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AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data. They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience. This i
by onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data.
They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience.
This is what you end up with.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoI've never understood this concept. Reddit is the worst, though at least you can argue that they probably have all the figures to back up the idea that engagement is much higher when they push someone onto the app. For a travel app which you are only using a few times a year I can't imagine this holds. It seems like it's product managers justifying their investment in the native applications in a lot of cases.
- paultopia 5y agoLots easier to collect user data without having to worry about inconvenient browser privacy protections?
- hiccuphippo 5y agoA company I worked for in the past explicitly made the mobile web version worse so people would use the app. They did it because with the app they could send offers through push notifications. Ugh.
- ghaff 5y agoI don't know why so many people leave so many notifications active. I've even had people tell me that lack of notifications are the reason they don't like just using web sites on mobile.
- dathinab 5y agoIt also is more likely when to users to come back after stopping using the app for a while if it's still installed and as such they can "stumble" about it. Anyway the most well known example is probably YT which slowly reduced over time the functionality of their Web version for mobile, and also put things in to make it more annoying, too.
- deeviant 5y agoThere is one simple reason: it's harder to block ads in the app version.
- wutbrodo 5y agoDoes the airbnb app or website even serve third party ads?
- deeviant 5y agoIt's less useful to focus on this single example, and more on the industry. Once these types of ideas gain momentum, they just become to be accepted as truth. "If everybody else pushes users to their app over web, there must be good reasons to do it, we should too." Expecting companies to rationally analyzed whether that is actually the case, is, well, expecting too much of companies.
- waffle_maniac 5y agoI built a client for their mobile API a while ago. Send it through Tor. That was the plan but I decided the project itself wasn’t worth it.
- ryukoposting 5y agoCome to think of it, does GDPR apply to apps?
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoYes
- jdlshore 5y agoIt applies to all data, no matter how it was collected, including manually and for employees, with some minor exceptions for small companies.
- ct0 5y agoI'm fairly certain that Airbnb used to give their data away on a different website. I used the dataset in my undergrad.
- bradstewart 5y agoThey have a monopoly on STR listings? I use VRBO at least as often (probably more) than AirBnb.
- MichaelZuo 5y agoIt does seem like a very bizarre thing to say. As if GPT-3 decided to comment on HN.
- GFischer 5y agoVRBO made 2 billion in bookings, which is impressive but still less than one fourth of AirBnb.
- allisdust 5y agoIt's a pointless war and their data is all over the place. With millions of residential IPs scraping data, its not possible to keep data in public and not get it scraped. All they are doing is making it worth someone's time to put it all together and provide a near realtime api for all the scraped data. Same goes for amazon and anyone who thinks they can protect their data.
- ct0 5y agoAirbnb gives their data away. http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html
- mh0pe 5y agoThis looks to be an activist project focused on shutting out Airbnb, check out the about page.