8 ms·

Airbnb Is Banning People Who Are ‘Closely Associated’ with Already-Banned Users

75 points by dmitrygr 4y ago

qbrass 4y ago
Kevin Bacon, you know what to do.
- lampshades 4y ago
  The hero we didn’t know we needed.
crazygringo 4y ago
It's towards the bottom, but there's a good quote that shows the perfect example of when this makes sense: > “For example, if someone is removed for a serious safety incident during an Airbnb reservation and we need to remove them and cancel their future reservations, and we then find that someone re-books the exact same future reservation with the same credit card number, we will remove the second account,” the company said. So I can see how this is absolutely necessary in some cases, but also how there's always going to be a confusing gray area no matter where you draw the line. It feels particularly crazy because if you travel together with a romantic partner who damages a property, and then you basically have to convince AirBNB that the two of you have broken up, and that the two of you aren't just using your account now to escape the other's ban.
- blue039 4y ago
  How is this any different than with a hotel? Imagine you send an employee to a place where they have to stay in a hotel. Then, they trash it. REALLY trash it. Trash it so bad that it takes actual time to repair. The hotel will likely use the credit card as the identifier. They'll also probably blacklist the company itself until someone really high up calls them and tells them sorry. Of course, AirBnB is a little different and not being a company makes this harder. However, the practice isn't exactly unusual. If you're strongly associated with someone chances are that someone will tag along. Easier to ban both (or all) of you than one of you and hope the people left over are responsible enough (they usually aren't with enough guilt tripping). Especially in the case of a romantic partner the only option probably is to ban both you strictly because it's a near certainty your malicious partner will travel with you or have the ability to guilt you into letting them. Good luck telling your girlfriend/boyfriend to go stay at the Holiday Inn while you sleep in luxury in an AirBnB.
  - trillic 4y ago
    Hotels have support. You can actually walk into the hotel and speak to the manager if it comes to that. AirBNB is a faceless website. If you're banned your recourse seems to be a support line or chat. Escalating onto social media can be quicker depending on your network.
    - timr 4y ago
      Meh, good luck going to the manager of your local instance of Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt and getting a corporate-level ban lifted. They're going to tell you that it's above their pay grade, and to contact HQ. HQ will ignore your attempts to contact them unless they come on the letterhead of a law firm. Maybe you can get a ban lifted if it was imposed by the instance, but even then, they're probably just going to tell you to go to HQ. It doesn't matter if it's SPG or AirBNB: when you're fighting with a large company that (you believe) has made a mistake, the best/only path forward is to get a lawyer involved.
      - Laaas 4y ago
        Difference being there are many hotels to choose from, and quite honestly, I've never heard of someone getting banned from a hotel chain (though I assume it has happened).
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      > Escalating onto social media can be quicker depending on your network. Funny enough, Twitter was the best way to get CA DMV support during the pandemic. They'd DM you unlisted phone numbers to call and get things done that the regular website can't. This is the only reason I have a Twitter account.
  - datpiff 4y ago
    A hotel ban only applies to one hotel or to a chain, not every hotel. Airbnb have a monopoly.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I remember reading the story about Lauren Southern a few days ago, they banned her parents because they didn't like Lauren's politics (shes a very polarizing figure). I totally get bans when a guest damages property or breaks rules, but the whole reason this got kicked up in the news because that ban was just so overtly political.
  - ahallock 4y ago
    That's gratuitous and done for spite only. I really don't want to do business with a company that seeks revenge because of internal political activism. It's gross. Within their legal rights as it stands today, but gross nonetheless.
  - sintaxi 4y ago
    IIRC they banned Southern not for her politics but for being closely associated to people who had unacceptable politics, and then banned her parents for being closely associated with Southern.
    - Xeoncross 4y ago
      See, PageRank isn't dead - it's just used on people now
  - korroziya 4y ago
    "Your politics hurt my feelings so you and anyone you know is banned from using my service." How is this reasonable to anybody? Left wingers get mad when a baker pulls this on a gay couple but apparently it's ok as long as it's against someone they don't like?
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      Well, the specific reasons matter. Surely Airbnb should ban some people because of their political views (eg members of ISIS), the question is just what the line is.
      - 4y ago
notch898a 4y ago
Group punishment. It works great, especially the further you extend it to the point it looks like 'demographics.'
- syzarian 4y ago
  There are demographics where I would not want to take the risk of renting out my property to them. In the U.S. we tend to make things about race when it ought to be about class. Yes, I’m biased against certain economic classes of people (not based on race).
- ffhhj 4y ago
  Next Airbnb will get in the concentration camp business to punish those closely related by their culture.
TrackerFF 4y ago
Remember that recent case where a lawyer was denied access to Madison Square Garden, because their in-house facial recognition software recognized her being an employee of a law-firm that was litigating against another subsidiary / child company of the owner of MSG Entertainment? Between this, and that case, I can't say I'm looking forward to the future (ab)use of tech. Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart (or some subsidiary of Walmart). Or that you get checked every time you try to use their self-checkout machines.
- tiahura 4y ago
  Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart Society was much more liveable when that was considered common sense.
  - code_duck 4y ago
    It would be normal for an individual known for shoplifting or assault to be blacklisted. Not some associated with an unsavory individual, which can be involuntary - coworker, family member, neighbor.
  - harimau777 4y ago
    It was more livable for the more socially acceptable and/or wealthy segments of society not for the lower segments. Someone who is poor or otherwise on the margins of society is much more likely to be associated with people society considers "the wrong sort of people". Similarly, those in the upper levels of society are discouraged from associating with the lower levels for fear of being associated with the wrong sort of people.
  - Archipelagia 4y ago
