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Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#261

Post by nicolas_t »

ndarilek wrote: post #139
nicolas_t wrote: post #107

As an host, I'll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity. When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who's disabled (the building is 300 years old, there's no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn'…

I'm blind. Would you not rent this property to me because you fear for my safety therein? Would it make a difference if I've said I've skied, biked solo, rock-climbed? If so, why should I have to do so when others don't, and are trusted to make up their own minds as to whether your property works for them? Do you feel more confident than I am in determining my own limits? Disclosure: I've been denied many opportuniti…

I'd actually most likely rent it to you after I've made sure that you really know what you're getting and I've phoned my insurance to make sure it's not an issue...

I'm slightly biased though since my flat mate in university was legally blind and I've seen him be extremely independent.

It's mostly for people who have difficulties moving that I couldn't rent it since there's a lot of stairs with no elevators, the stairs are old and not that stable and inside the house, the stairs have no handrails to support oneself and the sidewalks of the street of the apartment are extremely narrow, badly maintained with people driving very fast in that street. I love the area and the place and it has a lot of rustic charm but it is dangerous and inconvenient.

I mean when I broke my leg and had it in a cast, I rented an apartment in the same city because it was to dangerous to access my own apartment.

Now, outside of renting my apartment, if I were hiring, I would certainly never discriminate against anyone who is disabled or anyone else.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#262

Post by tptacek »

Unklejoe wrote: post #252
eropple wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming a lot here. You're assuming there are multiple bakers. You're assuming the bakers aren't colluding. You're assuming that the homophobic baker isn't being rewarded through additional patronage or via other methods, i.e., the GoFundMes etc. for their nonexistent plights. And you're assuming that a normal-person baker who doesn't hate gay people would not be shunned for their support. The market will and…

I see your point. I guess for something like this to work, bigotry/racism/whatever would have to decrease in popularity to the point where you would be shunned harder if you were a bigot than if you were a person who openly objected to bigotry. We may not be there yet, but I do feel optimistic that we will eventually get there. Things were much worse only a short time ago. One thing that makes this ("this" being the…

I think much of the problem is that these toxic effects aren't being created by overt bigotry, but rather by cognitive biases. The people rescinding reservations are doing so out of loss aversion, which is a very powerful human impulse. We're also powerfully geared to think differently about outgroups than we do about ingroups, which makes it easy for us to believe that there's a higher degree of risk in allowing a black family to stay in our house than a white one.

Social stigma might blunt these effects but it's unlikely to eliminate them any time soon. I bet a lot of the people who (effectively) refuse to rent to black people don't think they're the slightest bit biased against black people. They're not keeping track of their individual decisions about rental applicants, and they can easily let their brains fill in the blanks to tell them there were all sorts of negative signals they picked up on when declining reservations.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#263

Post by massysett »

spaceflunky wrote: post #109
dilap wrote: post #6

I don't know if this is really a tractable problem. At the end of the day, either airbnb lets hosts decide who stays or doesn't. If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.

I did Airbnb for my personal residence for a few years, I was a "Super Host" three years in a row. These policies, while officially new, have been slowly edged in for a while and is the reason why I no longer use Airbnb. Why? 1.) Airbnb is still a new concept to a lot of people. Hosts need to time to work with a guest to make sure they know how the arrangement is suppose to work. Airbnb use to have a 'respond within…

Honestly, AirBnB is bidding you good riddance. They obviously want to be some big corporation competing with Marriott, Holiday Inn, etc. They aren't going to get there with people like you. They're going to get there by clearing the way for the professional "hosts" who are, in reality, setting up unlicensed hotels in apartment buildings.

If AirBnB is going to get big, they need to have anti-discrimination policies. Without such policies, the states and federal government will sue them into oblivion--whether any laws were actually broken or not. Civil rights groups will boycott AirBnB and any TV network that carries their advertising. The list of hurts goes on and on.

So there is no future for hosts like you who want to vet people. Vetting allows too much room for all sorts of unsavory discrimination. More importantly for AirBnB though, vetting gets in the way of AirBnB making money and competing with hotel chains.

This company dreams of being the "Uber of hotels." You're in their way. You're like the old-timey Lyft driver who wanted people riding in front and doing the fist bump. That's over.

The sort of hosting you want to do is going to have to route through some informal mechanism, like an email list or word of mouth or some web forum, or maybe a random Facebook group. It's incompatible with a Bigcorp that wants to make money, lots of money.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#264

Post by [deleted] »

brightball wrote: post #27
dilap wrote: post #6

I don't know if this is really a tractable problem. At the end of the day, either airbnb lets hosts decide who stays or doesn't. If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.

