I think Airbnb (even leaving out the ‘skirting regulation’ stuff) is pretty much primed for discrimination. As soon as you require a photo of users you are doin

I think Airbnb (even leaving out the ‘skirting regulation’ stuff) is pretty much primed for discrimination. As soon as you require a photo of users you are doing that. It’s interesting to compare Airbnb and Uber (another company I’m leery of for skirting regulations). As a black man in Boston, catching at taxi was an exercise in humiliation/frustration. Either they did not stop, or they did and were incredibly rude/racist. When Uber became available in Boston I immediately joined. It was an incredible experience. No more having to deal with rude/racist cab drivers, no more having to worry whether I’d actually ever be able to catch a taxi to get somewhere. I have not used Uber in SF since I’ve found no problem catching a cab when I need to (and I’ve become disturbed by their business model) Airbnb is the exact opposite. It is essentially renting without the benefits of the Fair Housing Act or anti-discrimination laws. I’ve faced housing discrimination even with those laws in place (a good program on this is This American Life’s “House Rules” episode) so I’m under no illusion that things would magically be better on Airbnb’s platform. here are things they could do to fix this - Not require photos - Have metrics to track rejection by race (track when a host says no to one person and then yes to someone else for the same time period) - Have a streamlined complaint policy It’s not enough to ban one host cause he was so outright racist/egregious that it came to the attention of Social Media and finally their CEO.