    It was never considered common sense. Some variant of what you're thinking about might've been possible in a small society (say, when the shop owner in a village knew all his customers, and was able to keep an eye on the troublemakers). But in modern world it would basically mean that you might get banned from thousands of stores across the entire country because a cousin you barely know is an idiot. Or more likely, you'll just appear on the "do not serve" list without even knowing you're on in or finding out why. So yeah, treating these two as the same thing is dishonest.
bko 4y ago
This made a splash after conservative commentator Lauren Southern claimed her mom was banned without ever booking anything for her daughter. I'm not sure why Southern was banned though but i doubt it was because she was trashing the homes of hosts. [Edit] Southern claims she was originally banned due to public affiliation with certain groups against Airbnb policies and community standards https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/1623103441844436992?t=PbGMEKe3EWz0vC42s6mYQQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/16231034418444369...
- hot_gril 4y ago
  I'm more interested in why she got banned. That's pretty creepy.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Here's an archive of the page from the time she was banned: https://web.archive.org/web/20190606075214/airbnb.com/trust/standards https://web.archive.org/web/20190606075214/airbnb.com/trust/... I think it's objectively clear that she violated that policy, I don't think even she would deny that she engages in discriminatory behavior, bullying and harassment, and disturbing communities. It's not just about speech, she has for example been arrested in Italy for attempting to block migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean, which directly put lives at risk.
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      Unless she was doing those things in an AirBNB to other people there, I still find it creepy. These rules have nothing to do with the service. You don't get banned from a regular hotel for any of these reasons.
      - burkaman 4y ago
        Yes you do https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-hate-groups-we-need-to-draw-the-line/ https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-...
LatteLazy 4y ago
AirBnB (and youtube, and facebook and everyone else) must immediately manage it's user base MORE and LESS.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
laweijfmvo 4y ago
You know who doesn't do this? Every hotel chain that ever existed.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Hotels have stepped up their game, and AirBNB hosts have gotten so incredibly awful that I'm not sure how it's holding up.
  - Xeoncross 4y ago
    It's almost always cheaper to stay in hotels than airbnb everytime I look. It has been this way for years. Unless you want a whole house/cabin to yourself for the week/month (discounts) then hotels almost always end up being less fuss and cheaper.
    - asdadsdad 4y ago
      Yeah. I feel like sometimes you'd want an apartment to properly experience the city life, if you're into that (I am). And that's basically the only shortcoming of hotels for me, because indeed, they're cheaper in 99% of cases.
- ugh123 4y ago
  Hotels can and do ban certain guests from booking if they've caused extensive problems in the past. Cruise lines do it too.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Heck, most hotels in my area have banned an entire class of people -- locals. Locals are much more likely to trash their rooms.
- burkaman 4y ago
  This is almost definitely not true. I don't particularly like Airbnb but I would be very surprised if most hotels don't use services that do the exact thing described in this article. 15 year old article about hotels using a centralized datamining blacklist service: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25243594 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25243594 Hyatt banning hate groups: https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-hate-groups-we-need-to-draw-the-line/ https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-...
bgorman 4y ago
AirBnB is a terrible platform for users. Recently a host charged me a cleaning fee, left me a negative review about not cleaning. I requested that the cleaning fee be refunded, since it was clearly fraudulent. AirBnB declined to refund the cleaning fee. I will never use them again. I wonder what can be done to prevent companies like AirBnB, PayPal from becoming so user-hostile over time.
- kaczordon 4y ago
  Agreed had a similar horrible experience where Airbnb deleted my bad review. Just use chargebacks on your credit card, it’s there to protect you.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    While chargebacks might get you your money back, won't they also get you banned for life from Airbnb?
- asdadsdad 4y ago
  I was traveling and hopping from one city to another in Europe, and when I went to rent my second Airbnb using a perfectly good American credit card, they blocked me for "fraud reasons". I booked a 5* hotel which was even cheaper than the Airbnb apartment and carried on with my trip. I suspect their anti-abuse system bites them pretty often.
- bigger_inside 4y ago
  What can be done is prevent them from becoming near-monopolies with a captured audience. Cory Doctorow calls this "enshittification" - his term. The basic idea is that in the beginning, new companies are all about their users, luring them away from competitors, providing the best experience for cheap, with great service. That captures them. Think amazon, underpricing everyone, shipping for free, taking all returns, making a loss for years until everyone just uses amazon to search for products. Once you have their market, you shift gears, from serving users to serving your financiers, selling the user data/user attention/user experience to them: Amazon selling ranked listings in the search that all the captured customers now use as a default search engine. This makes every seller use amazon to sell. You have to, to reach the captured audience. And you have to pay amazon to be seen. And finally, using this machine you built, with captured customers and captured sellers to squeeze the most of it. Amazon copying the best-selling items and top-ranking their own products, without of course charging itself fees for either the listing or a cut of the sale, as the do with third parties.
leemelone 4y ago
Never use Airbnb
oskapt 4y ago
I just logged into AirBNB after not using it for a few years (pandemic and all), only to find that my account was deactivated for not following their ToS and community standards. I only ever had great reviews from the places that I stayed, so I figured they just deactivated it because it was stale. I requested that they reactivate it and got an automated response saying that they deactivated it because of information in my credit report, and until I dispute that information, their decision is final. I went and pulled all three credit reports to find that I have no negative information in there at all. I have stellar credit, scores in the "very good" to "excellent" range, minimal debt, no collections, great ratios between available credit and current balances, no negative consumer information...so what's there to dispute? I've asked them to reinstate my account, but as someone who reads HN and knows how these automated systems behave, I have minimal confidence that they'll do anything about it. I also reported them to the FTC for misusing/abusing consumer credit information, and I encourage anyone who has been swept up in their Kafka-esque universe to do the same.

