18 ms·

I love AirBnB, and have used them many times. But in the case of NYC, AirBnB brought this wholly on themselves. They knew landlords were running whole building

by keepper 10y ago

I love AirBnB, and have used them many times. But in the case of NYC, AirBnB brought this wholly on themselves. They knew landlords were running whole buildings in nyc as pseudo hotels, and they did little until now. [1] They knew individuals were renting whole apartments 100% of the time, and did nothing.[2] They refused to give data to the attorney general, and instead, mounted an AD campaign.[3] Only after they were harshly penalized, did they promise to clamp down on the actual abuses.[4] So they willingly let their customers break the law, because nyc is their biggest market, and well, now want to play the victim. The spirit of AirBnB and the "sharing" economy is to share under utilized housing. Not to create illegal hotels. [1] http://gothamist.com/2014/10/16/airbnb_illegal_rapacious.php http://gothamist.com/2014/10/16/airbnb_illegal_rapacious.php [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/wooing-governor-cuomo-airbnb-boots-2-233-new-york-city-listings https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/wooing-go... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-refuses-to-give-user-data-to-attorney-general-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-refuses-to-give-user-d... [4]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/technology/airbnb-proposes-cracking-down-on-new-york-city-hosts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/technology/airbnb-proposes...

nostromo 10y ago
> They refused to give data to the attorney general, and instead, mounted an AD campaign. Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned.
- vkou 10y ago
  What about companies who's sole source of business is illegal activity? Ones that produce negative externalities they don't have to pay for? Do we applaud them, too? We're not talking about protecting a political activist. We're talking about illegal rentals.
  - wyager 10y ago
    This seems to be the meaningless complaint du jour right now. If you don't like a business or product, just accuse it of introducing negative externalities. No evidence needed! Whatever negligible externalities are introduced by Airbnb, they are vastly outweighed by positive effects like making travel more affordable and busting up the hotel oligopoly.
    - fineIllregister 10y ago
      >hotel oligopoly I felt compelled to point how ridiculous this is. There are tons of lodging options. You can see for yourself with a casual search on any price comparison site.
      - wyager 10y ago
        Most hotels in the US are owned by a small number of huge companies. Check out a few slides into https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/casnu/marriott-organizational-structure https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/casnu/marriott-organizatio... I travel quite a bit for work, and I've stayed at 30+ hotels over the last 2 years. All of them, with the exception of a couple independents in NYC, were owned by Marriott or IHG.
    - davidf18 10y ago
      > Whatever negligible externalities are introduced by Airbnb... NYC is a dangerous city. Many buildings have doormen to keep transients out. AirBnB introduces transients to our buildings. Please value the safety of children, the elderly, and women. A Priceline search of Union City, NJ shows hotels for $60 per night. Union City, NJ is 15 minutes from Times Square by transit.
      - sokoloff 10y ago
        Do we need to hear about these $60 Union City hotels 7 times in this thread?
        davidf18 10y ago
  - nostromo 10y ago
    Not even the attorney general claimed that Airbnb's sole source of business is illegal activity. But regardless, if an attorney general asked The Pirate Bay or Mega for all personally identifying user data, I imagine people would be singing a different tune. Or, similarly, if an attorney general asked Google for everyone who had searched for "piratebay" or "mega".
    - TAForObvReasons 10y ago
      > The site has 225,000 users in the city, but only data from those who rent out their place is being sought, according to sources. That would affect only about 15,000 of New Yorkers. > The legal strike comes just days after AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky tried to appease state lawmakers by agreeing that its users should collect the normal hotel occupancy tax and promising to work with pols to root out bad hosts. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/state-airbnb-article-1.1477934#ixzz2gyyYbfpM http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/state-airbnb-articl... The appropriate summary is: AG specifically wants information about people who actually owe hotel occupancy taxes. They aren't trolling for every AirBnB user. The difference compared to your hypothetical examples is that merely visiting the sites doesn't necessarily constitute illegal behavior. Searching for "mega" in and of itself is not an illegal activity, just like how searching for "marijuana" is not illegal (especially now that certain states have legalized recreational use). The true analogy is asking the torrent trackers to release IP information for connections pertaining to a specific torrent.