That was my thought here as well. It's one thing to have very public businesses with anti-discrimination rules, but something like Air BnB where people have to decide in most cases who they are going to let into their homes is a much more complicated problem. We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite o…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#265

Post by cloudjacker »

jasode wrote: post #12

>Airbnb said it would also accelerate the use of instant bookings, which lets renters book places immediately without host approval. Maybe I'm naive but it seems like that policy would be perceived by hosts as extremely hostile. Homeowners have both a financial and emotional vested interest in their homes so letting strangers book it without a cursory check isn't going to work. Having no checks would work for real es…

> On the other hand, if the AirBnb host is renting out a non-owner-occupied beach house, the discrimination laws would apply.

The particular nuance that explains exactly why AirBnB is forcing its users to agree to a new contract.

Renters will be violating their AirBnB agreement if they are trying to rely on an exemption from discrimination law. Easy

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#266

Post by bitL »

hackuser wrote: post #260
bitL wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want to attack you? I'd love to see you achieving the utmost goodness potential you can reach without the need to bow under senseless political currents. Coming from a society ranked amongst the highest in equality scale, it comes naturally to me. Frankly, I was writing about my experiences while I was traveling around the world for roughly 2 years and using mainly AirBnB for accommodation. Do you really…

The facts are that certain groups have far more opportunity than others, including access to education, jobs, health care, power in their communities - and now Airbnb rooms, among many other things - not just access to upper echelons (though that is an issue too, because it means these groups lack a seat at the table when decisions are made). The extensive, overwhelming research, and centuries of history show which g…

Most of us would love to see the real social justice. There were many whites trying their best to help the rest of the world, often with self-inflicted wounds from their own culture, as well as many whites that wanted to dominate the rest (but were Ottomans, Mongols, Huns, Kushites etc. any better back in their days?)

Look, a few thousands years ago the dominant culture were Egyptian, Babylonian etc. Then there was China, Aztecs, India, Rome, Islam, then enlightened Europe. All those older cultures became zombies on self-inflicted wounds when they couldn't cope with their evolutionary advancement anymore, their mental framework got stale, they probably overly indulged in pleasures their technology allowed them without caring about progress and justice and they went from advanced to weak, allowing themselves to be conquered easily.

Here we are at a wonderful place in history when everyone can seemingly have their words heard. We are also marching towards post-scarcity economy and a single smartphone has a larger computing power than the whole humanity had when we launched into the space. More than ever disadvantaged groups have their say. The previously dominant, white culture, allowed that, working on abolishing slavery, awful crimes and horrible warts plaguing all previous cultures. Why are you still feeling offended? So many people worked so hard on bringing the concept of justice to everyone. Should their successors be persecuted for whatever wrongs you historically feel? How many of those wrongs were self-inflicted by your own culture? When you compare your life in the US, would you exchange it for your native one? Would you apologize to all victims of your ancestors' horrible acts?

When there are some things causing injustice, they should be disbanded, and not new ones erected as a "payback". Please get it out of your system, we would love to see you cooperating on a just world.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#267

Post by cloudjacker »

ovis wrote: post #32
jasode wrote: post #12

>Airbnb said it would also accelerate the use of instant bookings, which lets renters book places immediately without host approval. Maybe I'm naive but it seems like that policy would be perceived by hosts as extremely hostile. Homeowners have both a financial and emotional vested interest in their homes so letting strangers book it without a cursory check isn't going to work. Having no checks would work for real es…

What if there was a reputation threshold for a traveller to make an instant booking? Of course it's still not immune to racism or sexism, but it seems that it would provide a decent buffer against it.

I found it kind of tricky to deal with AirBnB when I needed it, because my travel partner always booked the AirBnB, because my travel partner already had the rep.

How did you guys deal with it?

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#269

Post by cloudjacker »

draugadrotten wrote: post #15

Coming up next: AirBnB adopts rules in effort to fight discrimination OF its hosts. Some guests may avoid to stay with hosts of certain life styles, gender, race or religion. This discrimination must be stopped.

that sounds like an awesome money maker, $5 for every host listing/profile they evaluate

"to prevent discrimination"

I like market inefficiencies

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#270

Post by serge2k »

brightball wrote: post #27
dilap wrote: post #6

I don't know if this is really a tractable problem. At the end of the day, either airbnb lets hosts decide who stays or doesn't. If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.

That was my thought here as well. It's one thing to have very public businesses with anti-discrimination rules, but something like Air BnB where people have to decide in most cases who they are going to let into their homes is a much more complicated problem. We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite o…

If you don't want to be subject to rules on how you operate a business out of your home, then don't operate a business out of your home.
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