75 points by dmitrygr 4y ago

qbrass 4y ago

Kevin Bacon, you know what to do.

lampshades 4y ago
The hero we didn’t know we needed.

crazygringo 4y ago

It's towards the bottom, but there's a good quote that shows the perfect example of when this makes sense: > “For example, if someone is removed for a serious safety incident during an Airbnb reservation and we need to remove them and cancel their future reservations, and we then find that someone re-books the exact same future reservation with the same credit card number, we will remove the second account,” the company said. So I can see how this is absolutely necessary in some cases, but also how there's always going to be a confusing gray area no matter where you draw the line. It feels particularly crazy because if you travel together with a romantic partner who damages a property, and then you basically have to convince AirBNB that the two of you have broken up, and that the two of you aren't just using your account now to escape the other's ban.

blue039 4y ago
How is this any different than with a hotel? Imagine you send an employee to a place where they have to stay in a hotel. Then, they trash it. REALLY trash it. Trash it so bad that it takes actual time to repair. The hotel will likely use the credit card as the identifier. They'll also probably blacklist the company itself until someone really high up calls them and tells them sorry. Of course, AirBnB is a little different and not being a company makes this harder. However, the practice isn't exactly unusual. If you're strongly associated with someone chances are that someone will tag along. Easier to ban both (or all) of you than one of you and hope the people left over are responsible enough (they usually aren't with enough guilt tripping). Especially in the case of a romantic partner the only option probably is to ban both you strictly because it's a near certainty your malicious partner will travel with you or have the ability to guilt you into letting them. Good luck telling your girlfriend/boyfriend to go stay at the Holiday Inn while you sleep in luxury in an AirBnB.
- trillic 4y ago
  Hotels have support. You can actually walk into the hotel and speak to the manager if it comes to that. AirBNB is a faceless website. If you're banned your recourse seems to be a support line or chat. Escalating onto social media can be quicker depending on your network.
  - timr 4y ago
    Meh, good luck going to the manager of your local instance of Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt and getting a corporate-level ban lifted. They're going to tell you that it's above their pay grade, and to contact HQ. HQ will ignore your attempts to contact them unless they come on the letterhead of a law firm. Maybe you can get a ban lifted if it was imposed by the instance, but even then, they're probably just going to tell you to go to HQ. It doesn't matter if it's SPG or AirBNB: when you're fighting with a large company that (you believe) has made a mistake, the best/only path forward is to get a lawyer involved.
    - Laaas 4y ago
      Difference being there are many hotels to choose from, and quite honestly, I've never heard of someone getting banned from a hotel chain (though I assume it has happened).
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    > Escalating onto social media can be quicker depending on your network. Funny enough, Twitter was the best way to get CA DMV support during the pandemic. They'd DM you unlisted phone numbers to call and get things done that the regular website can't. This is the only reason I have a Twitter account.
- datpiff 4y ago
  A hotel ban only applies to one hotel or to a chain, not every hotel. Airbnb have a monopoly.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
_fat_santa 4y ago
I remember reading the story about Lauren Southern a few days ago, they banned her parents because they didn't like Lauren's politics (shes a very polarizing figure). I totally get bans when a guest damages property or breaks rules, but the whole reason this got kicked up in the news because that ban was just so overtly political.
- ahallock 4y ago
  That's gratuitous and done for spite only. I really don't want to do business with a company that seeks revenge because of internal political activism. It's gross. Within their legal rights as it stands today, but gross nonetheless.
- sintaxi 4y ago
  IIRC they banned Southern not for her politics but for being closely associated to people who had unacceptable politics, and then banned her parents for being closely associated with Southern.
  - Xeoncross 4y ago
    See, PageRank isn't dead - it's just used on people now
- korroziya 4y ago