- keepper 10y ago
  That's a very easy way to put it. By their own admission, they knew their users were breaking the law ( attorney general claimed 50%, airbnb claimed 15% ).[1] You can claim "users rights" all you want, but knowing people are using your service to break laws, and just refusing compliance, well gets you to exactly the position they are in. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579575953059437762 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034803045795759...
  - nostromo 10y ago
    I bet 15% of Google users have used the service to break some sort of law. In fact, I bet it's much higher ("piratebay","where to buy pot","offshoring","visit Cuba") That wouldn't convince me that Google should turn over thousands of user records without a fight. It's important that prosecutors have some sort of burden or proof before obtaining personal information, not after. I hope all companies push back on such requests, even when it's not in their financial interest to do so.
    - yladiz 10y ago
      The difference is that you're not directly breaking the law using Google when you visit a torrent site, and there are ways to remove certain information from Google, like Chilling Effect. However, on Airbnb users were directly using the platform the flout or break the law, which is why they're in trouble.
      - lonelyw0lf 10y ago
        well said - Also they are aiding and abetting in breaking the law which should mean they are equally punishable and should be.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Sure. But if it's illegal to rent an apartment short term, and you post an ad to rent an apartment short term with reviews of people who did rent an apartment short term in the past, that burden of proof is met.
- revelation 10y ago
  Only they provided data. But they didn't spend much time anonymising it, instead removing commercial offers in a single Röhm-putsch, falsifying it for any independent analysis: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-data-purge-new-york-city http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-dat...
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned. Depends on whether the activity they're engaging is legal or not.
- timv 10y ago
  But companies that earns a substantial portion of the revenue from their users' illegal practices either need to actively participate in the investigation and enforcement of those laws, or expect that new laws will be created to work around them. AirBnB didn't want to solve this problem, so NY solved it without AirBnB's help. It's a predictable outcome, and one that AirBnB was hurtling towards once they stood in the path of any other solution.
  - wheelerwj 10y ago
    If a company profits from illegal activity, isn't that also illegal?
    - timv 10y ago
      It depends. If they do it knowingly, then usually yes. But eBay profits from people selling stolen goods. A telco profits when people conspire to commit crimes via email or phone. A pharmaceutical company profits when an addict buys drugs under a fake prescription. But the companies aren't specifically commit a crime just because those things happened and the company received income from it. Companies are expected to do take reasonable steps to limit those sorts of activities, and to appropriately assist law enforcement when they seek to investigate or curb such occurrences.
      - ewar-woowar 10y ago
        eBay can't check the source of a 2nd hand item to discern if it is stolen. Surely if there were landlords renting out entire apartment buildings then the sequential addresses would show up in AirBnB's data as mystreet 1a, mystreet 1b, mystreet 1c and so on? It must have been pretty obvious to the point that a routine check against illegal activity should have carried out.
josu 10y ago
>They knew individuals were renting whole apartments 100% of the time, and did nothing. While this certainly goes against the spirit of Airbnb and probably against their terms and conditions, if there is demand for this kind of short rentals, why wouldn't they be allowed? (Not directly replying to your comment, just opening up a related discussion) EDIT: linkregister's comment addresses the issue https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800412
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  they are in many places just not nyc. if you are against that, and i agree your point has merits, try to change the law. don't actively work to break the law.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    To be fair, they're 'just' following the Uber playbook of breaking the law in the most public way possible with the hope of changing the law in their favour
    - davidf18 10y ago
