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Hundreds of comments and votes. But I have not seen an apology from AirBnB on HN. Perhaps I missed it, but they should be everywhere. Why don't they understand

Hundreds of comments and votes. But I have not seen an apology from AirBnB on HN. Perhaps I missed it, but they should be everywhere. Why don't they understand this? Why are they not incredibly active on this and other forums? Have they no conscience? Do they really not care? Is this really still seen by them as a PR problem rather than a a horrible event that they at least partially enabled and thus should feel terrible about and seek to help the victim in any and all ways they can? The success of eBay, a P2P business, was initially driven by its community, and members treated each other with respect and were happy to trade with each other. AirBnB is behaving as if it doesn't care about its community, its customers. Is that the death knell sounding? Perhaps. To me the only recourse now is a new person or team at the top, folks that actually live the desired values of the company.

babebridou 15y ago
Let's be blunt: when there's a fire, the first thing that's required is to contain it. They failed at containing their public presence to a specific website/social network and now there are little flame wars sprouting everywhere and no way to adress every opinion. Unfortunately, I believe the best option at this point for AirBnB is to do nothing about it for this specific case, and brace for the next impact by preparing the field in advance (centralize comments in order to assimilate and answer public questions). This story should not be bigger than what's happened/happening to the victim - and that's huge enough already. Make her feel better first, then see what you can do about your "image". Tell your side of the story in one place and be receptive for critics. Something good can come out of this mess, but they won't find it if they think hiring more people to monitor/participate in more forums on the internet is a solution.

babebridou 15y ago

Let's be blunt: when there's a fire, the first thing that's required is to contain it. They failed at containing their public presence to a specific website/social network and now there are little flame wars sprouting everywhere and no way to adress every opinion. Unfortunately, I believe the best option at this point for AirBnB is to do nothing about it for this specific case, and brace for the next impact by preparing the field in advance (centralize comments in order to assimilate and answer public questions). This story should not be bigger than what's happened/happening to the victim - and that's huge enough already. Make her feel better first, then see what you can do about your "image". Tell your side of the story in one place and be receptive for critics. Something good can come out of this mess, but they won't find it if they think hiring more people to monitor/participate in more forums on the internet is a solution.