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"So, to get these perceptions, we’ll share Airbnb profile photos and the first names associated with them with an independent partner that’s not part of Airbnb.
by gundmc 6y ago
"So, to get these perceptions, we’ll share Airbnb profile photos and the first names associated with them with an independent partner that’s not part of Airbnb. "
I have to imagine they considered making this opt-in and realized the vast majority of users wouldn't take action to increase sharing of their personal data. Despite the good cause, it is incredibly shady that they would implement this as an opt-out.
IANAL, but I would think that this would be a flagrant violation of privacy laws in many regions outside the US (this policy is limited to US hosts and guests).
Edit: I also did not receive an email, but found the toggle active in my account preferences after reading this post.
- ibejoeb 6y agoIt's only US users right now. Here's a more detailed announcement: https://www.airbnb.com/resources/hosting-homes/a/a-new-way-were-fighting-discrimination-on-airbnb-201 https://www.airbnb.com/resources/hosting-homes/a/a-new-way-w... Whatever good intention might be behind this, it's really off-putting to me. They send your photo and name to a third party who is tasked with evaluating those to determine your race. "will look at these photos and first names and indicate their perceptions—or, what race they think the information we shared suggests. They’ll share these perceptions with a specialized team at Airbnb exclusively for anti-discrimination work" Presumably that'll be correlated to booking data to identify rejections. I can't think of any other use case. Gotta say, if someone truly doesn't want me to stay somewhere because of my race, I'll take that rejection rather than force myself into a shitty situation.
- ponker 6y agoExactly! The AirBNB setup puts both parties in a vulnerable spot. If people are racist let them can my reservation, I don’t wanna see them either!
- teej 6y agoThis presumably helps Airbnb deplatform racist hosts, which is a better outcome in my opinion.
- ponker 6y agoI absolutely do NOT want that. Then hosts will learn to conceal their racism (unless they wanted to be deplatformed, in which case why wouldn’t they deplatform themselves?) and I might accidentally book with them.
- hunter2_ 6y agoI believe most attempts to counter racism involve shaming racists and therefore result in the concealment of racism rather than lack of racism, unfortunately. Just as teaching a kid to stop picking his nose or similar activities results in concealment more often than stoppage.
- strzibny 6y ago100%.
- dmode 6y agoAn opt-in strategy has some challenges here as the data may become biased a cohort of users and you wouldn’t be able to tell whether rejections are due to discrimination or the natural course of business. And opt-out strategy allows for the data to be as representative about the platform as possible