Kim Shumway: Good reporting on an entirely predictable problem. Fun fact: Airbnb also covers up thousands of sexual assaults every year! Its internal safety team has "cool-down rooms" to take a break from the trauma of what they hear. It's a bad company, a bad industry, and people should just stay in hotels.

Good reporting on an entirely predictable problem. Fun fact: Airbnb also covers up thousands of sexual assaults every year! Its internal safety team has "cool-down rooms" to take a break from the trauma of what they hear. It's a bad company, a bad industry, and people should just stay in hotels.

No room for privacy: How Airbnb fails to protect guests from hidden cameras

How Airbnb fails to protect guests from hidden cameras | CNN Businesswww.cnn.com A CNN investigation finds Airbnb fails to protect its guests against the persistent threat within its industry.

Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Awaywww.bloomberg.com When things go horribly wrong during a stay—the company’s secretive safety team jumps in.

Airbnb later dropped its forced confidential arbitration, btw, so now you can sue them when lax safety measures leads to something horrific happening to you. What a world. Bloomberg has done very good reporting on all this. This company is bad and people should stop giving them money.

Two Sexual Assault Survivors Spur Airbnb Arbitration Turnaroundwww.bloomberg.com For Sherry Dooley, Airbnb Inc.’s announcement last week that it would no longer force guests into confidential arbitration to settle claims of sexual assault was disturbing. For Natalie White, it mean...

Getting back to the hidden cameras, the problem is so bad that there are all kinds of guides about how to detect them! They sell hidden camera detectors on Amazon! Love living in a "one tech company sells us the tools to detect abuse enabled by another tech company" kind of dystopia. What fun.

How to find hidden cameras in an Airbnb, according to a security expertwww.washingtonpost.com We bugged a house with hidden cameras so a security consultant could demonstrate the telltale signs you’re being watched at a rental property.

Seeing some horror stories in my QTs. Gas leaks. No smoke detectors. If hotels had these failures, the *company* could be punished. But Airbnb shifts that responsibility to *individuals*. And no one checks. As an aside, this is what journalism is supposed to do: hold the powerful to account.

Have we not all realized that "disruptors" are really just the same service without regulation and taxes? And, more to the point, realized that regulation is good, actually?

Some predictable problems don’t have simple solutions, though. They can be mitigated without being completely eliminated. Sharing services offer great benefits one shan’t forget about and enable for example short-term housing in areas with low conventional hotel coverage.

Everyone loves banning new things (there have been movements to ban everything from coffee to bicycles to satellite tv) but I’d much rather see a pragmatic approach to address downsides while still enabling the upsides of an innovation.

I didn't suggest banning anything. I expanded upon the risks, which Airbnb tries to hide, and suggested people choose to stay elsewhere. There are use cases for it (large families, those who require kitchens), but there's also some horrific exploitation and no incentives to change. That's bad.

when airbnb popped up the first time i thought that shit sounded sketchy as hell. always always always stay at hotels or motels or cabins, there's so many options also airbnb is why you can't find somewhere to live in some places. like at all. it's all airbnbs

Yeah, people have talked about how they distort housing markets. And neighbors *hate* them. This is one area where I can get on the side of HOAs that ban them. (Although, then they have to enforce that, which is another thing.)

The two houses on either side of us are rentals owned by the same guy who lives a little further down our street. And I've clocked other houses in the neighborhood which are clearly rentals. I hate it so much.

NM finally made a law that you can only own 2 (still too many imo) and you have to live within 200 miles of them.

It started out good ... but the death knell for me was their shady as fuck advertising. They'd show you results and be like "this is the low per night price!" Then you open the listing and it's like "sike you dummy, there's also $100 in random fees per night".

Loooooooooooooove the convenience of paying a cleaning fee that's a full day's wages for a cleaner, then being expected to do like 80 percent of the cleaning myself before leaving for the airport.

and famous people should stop doing podcast ad reads for them. it’s really weird to hear seth myers or conan do ads for them… it is a bad bad bad company.

Yep.

(somewhere in my replies is me castigating chris hayes abt his podcast having gambling ads (not his vo) despite his outspokenness on that and he said “yeah but i do not interfere w/sales as a news guy it is unethical”, which is fine for a news guy but not these others & DOING THE READS TOO!! ughhh)

You'd think celebrities would have their teams do due diligence, but there's a lot going on and many people don't question things. For example, I thought everyone knew that Airbnb is problematic - it's been reported on for years! - but the reaction here tells me it's not common knowledge.

wow, i took a peek and i guess people don’t know!

I chuckle because a tech reporter has a podcast that mostly shits on AI as being a fraud. And now an AI company is advertising during the breaks. (He claims he has nothing to do with the ad buys, can't control it, and also hates the irony)

Zitron?

absolutely!

where IS my ed at?

Omg that article was horrifying to read! If yeh rapist wasn’t dumb enough to return later, he’d have not been caught probably. And the company just paying our money to effectively silence more complaints or noise. Wow.

And assault assaults. A host running a 16 bed hotel with a 2nd unit for unpaid staff. Physical threats. Calls. Multiple lawsuits. The building had up to 10 of 30 units airbnb. Owner thought he could run a bldg with 30 individual hotels & no security. Trafficking, too. LAPD let the celeb host go.

1. Unpermitted reality show crew 2. Drug bust as seen from the roof. LAPD were there to get drinking teens off the roof. 3. Bldg & Hotel mgrs together as I exit the back door to go to the police & report the first threatening call. 4. Me about to be arrested. Arrived guns drawn, lights & sirens.

1. Guest arrived after hours 2. Karaoke night 3. Underage drinking on the steps. Guests go out the back door. 4. Guest arrived after hours.

This article is insane. I hope this particular woman cashed a fat check from Air B&B.

what the fuck is wrong with men that do that? It's such a weird microcosm of sexual assault.

ABNB was fun when it was new, before creeps, slumlords, and wealthy landlords all ruined it. I stayed in some cool places and met some awesome hosts. Now it's garbage and the founders don't care about anything beyond being yacht bois

Its like a lot of things that start out pretty great like couch surfing- then the greedy and the crazys get into it and mess up what was once a lovely idea

VCs and stock traders ruin everything because most of them are sociopaths that don't care about people anyway

100%. It's a blight on society, so that frat brahs can make money off other ppl's effort and transactions.

Disruption! By which they mean "becoming middlemen who undercut safety regulations and get around unions." But I suppose "disruption" sounds catchier.

I really don’t want to wind up in a Barbarian style air b n b lmao just literally find a hotel

People could actually be living in these homes, instead we get one of the worst companies in the world.

Something something about the lack of Chevron doctrine compounding the problem

We had an encounter this weekend that made us feel unsafe. We immediately dipped out but I can see how others might stay due to necessity or minimizing the situation. Thank you for bringing this to light!

I hope everyone's okay. My sympathies. It doesn't have to be this way.

I ❤️ Airbnb

You're really going to hate how the hotel business works...

Holy crap. That is just... wow I have no words.

It's very bad and has been so for a long time!

And this is why I've never even considered staying at an Airbnb.

Same

😲

Never understood Airbnb or the reasons to stay in some strangers unregulated rental property.

Some of these assaults are also that Airbnb is used as a brothel for travelling prostitutes from Eastern Europe. We have many cases of this in Sweden. (Buying sex is illegal here)

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