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I'm pretty sick of celebrating AirBnB. They create so many classic externalities problems and are doing basically nothing to address them despite simple soluti

I'm pretty sick of celebrating AirBnB. They create so many classic externalities problems and are doing basically nothing to address them despite simple solutions being available, like allowing people to look up addresses and file complaints without being a customer (ie: neighbors of AirBnB owners that are adversely affected). It's obvious why they don't do this: they know there are tons of illegal listings that would immediately be identified and pulled down, and they know that's a significant amount of their business. This doesn't even begin to address the legalities of subleasing, the negative real estate market effects for residents, etc. all of which AirBnB chooses to paper over with ads about how they are helping poor people get additional sources of income. We should be careful trusting them in having a significant role in our real estate system. As a company they behave irrationally and their values, outside of growth at all costs, are shallow, and as a country real estate provides a huge amount of our economic backbone. We're all still really mad at the bankers about the last economic recession, do we want to blame the next one on the tech companies? AirBnB: fix your existing marketplace and show that you can run a proper, legal business before expanding.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Celebrating? HN is extremely anti-Airbnb.
- bronson 8y ago
  wdewind was presumably talking about Fast Company, who are most certainly celebrating them.
- wdewind 8y ago
  Maybe, but AirBnB has also been held up as a positive story of tenacity and disruption in this community as well. It's probably gone on so long it's become a parody of itself, but people keep writing these articles because people keep reading them.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Not really clear on your tone, but HN exists as a tech forum because it is developed and hosted by Y Combinator, which funded Airbnb in a seed round (which I believe they still have, and assume is substantially valuable). So there is the probably more of a complicated community dynamic than "HN is extremely anti-Airbnb"
  - orky56 8y ago
    To that same point, Airbnb investors include pretty much everyone who have also invested in other startup darlings: Sequoia, A16Z, Crunchfund, Google, Founders Fund, Greylock, SV Angel, General Catalyst, KPCB
- dbspin 8y ago
  Clearly, based on the comments on this article, that isn't remotely true. As someone who lives in a city with one of the most severe rental crisis in the world, with a 3:1 ratio of Airbnb properties to rental properties: I earnestly hope they go bankrupt tomorrow and their founders are tried as accomplices to the violations of local law they facilitate. * https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/29/empty-dublin-housing-crisis-airbnb-homelessness-landlords https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/29/empty-dublin-...
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
like allowing people to look up addresses and file complaints without being a customer Complain to who, and for what purpose? If your neighbor is breaking the law or violating the terms of their lease, complain to the city or to the property owner. Why are you dragging this platform into it? I don't really want to live in a world where anyone on the internet can destroy my income via anonymous complaint. That seems really ripe for abuse.
- wdewind 8y ago
  For the same reason we drag YouTube into copyright complaints. You're correct in identifying that there needs to be some kind of fair balance here, but AirBnB makes a lot of business facilitating illegal transactions. I don't really think there are apartments in New York City in which running AirBnB is legal, for instance, and yet NYC is one of their biggest markets. But yes, they also have legitimate, legal business. The trick is it is very difficult for landlords to monitor their properties for this kind of behavior, and also difficult to enforce action against it (getting proof can be extremely difficult, for instance). Because much of AirBnB's business is flat out illegal due to zoning, property laws, HoAs and leases, I think requiring them to provide a better system for accepting accountability for the negative externalities they create is reasonable. > I don't really want to live in a world where anyone on the internet can destroy my income via anonymous complaint. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting an easy way for landlords and others to determine if a property they own or one near them is being listed on AirBnB. After that there are a ton of avenues for justice one could take, and it would probably include, along with government/HoA response, a procedure for forcing AirBnB to take down the listing given proof of ownership or something, similar to DMCA, but this is not an unsolvable problem by any means. It's one AirBnB is choosing not to solve because it would destroy their business.
  - RandallBrown 8y ago
    There is a really easy way for landlords to find out if their property is available on AirBnB or similar services. Just search for the address.
mullingitover 8y ago
> ...as a country real estate provides a huge amount of our economic backbone. I could do without the economy depending on real estate being a good investment.
- wdewind 8y ago
  Well, real estate is a very close proxy for "this place is worth living" which is a very close proxy for absolute population which isn't a direct proxy but is certainly a deeply contributing factor to all around economic growth/success. So while there are tons of policies we can tweak, and I'm sure there are horrible ones that create artificial bubbles, it's not really fully divorceable for the economy.
  - mullingitover 8y ago
    > Well, real estate is a very close proxy for "this place is worth living" which is a very close proxy for absolute population which isn't a direct proxy but is certainly a deeply contributing factor to all around economic growth/success. When the government is primarily working on the numbers (real estate values, tax revenues from real estate) there's a perverse incentive to maximize the numbers rather than serving the needs of the entire population. SF is a great example of this--the real estate market is a disaster for the middle class, but it's fantastic for the landowners and the city. Indeed, it's in the interests of both of those aforementioned parties to drive out the middle class from the region and replace them with more wealthy buyers. The whole system depends on this happening or it risks collapse.
- nostromo 8y ago
  That day will never come - at least not without blood in the streets - because we've painted ourselves into a corner. Money is created via bank loans. The largest bucket of loans in the US is mortgage debt -- and it's worth trillions more than any other type. Should this source of newly minted dollars dry up, the US could very quickly fall into a liquidity crisis. So, yeah, it's easy to shake our fists at high housing costs -- but what most people don't realize is that almost every dollar you've ever touched or earned was born in some other person's mortgage.
djsumdog 8y ago
I also noticed they're talking about these new dwellings being smart/connected. I told my roommate if he ever got an Amazon Echo/Google Home device, I'd shatter it with a hammer and throw it in the trash. Sears sold kit homes at the turn of the century (which arrived in train box cars and took 3 ~ 6 months to assemble), some which are still around today. I'd rather have something like that, which people can put together, without AirBNB doing a Google/Facebook style collection operation (I'm pretty sure they'll collect data they can sell to reduce the costs and gain a long tail profit).
gowld 8y ago
Occasional reminder that AirBnB was originally "growth-hacked" with a campaign of deceiptful and TOS-violating Craiglist spam, and your forum host and YC founder specifically looks to fund for founders who break rules (including laws) "that don't matter" (to the rulebreaker), on the advice of YC's current president.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  I would be interested in collating a list of these sort of issues (Which laws were broken by which branch of Uber etc?) has anyone made a start?
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    I actually started to do something similar to this when Uber was Lobbying the state legislature of Texas[1] to preempt Austin's goals of regulating background checks and fingerprinting drivers, but never really kept up with it. --- [1] https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/28/schriever-uber-lyft-lobby-deregulation-preemption/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/28/schriever-uber-lyft-...
- rchaud 8y ago
  If you succeeded, your underhanded tactics suddenly get re-framed in the press as fearless audacity and keen business acumen. If you failed, your underhanded tactics become a cautionary tale, and a reminder of why it<s important to remain ethical in business.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

