO on news.ycombinator.com, it's very clear that AirBnb are the primary, if not only, ones at fault here. I don't want to call Paul a liar, since it seems like…

FTA: "Even if you don’t believe they are nice guys (which they are, among the nicest of all the people we’ve funded)"

Why anyone would believe somebody with a vested financial interest is beyond me.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#227

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:39 PM UTC

foxit wrote: post #222

jacquesm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was actually a considerable effort by friends of hers to get this story promoted. And it worked, very well.

What are you talking about? I posted the story here after a month had gone by with no word of what the outcome was. It was picked up and went from there - I do not know her and nobody who does had anything to do with it.

I'd like to take that off-line, but you don't have an email address listed. J@ww.com.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#228

Post by larrys » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:39 PM UTC

Maybe PG/YC/Airbnb see this for what it is. A great deal of notoriety that will help this startup after the situation lands on the front page of every major paper as well as the nightly news. Then will come EJ on 20/20, morning shows etc. telling her story as a word of caution. Airbnb will respond that they've fixed the problem though. Then even your aunt will know about airbnb. What's that publicity worth.

In the end, this won't hurt it will help. (Think of all the weird stuff selling on ebay like dead bodies, dead body parts etc that were constantly publicized many years ago. At times it seemed like there were new stories weekly.)

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#229

Post by andypants » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:45 PM UTC

ajays wrote: post #200

niklas_a wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the right thing to do - it seems like you are just freaking her out more. A better way would have been to pass PG's details to her.

I disagree. Giving EJ PG's details, and putting the onus on the victim to reach out to PG, is (IMHO) the kind of attitude that got us here. I think this is what happened with AirBnB too: they probably gave her a number to call "if you need anything", and then just moved on. The victim shouldn't have to go around knocking on doors to get help. Sometimes it's nice if the help comes to victim on its own volition.

In this case the 'someone' happens to be PG, a complete stranger to EJ and somebody with financial stake in airbnb, who got EJ's contact info from another complete stranger on the internet?

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#230

Post by foxit » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #227

foxit wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? I posted the story here after a month had gone by with no word of what the outcome was. It was picked up and went from there - I do not know her and nobody who does had anything to do with it.

I'd like to take that off-line, but you don't have an email address listed. J@ww.com.

Are you saying you don't believe me? First, I don't wish to have my email address passed on to other people without my permission. Second, I can't imagine what would be accomplished by my emailing you as opposed to addressing - or simply retracting - your unfounded statement here. Finally, your actions and assumptions you've related here today thoroughly creep me out and I do not wish to have private conversation with you.