You can't know that and it by no means follows from what you've said. It's fine to describe your specific experiences, but not fine to cross into overgeneralized denunciation. Especially not to gin up indignation, which is pretty much the sole purpose of overgeneralized denunciation.
Other Airbnb neighbors may have a great time, but that doesn't mean I'm 'generalising' about them in a 'not fine' way when recounting my honest feelings after repeatedly dealing with them.
It's an odd coincidence my comment went from the top comment on this article to far down the thread in a single reload.
But it's not unusual for him to wade into conversations like this. What he's objecting to is an instance of a pattern that he has consistently been objecting to over the the last 9 months or so: commenters extrapolating the public policy intentions of organizations based on reporting about the behavior of those organizations. There's a term for that kind of reasoning: fundamental attribution error.
Given a couple minutes with the HN search bar, you can quickly find several other recent places where Dan has raised the same objections with respect to other companies.
I think "not attributing unproven intentionality to organizations" is a pretty good norm for HN to adopt.
That doesn't mean you can't make the argument that Airbnb is having a toxic effect on particular cities! It just means you can't make the lazy emotional appeal that Airbnb is run by people who don't care about toxicity.
I am recounting a year of direct personal experience, no reporting is involved.
I have yet to see any proof that AirBnB cares for anything other than to expand their reach and profitability. They'll partner with local governments to support tax collection, as its in their best interests (and costs them little but engineering time, as the tax is passed through to the customer/host), but its also in their best interest to disregard externalities such as that caused by less than desirable AirBnB customers.
EDIT: They're the less abrasive version of Uber. Disruption needs to be balanced with societal benefits. Your startup does not exist in a vacuum, and you are one piece of legislation or court decision away from being regulated out of existence. Behave accordingly.
Like this guy, just a day ago, where someone made a fake listing for his house and they won't answer him. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/4h5yo0/fl_some...
Maybe it's the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Or it's just the New Economy. Twitter has 2300 employees. Microsoft, hardly the picture of perfect customer service, has almost 120,000. Guess which one you can get on the phone.
You can't get valuations of millions of dollars per employee if you have employees trying to do things like answer complaints. Dealing with complaints is money-losing business, not money-making business.
To me, I feel like you know you're in trouble on an HN thread when someone invokes that Upton Sinclair quote. There are very few conversations you can't shut down with it.
I really don't think Dan acted out of a conflict-of-interest, and in general I agree with the substance of his reply -- but a public chastising was out of place here.
There's no substantive point about Airbnb or any other company that can't be expressed in the way my comment above is recommending. That ought to be obvious to anyone who reads it dispassionately and is familiar with HN.
I've been on Startup News / Hacker News for eight years, so I'm pretty familiar with the site.
> But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the people around them.
... because (a) you can't know such a thing and (b) it's corrosive of the kind of discussion we want here.
Reporting specific experiences is fine. Crossing into grandiose denunciations is not. Those add no information; their purpose is to gin up rage, which puts salt on the slug of thoughtful discourse.
> > But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the people around them.
As mentioned repeatedly, that's an honest impression from a year of constant engagement. I have in no way said it is AirBnB policy to not give a damn, simply that as someone who has attempted to engage the company about these matters, they appear to not give a damn.
> Those add no information
I very much disagree that the resulting impression does not add value, and HN would seem to agree, as evidenced by the HN community's reactions to your post.
People can and do post impressions of services on HN, and have for some time. Part of handling yourself properly is not only avoiding impropriety but also the appearance on impropriety: being told not to post my impressions of a company that is incompetent enough they've repeatedly stated they cannot match an address to a listing looks very poor when YC has a financial interest in the company.
Respectfully, you were wrong on this one.
Perhaps that's all you meant to say, but what you actually said went far beyond it in a way that is corrosive to thoughtful discourse, which is why I objected.
I am recounting my own person experience, so, very obviously everything is how Airbnb appears to me, and I'm sure you're intelligent enough to know that. And again, it's quite reasonable to say that based on those experiences, which I'd be happy to provide police reports, screenshots, and contacts at my local council, Airbnb absolutely does not care.