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

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#51

Post by yesbabyyes » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:03 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #35

Let's engage in a little thought exercise. Pretend that you are the Airbnb victim. You live in incredible fear of psychotic criminals and identity thieves. The fear is so uncontrollable that you "spend [your] mornings recalling nightmares and breathing through panic attacks." Would you: a) go into hiding at a friend's place and lay low? b) go extremely public and take on a startup?

Would you:

go into hiding at a friend's place and lay low? ... for a month, and then

go extremely public and take on a startup? ... after a month.

Yeah, I think I might just do that.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#52

Post by sliverstorm » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:04 AM UTC

suprgeek wrote: post #38

sriramk wrote: post #18

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…

Seconded. It is hard to write a defense of TC given past events. However in this case they are SPOT ON. None of the stories are overtly "drama" or "editorializing" on TC's part. EJs posts are dramatic enough. PG has come out in explicit defense on AirBnB's behalf when they are very clearly falling short in the ethical and "right thing to do" department, not to mention trying to censor somebody by pressuring them. Tak…

PG has come out in explicit defense on AirBnB's behalf when they are very clearly falling short in the ethical and "right thing to do" department

Well, he is invested in them, and he is only human.

While I am not saying that is why he is backing AirBnB, it's good not to forget where people are coming from and where their interests lie.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#53

Post by gjm11 » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:09 AM UTC

sriramk wrote: post #18

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…

> Airbnb's real problem here is EJ, not Arrington.

No, Airbnb's real problem here is their own behaviour. (Unless EJ is simply lying outright about what they've done and what they've not done.)

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#54

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:10 AM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #37

I think perhaps the more important question here is with pg going to bat for Airbnb against Arrington, is this going to affect the long term relationship between Y Combinator and Techcrunch. Techcrunch have always provided favourable coverage to YC companies, but if that relationship is going tepid because of this affair, the negative fall-out could be far worse for YC than for AirBnB. Most consumers will forget abou…

Journalists get in fights. They drink and make up afterwards.

I think MA's been treated worse by others. If he's worth his stripes, he'll report on other YC ventures as they deserve to be reported on.

Human nature may creep in, and if YC ventures continue to act in the manner of AirBnB (as reported), I can see a justified negative slant.

Now, if PG wants to sue MA and see what sort of press that generates ....

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#55

Post by todayiamme » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:11 AM UTC

bugsy wrote: post #50

todayiamme wrote: post #30

This might seem stupid, but given the line of events if I was AirBNB's founders I would do this; offer EJ my place to stay, and cook a simple meal for her. That's it. The shortfall of AirBNB over here is that they might care, but they aren't coming across as someone caring, and a little bit of empathy coupled with a genuine act of kindness will go a long way over here.

I agree with you that is a smart approach. I think the reason they don't do anything to really fix it rather than lip service and lawyer wrangling and dirty PR tricks is they are afraid of setting a precedent. However, they should have thought that through a bit more. They are saying they've had a million rentals or some such with no incident. If that is true, covering someone's damage for the 1 in a million case sho…

I genuinely don't know the truth, but this reminds me of something Sivers 'wrote http://sivers.org/the-mob ( if I was Brian Chesky then I would ask for his advice. That man has a way with people. )

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#56

Post by bugsy » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:12 AM UTC

yesbabyyes wrote: post #51

hluska wrote: post #35

Let's engage in a little thought exercise. Pretend that you are the Airbnb victim. You live in incredible fear of psychotic criminals and identity thieves. The fear is so uncontrollable that you "spend [your] mornings recalling nightmares and breathing through panic attacks." Would you: a) go into hiding at a friend's place and lay low? b) go extremely public and take on a startup?

Would you: go into hiding at a friend's place and lay low? ... for a month, and then go extremely public and take on a startup? ... after a month. Yeah, I think I might just do that.