Celebrating? HN is extremely anti-Airbnb.

bronson 8y ago
wdewind was presumably talking about Fast Company, who are most certainly celebrating them.
wdewind 8y ago
Maybe, but AirBnB has also been held up as a positive story of tenacity and disruption in this community as well. It's probably gone on so long it's become a parody of itself, but people keep writing these articles because people keep reading them.
throwaway5752 8y ago
Not really clear on your tone, but HN exists as a tech forum because it is developed and hosted by Y Combinator, which funded Airbnb in a seed round (which I believe they still have, and assume is substantially valuable). So there is the probably more of a complicated community dynamic than "HN is extremely anti-Airbnb"
- orky56 8y ago
  To that same point, Airbnb investors include pretty much everyone who have also invested in other startup darlings: Sequoia, A16Z, Crunchfund, Google, Founders Fund, Greylock, SV Angel, General Catalyst, KPCB
dbspin 8y ago
Clearly, based on the comments on this article, that isn't remotely true. As someone who lives in a city with one of the most severe rental crisis in the world, with a 3:1 ratio of Airbnb properties to rental properties: I earnestly hope they go bankrupt tomorrow and their founders are tried as accomplices to the violations of local law they facilitate. * https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/29/empty-dublin-housing-crisis-airbnb-homelessness-landlords https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/29/empty-dublin-...

