AirBnbWhileBlack Highlights Discrimination Faced by Black Travelers
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.com
AirBNB isn't going to make everything right between two unknown parties. Minor hassles can add up into a major headache. Plus there's a lot of social pressure on reviews (both ways), so even that seems like limited recourse.
Edit: To clarify, I'm responding to why they should be able to refuse any guest.
Exactly. To do so would open them up to all sorts of complaints, civil rights and otherwise. To not do so would cost them millions of dollars in revenue. So, they choose to do nothing and pretend that the problem does not exist. I don't think it's fair to pretend that they are either blameless or powerless in this situation.
Short of having someone "Verifying" the reason, this would have the unintended consequence of disallowing the host from using any reason, good or otherwise, to decline guests.
Technology problems and social problems go hand-in-hand. For an easy example, consider moderation. Online communities are improved (the /r/science subreddit), or torn apart (Twitter users) based on the strength or weaknesses of the available moderation tools.
So what, technologically, could Airbnb do to improve its user experience for marginalized?
It could use inclusiveness as a search signal. This style of tactic (forcing improvements through algorithmic penalties) works extremely well when Google uses it for search rankings. For instance, if users self-reported their race, and listing X systematically fails to rent to people of certain backgrounds, penalize it in the rankings. Make it well-known that this is a factor, but don't tell people when they are violating it.
Something less-likely to work is a report/moderate cycle, to manually review these types of cases. The problem here is that it's almost impossible to review intent; maybe I really DID think my vacation was going to be cancelled, but then a project at work got cancelled so it came back.
Sure, people will lie about intent, not even be aware of their subconscious bias against black people, whatever...
That's why you look at the aggregate totals. It's just not going to be the case that coincidentally black travelers have their rentals rejected at a larger rate because of random external forces like renter projects being canceled.
Now, it's not expected and not typically tolerated. It survives by being obscure. Far better to draw attention to it and fight it than to just advise people of where to avoid.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/green-book-helped-ke...
After all, it has been a massive market opportunity to include women in the workforce since almost the dawn of civilization, and yet it's taken centuries for the allegedly rational market to realize this (and even then, not fully).
Ditto in the height of the Civil Rights era there was a massive market opportunity for restaurants that were willing to serve people of color - yet this largely didn't happen.
The market - and its participants - are frequently irrational. Or maybe more accurately, sociopolitical forces have the power to skew market behavior in huge ways.
This is also why I'm also often skeptical of attempts to cast equality as an economic good - it frequently is, but basing a worldview around it seems dangerous, precisely because the market often selects against justice.
That's untrue. Black areas had high density of businesses that catered to blacks, and by large discrimination was legally mandated, not a market outcome. Business groups were in general in favor of dismantling segregation because it increased their potential market.
And I do agree with you that sometimes the market does select against justice. At the same time, prices are still the best indicators for a long of things that don't involve life or death situations.
Except it is illegal to do so in a good number of countries. Racists know that. That's why they make up excuses.
This is important as hosts usually have 24 hours to respond. In that time period alternative listings I may be interested in could be booked. This has happened to me multiple times and puts unnecessary pressure/stress on me as a user of the service. If host can reject requests on a whim it lessens the user experience. I know IMMEDIATELY if a hotel has any vacancy, why do I have to hold my breath and pray an AVAILABLE booking goes through just because I'm black?
AirBnb could easily alleviate the situation with rejection updates. Although reviews leave far too much to personal opinion.
For now, at least, a demographic for each place would solve a lot.
"Oh 200 people have requested to be here and 100 were rejected. Out of that 80% of all black men who requested have been rejected and 30% white men and 0% of women, across the board... I think I'm good..."
"We’ve made a habit out of telling people not to read the comments online. But what started as a cynical in-joke has become a bad habit, and an excuse for enabling abuse across the web."
Just pointing out that while comments are terrible, it's Huffington Post that enables them to happen unchecked.
Edit: On further reflection, I guess Anil was writing as much or more about the "Don't read the comments" joke itself as about what to do when you come upon a comments section. And in that vein, it's true that my comment is pretty unhelpful. I've deleted it.
One thing that could help is removing people's names and photos or making them less prominent. But this isn't something AirBnb will improve their platform.
"The photos are on the platform for a reason," King said. "It really does help to aid in the trust between the guest and the host . . . You want to make sure that the guest who shows up at your door is the person you've been communicating with."
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475623339/-airbnbwhileblack-ho...
Wow.
How does a photo do that? The photo just ensures that the person at your door matches the photo. But why is that important? That is, what info are you trying to glean from the photo?
Airbnb bookings are business transactions. I don't see why the host has to trust the guest anymore than a hotel/motel has to trust their guests.
You might be right, but renting a place is regulated in most Western countries. And I'm pretty sure racial discrimination is against the law in most of these countries too, as much as refusing a service based on the race of the "client".
AirBnB takes the position they are just the middle man (like craigslist) and any issues that come up or lies in the ads are purely a problem between landlord and renter. I've stayed at about 22 places of which 1/3 had lied in their ads. There's zero repercussion for the landlords from AirBnB. You're unlikely to cancel because you just arrived with luggage and have plans. Canceling once you arrive is really a huge PITA trying to find a new place within 24hr most likely at 2x to 4x the cost and waste a day not exploring your destination. After that your only recourse is a bad review but most likely the place has already been booked by several others so your review is guaranteed to be buried. Other renters also may not notice the lies. Examples: Claims it includes parking but doesn't. People that did't bring car won't care. Claims it's heated but it's not. People coming during a hot season won't care. Claims it's in one place (quiet) but it's actually a few blocks away (loud), AFAICT no one has noticed since it was highly rated. Claims it's a 1bd but it's actually a studio with a divider. People that don't need quiet (no frig noises) to sleep won't care.
AirBnb needs to have some kind of way of punishing the lies. As it is they just claim "not our problem".
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The one piece of actual research in this is about discrimination against "black sounding" names. In one quoted tweet the guy mentions having to use his middle name.
Has it occurred to anyone that the main issue here might be people with deliberately weird names, and not race per se?
If you are named Rainbow, Adolf, Cletus, or LaQuan, I'm going to conclude (from experience) your mother and you are both probably crazy.