  "Your politics hurt my feelings so you and anyone you know is banned from using my service." How is this reasonable to anybody? Left wingers get mad when a baker pulls this on a gay couple but apparently it's ok as long as it's against someone they don't like?
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Well, the specific reasons matter. Surely Airbnb should ban some people because of their political views (eg members of ISIS), the question is just what the line is.
    - 4y ago

notch898a 4y ago

Group punishment. It works great, especially the further you extend it to the point it looks like 'demographics.'

syzarian 4y ago
There are demographics where I would not want to take the risk of renting out my property to them. In the U.S. we tend to make things about race when it ought to be about class. Yes, I’m biased against certain economic classes of people (not based on race).
ffhhj 4y ago
Next Airbnb will get in the concentration camp business to punish those closely related by their culture.

TrackerFF 4y ago

Remember that recent case where a lawyer was denied access to Madison Square Garden, because their in-house facial recognition software recognized her being an employee of a law-firm that was litigating against another subsidiary / child company of the owner of MSG Entertainment? Between this, and that case, I can't say I'm looking forward to the future (ab)use of tech. Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart (or some subsidiary of Walmart). Or that you get checked every time you try to use their self-checkout machines.

tiahura 4y ago
Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart Society was much more liveable when that was considered common sense.
- code_duck 4y ago
  It would be normal for an individual known for shoplifting or assault to be blacklisted. Not some associated with an unsavory individual, which can be involuntary - coworker, family member, neighbor.
- harimau777 4y ago
  It was more livable for the more socially acceptable and/or wealthy segments of society not for the lower segments. Someone who is poor or otherwise on the margins of society is much more likely to be associated with people society considers "the wrong sort of people". Similarly, those in the upper levels of society are discouraged from associating with the lower levels for fear of being associated with the wrong sort of people.
- Archipelagia 4y ago
  It was never considered common sense. Some variant of what you're thinking about might've been possible in a small society (say, when the shop owner in a village knew all his customers, and was able to keep an eye on the troublemakers). But in modern world it would basically mean that you might get banned from thousands of stores across the entire country because a cousin you barely know is an idiot. Or more likely, you'll just appear on the "do not serve" list without even knowing you're on in or finding out why. So yeah, treating these two as the same thing is dishonest.

bko 4y ago

This made a splash after conservative commentator Lauren Southern claimed her mom was banned without ever booking anything for her daughter. I'm not sure why Southern was banned though but i doubt it was because she was trashing the homes of hosts. [Edit] Southern claims she was originally banned due to public affiliation with certain groups against Airbnb policies and community standards https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/1623103441844436992?t=PbGMEKe3EWz0vC42s6mYQQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/16231034418444369...

hot_gril 4y ago
I'm more interested in why she got banned. That's pretty creepy.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Here's an archive of the page from the time she was banned: https://web.archive.org/web/20190606075214/airbnb.com/trust/standards https://web.archive.org/web/20190606075214/airbnb.com/trust/... I think it's objectively clear that she violated that policy, I don't think even she would deny that she engages in discriminatory behavior, bullying and harassment, and disturbing communities. It's not just about speech, she has for example been arrested in Italy for attempting to block migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean, which directly put lives at risk.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Unless she was doing those things in an AirBNB to other people there, I still find it creepy. These rules have nothing to do with the service. You don't get banned from a regular hotel for any of these reasons.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      Yes you do https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-hate-groups-we-need-to-draw-the-line/ https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-...