I would too. The person had been playing psychological games with her via email. This is not some teenager stealing a TV, this is a psychopath that plays long games with the victim the way a cat plays with a mouse before mauling and eating it. We are not talking some routine crime, there is a very sick component here that goes way beyond normal robberies. I carry (a gun in case it's not clear) in public and know how to fight, and I would feel extremely uncomfortable in my apartment until the perps were caught and in prison, not out on bail after something as twisted as what happened. ... Oh and yeah, I would also publicly trash the company (the two things are definitely not mutually exclusive) in order to warn other innocent people so they don't have to experience the terror and abuse that I went through. Unless the company fixed things. But obviously not knowing the identity of the person that was renting means they were a major contributor to the problem so I would definitely complain loudly, from wherever I was hiding out from the psycho killer.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#57

Post by resdirector » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:12 AM UTC

I really look forward to reading a Paul Graham essay about his experience here, once the dust has settled. I know he has written about PR before, but this is probably essay-worthy in of itself (perhaps something like "in the eye of a shitstorm" or similar).

I'd like to know his philosophies and how he came to his decisions to do what when, his thought processes etc.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#58

Post by fedd » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:21 AM UTC

todayiamme wrote: post #30

This might seem stupid, but given the line of events if I was AirBNB's founders I would do this; offer EJ my place to stay, and cook a simple meal for her. That's it. The shortfall of AirBNB over here is that they might care, but they aren't coming across as someone caring, and a little bit of empathy coupled with a genuine act of kindness will go a long way over here.

that would be nice.

they are afraid of it to become systematic, that's why they are trying to keep it secret that they are helping her materially etc, but it really doesn't need to:

such a thing happened for the first time, the next times anybody suffered would have to blame only themselves, because they knew the EJ story but handled their keys to stranger without the extensive check.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#59

Post by chrischen » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:24 AM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #41

This is my little 2 cents on this whole fiasco that seems not to go away. All this would not have come to this if Airbnb guys asked themselves a simple question. How would I handle this if this happened to my sister of wife. The main problem is Airbnb had about a month to fix this before it became 'viral'. It was only the post by TC that made me realise this issue was about a month ago (30 days!). As a fan of Airbnb,…

So how would they help this person? Reimburse her? AirBnb is technically not liable for those damages right? So how much do they give her? If it's too little it might be insulting. Too much and people would still complain about irreparable emotional damage.

They said they're trying to help catch the perpetrator right? In my eyes that's all they really can do and the only thing that matters. The damages are primarily the girl's responsibility but the criminal is partially Airbnb's fault.

Re: How The Hell Is This My Fault?

#60

Post by gojomo » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 9:29 AM UTC

bugsy wrote: post #46

gojomo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before jumping to more conclusions, compare also the EJ quotes in her interview with SFChronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i... They sound to me like she's slightly walking back her criticism of AirBnb, attributing it, at least in part, to the emotional stress she was feeling.

You know, I assumed that much of what she said was a misinterpretation of events based on emotional stress like you say since their public face was completely different from the aggressive stance they (at least one of them) were taking in private. However, that changed after reading the Arrington article because it is now corroborated that they do in fact have people there taking an aggressive stance, and who are lyi…

Compare Arrington's original writeup:

I spoke to Airbnb about EJ’s situation. They won’t reimburse her for damages, they say, and they do not insure against losses. They are helping police track down the person who did this, but their help ends there.

...with how Arrington now casts the spokesman's statement...

Airbnb’s Christopher Lukezic told me on Wednesday that the company was not responsible for EJ’s losses, that they are just a service to match people and that they were helping the police find the people who did this.

There's a subtle but very important difference: 'not responsible' is not the same as 'their help ends there'.

Did Arrington choose to punish the 'no comment' by using words carefully chosen to make AirBnb look worse? His latest post does not disprove that hypothesis!

And when Arrington says, "What he said is what I wrote [above], and what was in the original post", well that's not true. The original post had a stronger implication AirBnb wasn't helping. Which is exactly what PG was objecting to.