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Give me a frigging break! I don't care what the long-term implications are Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implic

Give me a frigging break! I don't care what the long-term implications are Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. They have responsibilities to investors, employees, and other users—they’re (rightly) making a decision with those stakeholders in mind, not the woman who had her house ruined. I don't care about cost Again, clearly you’re not cut out to run a business if you don’t care about cost. If my business does this to someone I make it right. Airbnb didn’t do this to her. The people who did it to her did it to her. Airbnb provides a marketplace for these interactions to occur—nothing more. The users cannot abdicate their personal responsibility not to use the service carelessly. I mean, we’re talking about letting people into your home here. Is a car manufacturer liable when a driver runs over a jaywalker because they were texting on their phone? No. Is the phone manufacturer liable? No. Should I be sued when I recommend my accountant to my friend and the accountant defrauds him? No. Should Craigslist be liable if precisely the same thing happened through Craigslist? No. Anything less is simple villainy. This is a test of human decency. Calling this villainy is one of the most hyperbolic statements I’ve heard in living memory. So is declaring, as if it were agreed upon fact, that Airbnb is evil if they don’t reimburse her. If you are going to enjoy the rewards of your business, you have a moral obligation to ensure that you make things right when that business harms someone else. If your company actually does something to somebody, then sure—but not when you’re company doesn’t. Airbnb didn’t do anything to her: she let a stranger into her house for a week without thinking about it! I’m not blaming the victim, I’m blaming the people who did it to her—but I’m certainly not blaming the middleman. What happened to this girl sucks, but your post is overly emotional and absurd. It’s not Airbnb’s moral responsibility to do anything about this. They may choose to from a pragmatically-motivated customer relations, reputation, and corporate image standpoint—and sure, it would be an all-around charitable and nice thing to do—but I completely disagree with the claim that they have any moral responsibility to do so. Airbnb can do whatever they damn well please and what they believe is in the best interests of their business. What I think is indecent is creating an artificially high and illogical holier-than-thou moral high ground divorced from the realities of running a $1B business that you then use to drum up a public crucifixion of a company that doesn’t live up to said standard.

danilocampos 15y ago
> Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. I'm really glad I learned that before earning my business degree. I'll tell you a story. A couple of years ago, during the height of the financial crisis, I decided to quit a pretty safe job, move across the country, and focus full-time on building and selling iOS apps. Just before the move, with cash tight, I shipped a new app. It was doing... so well. A nice bit of press, good placement in the App Store, and revenues like no other project had yet produced. There was just one problem: sometimes, you could enter a shitload of data into the app – and then it would crash without saving. A lot of work lost. Not all of the time, just enough to make you suspicious of the app. And as a result, a worthless tool. The fix was very easy. Absurdly easy: one line of code. An over-released object. But Apple doesn't work quickly now and definitely didn't then. I had a choice: two weeks of selling what I knew to be a worthless app or destroy all my momentum and pull the app until the fix was ready. So I pulled the app. Lost the high ranking that would have led to even more sales. Donated all the sales from that first day to a worthy cause, since I couldn't issue refunds. Fuck, did I need that money. But I never looked back. Because it was the right thing to do. You profit from creating value. If you do harm, you take responsibility and put things right. Anything less is unworthy of your humanity. That's it. If my passion for doing the right thing makes me bad at certain things, oh well. Money comes and goes. My conscience is with me until I die. > What happened to this girl sucks, but your post is overly emotional and absurd. It’s not Airbnb’s moral responsibility to do anything about this. Sorry you feel that way. We'll never have common ground to work together. Good luck!
- codyrobbins 15y ago
  You’re patting yourself on the back for not selling a buggy app to people? That's a completely different situation than that in the story at hand. Airbnb worked precisely like it was supposed to—there were no bugs. It’s just that Airbnb is in no way supposed to prevent things like this from happening. If you do harm Again, you’re not addressing the simple fact that you’re working from the assumption that Airbnb itself did harm here. They simply didn’t. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. Clearly Airbnb does not believe that doing so would be ‘doing the right thing.’ You’re simply calling them evil instead of recognizing that they have a different—and quite defensible—point of view concerning their responsibility.

danilocampos 15y ago

> Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. I'm really glad I learned that before earning my business degree. I'll tell you a story. A couple of years ago, during the height of the financial crisis, I decided to quit a pretty safe job, move across the country, and focus full-time on building and selling iOS apps. Just before the move, with cash tight, I shipped a new app. It was doing... so well. A nice bit of press, good placement in the App Store, and revenues like no other project had yet produced. There was just one problem: sometimes, you could enter a shitload of data into the app – and then it would crash without saving. A lot of work lost. Not all of the time, just enough to make you suspicious of the app. And as a result, a worthless tool. The fix was very easy. Absurdly easy: one line of code. An over-released object. But Apple doesn't work quickly now and definitely didn't then. I had a choice: two weeks of selling what I knew to be a worthless app or destroy all my momentum and pull the app until the fix was ready. So I pulled the app. Lost the high ranking that would have led to even more sales. Donated all the sales from that first day to a worthy cause, since I couldn't issue refunds. Fuck, did I need that money. But I never looked back. Because it was the right thing to do. You profit from creating value. If you do harm, you take responsibility and put things right. Anything less is unworthy of your humanity. That's it. If my passion for doing the right thing makes me bad at certain things, oh well. Money comes and goes. My conscience is with me until I die. > What happened to this girl sucks, but your post is overly emotional and absurd. It’s not Airbnb’s moral responsibility to do anything about this. Sorry you feel that way. We'll never have common ground to work together. Good luck!

codyrobbins 15y ago
You’re patting yourself on the back for not selling a buggy app to people? That's a completely different situation than that in the story at hand. Airbnb worked precisely like it was supposed to—there were no bugs. It’s just that Airbnb is in no way supposed to prevent things like this from happening. If you do harm Again, you’re not addressing the simple fact that you’re working from the assumption that Airbnb itself did harm here. They simply didn’t. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. Clearly Airbnb does not believe that doing so would be ‘doing the right thing.’ You’re simply calling them evil instead of recognizing that they have a different—and quite defensible—point of view concerning their responsibility.