LatteLazy 4y ago

AirBnB (and youtube, and facebook and everyone else) must immediately manage it's user base MORE and LESS.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

laweijfmvo 4y ago

You know who doesn't do this? Every hotel chain that ever existed.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Hotels have stepped up their game, and AirBNB hosts have gotten so incredibly awful that I'm not sure how it's holding up.
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  It's almost always cheaper to stay in hotels than airbnb everytime I look. It has been this way for years. Unless you want a whole house/cabin to yourself for the week/month (discounts) then hotels almost always end up being less fuss and cheaper.
  - asdadsdad 4y ago
    Yeah. I feel like sometimes you'd want an apartment to properly experience the city life, if you're into that (I am). And that's basically the only shortcoming of hotels for me, because indeed, they're cheaper in 99% of cases.
ugh123 4y ago
Hotels can and do ban certain guests from booking if they've caused extensive problems in the past. Cruise lines do it too.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Heck, most hotels in my area have banned an entire class of people -- locals. Locals are much more likely to trash their rooms.
burkaman 4y ago
This is almost definitely not true. I don't particularly like Airbnb but I would be very surprised if most hotels don't use services that do the exact thing described in this article. 15 year old article about hotels using a centralized datamining blacklist service: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25243594 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25243594 Hyatt banning hate groups: https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-hate-groups-we-need-to-draw-the-line/ https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-...

bgorman 4y ago

AirBnB is a terrible platform for users. Recently a host charged me a cleaning fee, left me a negative review about not cleaning. I requested that the cleaning fee be refunded, since it was clearly fraudulent. AirBnB declined to refund the cleaning fee. I will never use them again. I wonder what can be done to prevent companies like AirBnB, PayPal from becoming so user-hostile over time.

kaczordon 4y ago
Agreed had a similar horrible experience where Airbnb deleted my bad review. Just use chargebacks on your credit card, it’s there to protect you.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  While chargebacks might get you your money back, won't they also get you banned for life from Airbnb?
asdadsdad 4y ago
I was traveling and hopping from one city to another in Europe, and when I went to rent my second Airbnb using a perfectly good American credit card, they blocked me for "fraud reasons". I booked a 5* hotel which was even cheaper than the Airbnb apartment and carried on with my trip. I suspect their anti-abuse system bites them pretty often.
bigger_inside 4y ago
What can be done is prevent them from becoming near-monopolies with a captured audience. Cory Doctorow calls this "enshittification" - his term. The basic idea is that in the beginning, new companies are all about their users, luring them away from competitors, providing the best experience for cheap, with great service. That captures them. Think amazon, underpricing everyone, shipping for free, taking all returns, making a loss for years until everyone just uses amazon to search for products. Once you have their market, you shift gears, from serving users to serving your financiers, selling the user data/user attention/user experience to them: Amazon selling ranked listings in the search that all the captured customers now use as a default search engine. This makes every seller use amazon to sell. You have to, to reach the captured audience. And you have to pay amazon to be seen. And finally, using this machine you built, with captured customers and captured sellers to squeeze the most of it. Amazon copying the best-selling items and top-ranking their own products, without of course charging itself fees for either the listing or a cut of the sale, as the do with third parties.

leemelone 4y ago

Never use Airbnb

oskapt 4y ago

I just logged into AirBNB after not using it for a few years (pandemic and all), only to find that my account was deactivated for not following their ToS and community standards. I only ever had great reviews from the places that I stayed, so I figured they just deactivated it because it was stale. I requested that they reactivate it and got an automated response saying that they deactivated it because of information in my credit report, and until I dispute that information, their decision is final. I went and pulled all three credit reports to find that I have no negative information in there at all. I have stellar credit, scores in the "very good" to "excellent" range, minimal debt, no collections, great ratios between available credit and current balances, no negative consumer information...so what's there to dispute? I've asked them to reinstate my account, but as someone who reads HN and knows how these automated systems behave, I have minimal confidence that they'll do anything about it. I also reported them to the FTC for misusing/abusing consumer credit information, and I encourage anyone who has been swept up in their Kafka-esque universe to do the same.