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

like allowing people to look up addresses and file complaints without being a customer Complain to who, and for what purpose? If your neighbor is breaking the law or violating the terms of their lease, complain to the city or to the property owner. Why are you dragging this platform into it? I don't really want to live in a world where anyone on the internet can destroy my income via anonymous complaint. That seems really ripe for abuse.

wdewind 8y ago
For the same reason we drag YouTube into copyright complaints. You're correct in identifying that there needs to be some kind of fair balance here, but AirBnB makes a lot of business facilitating illegal transactions. I don't really think there are apartments in New York City in which running AirBnB is legal, for instance, and yet NYC is one of their biggest markets. But yes, they also have legitimate, legal business. The trick is it is very difficult for landlords to monitor their properties for this kind of behavior, and also difficult to enforce action against it (getting proof can be extremely difficult, for instance). Because much of AirBnB's business is flat out illegal due to zoning, property laws, HoAs and leases, I think requiring them to provide a better system for accepting accountability for the negative externalities they create is reasonable. > I don't really want to live in a world where anyone on the internet can destroy my income via anonymous complaint. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting an easy way for landlords and others to determine if a property they own or one near them is being listed on AirBnB. After that there are a ton of avenues for justice one could take, and it would probably include, along with government/HoA response, a procedure for forcing AirBnB to take down the listing given proof of ownership or something, similar to DMCA, but this is not an unsolvable problem by any means. It's one AirBnB is choosing not to solve because it would destroy their business.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  There is a really easy way for landlords to find out if their property is available on AirBnB or similar services. Just search for the address.

mullingitover 8y ago

> ...as a country real estate provides a huge amount of our economic backbone. I could do without the economy depending on real estate being a good investment.

wdewind 8y ago
Well, real estate is a very close proxy for "this place is worth living" which is a very close proxy for absolute population which isn't a direct proxy but is certainly a deeply contributing factor to all around economic growth/success. So while there are tons of policies we can tweak, and I'm sure there are horrible ones that create artificial bubbles, it's not really fully divorceable for the economy.
- mullingitover 8y ago
  > Well, real estate is a very close proxy for "this place is worth living" which is a very close proxy for absolute population which isn't a direct proxy but is certainly a deeply contributing factor to all around economic growth/success. When the government is primarily working on the numbers (real estate values, tax revenues from real estate) there's a perverse incentive to maximize the numbers rather than serving the needs of the entire population. SF is a great example of this--the real estate market is a disaster for the middle class, but it's fantastic for the landowners and the city. Indeed, it's in the interests of both of those aforementioned parties to drive out the middle class from the region and replace them with more wealthy buyers. The whole system depends on this happening or it risks collapse.
nostromo 8y ago
That day will never come - at least not without blood in the streets - because we've painted ourselves into a corner. Money is created via bank loans. The largest bucket of loans in the US is mortgage debt -- and it's worth trillions more than any other type. Should this source of newly minted dollars dry up, the US could very quickly fall into a liquidity crisis. So, yeah, it's easy to shake our fists at high housing costs -- but what most people don't realize is that almost every dollar you've ever touched or earned was born in some other person's mortgage.

djsumdog 8y ago

I also noticed they're talking about these new dwellings being smart/connected. I told my roommate if he ever got an Amazon Echo/Google Home device, I'd shatter it with a hammer and throw it in the trash. Sears sold kit homes at the turn of the century (which arrived in train box cars and took 3 ~ 6 months to assemble), some which are still around today. I'd rather have something like that, which people can put together, without AirBNB doing a Google/Facebook style collection operation (I'm pretty sure they'll collect data they can sell to reduce the costs and gain a long tail profit).

gowld 8y ago

Occasional reminder that AirBnB was originally "growth-hacked" with a campaign of deceiptful and TOS-violating Craiglist spam, and your forum host and YC founder specifically looks to fund for founders who break rules (including laws) "that don't matter" (to the rulebreaker), on the advice of YC's current president.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
I would be interested in collating a list of these sort of issues (Which laws were broken by which branch of Uber etc?) has anyone made a start?
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I actually started to do something similar to this when Uber was Lobbying the state legislature of Texas[1] to preempt Austin's goals of regulating background checks and fingerprinting drivers, but never really kept up with it. --- [1] https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/28/schriever-uber-lyft-lobby-deregulation-preemption/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/28/schriever-uber-lyft-...
rchaud 8y ago
If you succeeded, your underhanded tactics suddenly get re-framed in the press as fearless audacity and keen business acumen. If you failed, your underhanded tactics become a cautionary tale, and a reminder of why it<s important to remain ethical in business.