      No, not really, because AirBnB puts transients in apartment buildings that threaten the safety of people who live there. AirBnB seems to have little regard for the safety of New Yorkers: there are children, the elderly, and women who should be able to feel safe and be safe in their own apartment buildings. Many, many buildings have doormen in NYC have doormen who keep transients out. People are free to take Uber and it does not threaten the safety of New Yorkers. In fact, it has been helpful to help reduce taxi-like vehicle fares in NYC for New Yorkers. AirBnB does not benefit New Yorkers except those who rent out their apartments.
      - sokoloff 10y ago
        To the extent that AirBnB increases tourism to an area, or reduces the cost of lodging, leaving a propensity for tourists to spend more locally (and have the same total cost of their stay), the local merchant community benefits.
mathattack 10y ago
Thank you for sharing. I viewed this as "How did the hotel lobby beat the AirBnB lobby given that AirBnB hosts have so many more voters?" I still view it as a shame, but it's a little more complicated.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I'd view it as apartment renters and (especially) non-AirBnB host condo/co-op owners have even more voters than AirBnB hosts.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    Are the renters locals or out of towners? My (uninformed) impression was that AirBnB is more out of towners than long term locals. (I know a lot of folks who used it for business trips)
    - ghaff 10y ago
      The intent of my comment (which wasn't worded well) is that non-AirBnBing long-term residents or would-be residents (whether renting or owning) outnumber the hosters.
    - jeffwilcox 10y ago
      I've seen a couple examples of folks doing 3-6 month AirBnB renting instead of looking for and dealing with the apartment market. One friend in Italy negotiated to have the owner eventually just lease their unit for which they had a long-term AirBnB thing going. Interesting to see where this all goes in time.
    - drspacemonkey 10y ago
      I can't speak for NYC, but Vancouver is looking to ban AirBnB due in part to the displacing effect it has on long term locals. In an ultra-low vacancy rental market, every AirBnB unit takes a badly-needed apartment out of the rental pool.
- ryuker16 10y ago
Keyframe 10y ago
>The spirit of AirBnB and the "sharing" economy is to share under utilized housing. In Croatia, almost all and every airbnb listing is from/for a professional apartment which is renting 100% of the time. I used it like that and have been satisfied. I just presumed it's like that all over the world. It started out as a living space surplus 'sharing', but it grew into pro apartment renting.
- eric_h 10y ago
  All of the AirBnBs I've stayed in were like this (New York(upstate-ish), and Colorado (Denver & Boulder)). The place in Boulder was a rental property before AirBnB existed, and actually had a license, the place in Denver appeared to be built specifically for renting on AirBnB (as were both of its immediate neighbors).
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    So, the complaint has merit then.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Almost all of these things benefited me as a consumer and allowed normal people to get an income flow. You're asking the wrong question. You should ask why AirBnB posed such an existential risk to hotels in the first place.
- EpicEng 10y ago
  They pose a risk to hotels because hotels have to obey the law while these guys think they do not.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Ditto from the ground. Airbnb's political acumen, especially in comparison with Uber's, is abysmal. They clam up when authorities ask questions, piss off powerful constituents (e.g. prosecutors by launching ad campaigns against them and investors and early employees by blocking share transfers), and then routinely overplay their "popular support" card. If this is their ground game elsewhere, expect more backlash to follow.
- duaneb 10y ago
  I showed up in SF last year to find airbnb had ads criticizing local tax laws all around town. Disgusting. They are the heart and soul of why SF sucks to live in. Not terribly smart use of money, either, compared to growing markets where the brand is actually viewed favorably.
  - zip1234 10y ago
    Housing shortage is what makes prices high. AirBnB is not why prices are high or why there is a housing shortage.
    - subpixel 10y ago
      At least in NYC AirBnB is indeed why it is much, much harder to rent an apartment at the low/middle end of the market. Couples who move in together don't free up an apt - they rent it on AirBnB. To say nothing of landlords who don't replace tenants in order to do the same.
      - jrockway 10y ago
        This means their rent is too low, right? If they can make money by being a middleman, it means people are willing to pay more than what the landlord priced the apartment at. (I bet in NYC the brokers are to blame for this; they make the cost of moving very high.)
        10y ago

