I completely agree with most of your sentiment. I've been really confused by many of the views expressed on HN declaring the AirBnB should buy her a new house,

I completely agree with most of your sentiment. I've been really confused by many of the views expressed on HN declaring the AirBnB should buy her a new house, relocate her, or some other outlandishly expensive response, but there are two issues/questions being mixed here: A) Was AirBnB acting negligently or irresponsibly in the course of conducting business? B) Has their response been appropriate? On point A, I don't believe they were. As you point out, you're renting your house out to strangers. Hotels carry very, very large insurance policies to protect against the kind of stupidity and maliciousness that most of us never want to experience. On point B, it's hard to defend them. AirBnB has issued statements that are being rebutted by the victim in this case. That's how how you want your communication to end up in these kinds of scenarios. You want to embrace the victim, and if they're being unrealistic, you have to address that head on and have confidence in the rationality of person reading your words. If it turns out you're wrong, well then it won't really matter, because point A becomes unsolvable for you. It would require significant adjustments to their business model in order to protect individual renters from the type of activity observed in this case.