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Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

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Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#41

Post by Riod »

meowface wrote: post #15
zzleeper wrote: post #6

Devils advocate: Suppose your stats are biased by a % of bad listings (fake, bad, etc.) that violate some rule. Would you want to include them in your numbers? If having the correct statistics (i.e. excluding these bad listings) was important for regulatory or marketing purposes, then fixing this before the report is part of the fiduciary duty of the firm with its shareholders, so no surprise here.

My thoughts, too. Though the question is why haven't they removed these earlier? Were they waiting to do it? Or was this just a result of incompetence followed by a panicked response?

Because they were making good coin from those listings

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#42

Post by Riod »

erdojo wrote: post #17

This report would seem more damning if the authors had at least attempted to keep their bias out of it. I found it significantly less credible because of it. I kept wondering what info they weren't sharing in their rush to paint Airbnb as liars and cheats. Or if their own data, which has no external validation either, is true. Someone also made a good point here regarding Airbnb's motives. It is entirely feasible tha…

If they cared they would have done it long ago. They chose to make money off those listings instead

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#43

Post by meowface »

ars wrote: post #19
meowface wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts, too. Though the question is why haven't they removed these earlier? Were they waiting to do it? Or was this just a result of incompetence followed by a panicked response?

Could be it never mattered before, because no one was looking, and now someone is looking.

I'd argue that's a form of incompetence.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#44

Post by ComteDeLaFere »

jzwinck wrote: post #9
owlmonkey wrote: post #7

The implication is that people are illegally listing multiple properties that they own or rent, but this analysis doesn't rule out the cases where someone hires a professional property manager to list their place on AirBnB while they're on vacation or away. That property manager will have multiple "whole home" listings but there's nothing illegal about it. But we shouldn't expect an unbiased analysis from a site like…

A huge number of rental tenants in NYC are not legally able to sublet. Hiring someone else to do it does not absolve them.

My building in a popular area of NYC does not allow sublet, and specifically calls out AirBnB as well. Given that, I would estimate 15-20% of the units in the building are now full-time AirBnB rentals. The suspicion I've had in the back of my head, that AirBnB "businesses" are driving up rents, is gaining momentum.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#45

Post by thefrostytruth »

tazjin wrote: post #23

It's interesting that the word "photoshopped" is being used for this kind of manipulation as well.

It's just bad writing.

It muddies their actual meaning, and an unfortunate metaphor that gets in the way--does more to confuse than illuminate. These guys are onto something big, but they're not great at presenting it.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#46

Post by rubidium »

andrewclunn wrote: post #4

To be fair, the fact that this was a New York City only thing could relate to NYC's particular subletting issues and housing laws.

To be fair, any company intentionally changing it's database before a public "snapshot" in order to gain public favor (and avoid possible litigation) is worth calling out as dishonest. So it's not really about NYC, it's about Airbnb.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#47

Post by sosborn »

thefrostytruth wrote: post #45
tazjin wrote: post #23

It's interesting that the word "photoshopped" is being used for this kind of manipulation as well.

It's just bad writing. It muddies their actual meaning, and an unfortunate metaphor that gets in the way--does more to confuse than illuminate. These guys are onto something big, but they're not great at presenting it.

And before you know it the word is redefined in Merriam Webster. Literally.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#48

Post by [deleted] »

thefrostytruth wrote: post #45
tazjin wrote: post #23

It's interesting that the word "photoshopped" is being used for this kind of manipulation as well.

It's just bad writing. It muddies their actual meaning, and an unfortunate metaphor that gets in the way--does more to confuse than illuminate. These guys are onto something big, but they're not great at presenting it.

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#49

Post by ccarter84 »

true_religion wrote: post #36
elemeno wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, altering your statistics to report to regulators will open you up to a lot of potential legal trouble as the regulators might well decide to take the view that you're deliberately giving them misleading information. If you need to massage the date to represent what you believe to be a realistic view of your data then you still need to start off with your 'bad' data and explain why you don't believ…

If regulators are investigating your business, they are already 'taking legal action' against you. Now regulators can and in many cases often choose to believe that companies act in good faith when they clean up their data profile before handing it to investigators. Without clear data, regulators can also assume that a company is trying to obscure the truth by throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a data set…

While investigations generally could precede legal action, they don't always lead to it. An individual could be investigated for a serious crime and later be ruled out by said investigators as new evidence comes to light.

That being said, this should lead to legal action by NYC.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#50

Post by itslennysfault »

tazjin wrote: post #23

It's interesting that the word "photoshopped" is being used for this kind of manipulation as well.

Maybe I'm just to literal, but when I read that I paused and wondered why you'd manually modify a report in photoshop. I'm now sure it was meant colloquially as "modified" but when I read the article I figured they meant it literally.
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