by keepper 10y ago

nostromo 10y ago

> They refused to give data to the attorney general, and instead, mounted an AD campaign. Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned.

vkou 10y ago
What about companies who's sole source of business is illegal activity? Ones that produce negative externalities they don't have to pay for? Do we applaud them, too? We're not talking about protecting a political activist. We're talking about illegal rentals.
- wyager 10y ago
  This seems to be the meaningless complaint du jour right now. If you don't like a business or product, just accuse it of introducing negative externalities. No evidence needed! Whatever negligible externalities are introduced by Airbnb, they are vastly outweighed by positive effects like making travel more affordable and busting up the hotel oligopoly.
  - fineIllregister 10y ago
    >hotel oligopoly I felt compelled to point how ridiculous this is. There are tons of lodging options. You can see for yourself with a casual search on any price comparison site.
    - wyager 10y ago
      Most hotels in the US are owned by a small number of huge companies. Check out a few slides into https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/casnu/marriott-organizational-structure https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/casnu/marriott-organizatio... I travel quite a bit for work, and I've stayed at 30+ hotels over the last 2 years. All of them, with the exception of a couple independents in NYC, were owned by Marriott or IHG.
  - davidf18 10y ago
    > Whatever negligible externalities are introduced by Airbnb... NYC is a dangerous city. Many buildings have doormen to keep transients out. AirBnB introduces transients to our buildings. Please value the safety of children, the elderly, and women. A Priceline search of Union City, NJ shows hotels for $60 per night. Union City, NJ is 15 minutes from Times Square by transit.
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      Do we need to hear about these $60 Union City hotels 7 times in this thread?
      - davidf18 10y ago
- nostromo 10y ago
  Not even the attorney general claimed that Airbnb's sole source of business is illegal activity. But regardless, if an attorney general asked The Pirate Bay or Mega for all personally identifying user data, I imagine people would be singing a different tune. Or, similarly, if an attorney general asked Google for everyone who had searched for "piratebay" or "mega".
  - TAForObvReasons 10y ago
    > The site has 225,000 users in the city, but only data from those who rent out their place is being sought, according to sources. That would affect only about 15,000 of New Yorkers. > The legal strike comes just days after AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky tried to appease state lawmakers by agreeing that its users should collect the normal hotel occupancy tax and promising to work with pols to root out bad hosts. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/state-airbnb-article-1.1477934#ixzz2gyyYbfpM http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/state-airbnb-articl... The appropriate summary is: AG specifically wants information about people who actually owe hotel occupancy taxes. They aren't trolling for every AirBnB user. The difference compared to your hypothetical examples is that merely visiting the sites doesn't necessarily constitute illegal behavior. Searching for "mega" in and of itself is not an illegal activity, just like how searching for "marijuana" is not illegal (especially now that certain states have legalized recreational use). The true analogy is asking the torrent trackers to release IP information for connections pertaining to a specific torrent.
keepper 10y ago
That's a very easy way to put it. By their own admission, they knew their users were breaking the law ( attorney general claimed 50%, airbnb claimed 15% ).[1] You can claim "users rights" all you want, but knowing people are using your service to break laws, and just refusing compliance, well gets you to exactly the position they are in. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579575953059437762 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034803045795759...
- nostromo 10y ago
  I bet 15% of Google users have used the service to break some sort of law. In fact, I bet it's much higher ("piratebay","where to buy pot","offshoring","visit Cuba") That wouldn't convince me that Google should turn over thousands of user records without a fight. It's important that prosecutors have some sort of burden or proof before obtaining personal information, not after. I hope all companies push back on such requests, even when it's not in their financial interest to do so.
  - yladiz 10y ago
    The difference is that you're not directly breaking the law using Google when you visit a torrent site, and there are ways to remove certain information from Google, like Chilling Effect. However, on Airbnb users were directly using the platform the flout or break the law, which is why they're in trouble.
    - lonelyw0lf 10y ago
      well said - Also they are aiding and abetting in breaking the law which should mean they are equally punishable and should be.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Sure. But if it's illegal to rent an apartment short term, and you post an ad to rent an apartment short term with reviews of people who did rent an apartment short term in the past, that burden of proof is met.
revelation 10y ago
Only they provided data. But they didn't spend much time anonymising it, instead removing commercial offers in a single Röhm-putsch, falsifying it for any independent analysis: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-data-purge-new-york-city http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-dat...
kafkaesq 10y ago
Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned. Depends on whether the activity they're engaging is legal or not.
timv 10y ago
But companies that earns a substantial portion of the revenue from their users' illegal practices either need to actively participate in the investigation and enforcement of those laws, or expect that new laws will be created to work around them. AirBnB didn't want to solve this problem, so NY solved it without AirBnB's help. It's a predictable outcome, and one that AirBnB was hurtling towards once they stood in the path of any other solution.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  If a company profits from illegal activity, isn't that also illegal?
  - timv 10y ago
    It depends. If they do it knowingly, then usually yes. But eBay profits from people selling stolen goods. A telco profits when people conspire to commit crimes via email or phone. A pharmaceutical company profits when an addict buys drugs under a fake prescription. But the companies aren't specifically commit a crime just because those things happened and the company received income from it. Companies are expected to do take reasonable steps to limit those sorts of activities, and to appropriately assist law enforcement when they seek to investigate or curb such occurrences.
    - ewar-woowar 10y ago
      eBay can't check the source of a 2nd hand item to discern if it is stolen. Surely if there were landlords renting out entire apartment buildings then the sequential addresses would show up in AirBnB's data as mystreet 1a, mystreet 1b, mystreet 1c and so on? It must have been pretty obvious to the point that a routine check against illegal activity should have carried out.

josu 10y ago

>They knew individuals were renting whole apartments 100% of the time, and did nothing. While this certainly goes against the spirit of Airbnb and probably against their terms and conditions, if there is demand for this kind of short rentals, why wouldn't they be allowed? (Not directly replying to your comment, just opening up a related discussion) EDIT: linkregister's comment addresses the issue https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800412

thesimpsons1022 10y ago
they are in many places just not nyc. if you are against that, and i agree your point has merits, try to change the law. don't actively work to break the law.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  To be fair, they're 'just' following the Uber playbook of breaking the law in the most public way possible with the hope of changing the law in their favour
  - davidf18 10y ago
    No, not really, because AirBnB puts transients in apartment buildings that threaten the safety of people who live there. AirBnB seems to have little regard for the safety of New Yorkers: there are children, the elderly, and women who should be able to feel safe and be safe in their own apartment buildings. Many, many buildings have doormen in NYC have doormen who keep transients out. People are free to take Uber and it does not threaten the safety of New Yorkers. In fact, it has been helpful to help reduce taxi-like vehicle fares in NYC for New Yorkers. AirBnB does not benefit New Yorkers except those who rent out their apartments.
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      To the extent that AirBnB increases tourism to an area, or reduces the cost of lodging, leaving a propensity for tourists to spend more locally (and have the same total cost of their stay), the local merchant community benefits.

mathattack 10y ago

Thank you for sharing. I viewed this as "How did the hotel lobby beat the AirBnB lobby given that AirBnB hosts have so many more voters?" I still view it as a shame, but it's a little more complicated.

ghaff 10y ago
I'd view it as apartment renters and (especially) non-AirBnB host condo/co-op owners have even more voters than AirBnB hosts.
- mathattack 10y ago
  Are the renters locals or out of towners? My (uninformed) impression was that AirBnB is more out of towners than long term locals. (I know a lot of folks who used it for business trips)
  - ghaff 10y ago
    The intent of my comment (which wasn't worded well) is that non-AirBnBing long-term residents or would-be residents (whether renting or owning) outnumber the hosters.
  - jeffwilcox 10y ago
    I've seen a couple examples of folks doing 3-6 month AirBnB renting instead of looking for and dealing with the apartment market. One friend in Italy negotiated to have the owner eventually just lease their unit for which they had a long-term AirBnB thing going. Interesting to see where this all goes in time.
  - drspacemonkey 10y ago
    I can't speak for NYC, but Vancouver is looking to ban AirBnB due in part to the displacing effect it has on long term locals. In an ultra-low vacancy rental market, every AirBnB unit takes a badly-needed apartment out of the rental pool.
ryuker16 10y ago

Keyframe 10y ago

>The spirit of AirBnB and the "sharing" economy is to share under utilized housing. In Croatia, almost all and every airbnb listing is from/for a professional apartment which is renting 100% of the time. I used it like that and have been satisfied. I just presumed it's like that all over the world. It started out as a living space surplus 'sharing', but it grew into pro apartment renting.

eric_h 10y ago
All of the AirBnBs I've stayed in were like this (New York(upstate-ish), and Colorado (Denver & Boulder)). The place in Boulder was a rental property before AirBnB existed, and actually had a license, the place in Denver appeared to be built specifically for renting on AirBnB (as were both of its immediate neighbors).
- Keyframe 10y ago
  So, the complaint has merit then.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

Almost all of these things benefited me as a consumer and allowed normal people to get an income flow. You're asking the wrong question. You should ask why AirBnB posed such an existential risk to hotels in the first place.

EpicEng 10y ago
They pose a risk to hotels because hotels have to obey the law while these guys think they do not.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Ditto from the ground. Airbnb's political acumen, especially in comparison with Uber's, is abysmal. They clam up when authorities ask questions, piss off powerful constituents (e.g. prosecutors by launching ad campaigns against them and investors and early employees by blocking share transfers), and then routinely overplay their "popular support" card. If this is their ground game elsewhere, expect more backlash to follow.

duaneb 10y ago
I showed up in SF last year to find airbnb had ads criticizing local tax laws all around town. Disgusting. They are the heart and soul of why SF sucks to live in. Not terribly smart use of money, either, compared to growing markets where the brand is actually viewed favorably.
- zip1234 10y ago
  Housing shortage is what makes prices high. AirBnB is not why prices are high or why there is a housing shortage.
  - subpixel 10y ago
    At least in NYC AirBnB is indeed why it is much, much harder to rent an apartment at the low/middle end of the market. Couples who move in together don't free up an apt - they rent it on AirBnB. To say nothing of landlords who don't replace tenants in order to do the same.
    - jrockway 10y ago
      This means their rent is too low, right? If they can make money by being a middleman, it means people are willing to pay more than what the landlord priced the apartment at. (I bet in NYC the brokers are to blame for this; they make the cost of moving very high.)
      - 10y ago