General questions about the Airbnb Community Commitment

Airbnb can do whatever they want in property they own/lease. However since they 'share' (funny word that) people's private homes they will have to live with the fact that those people will refuse guests for whatever reasons they feel like, this is the flip side of the coin of not having a relationship where they are in control (employer, employee, owner of the premises).

Airbnb wants to have its cake and eat it too, on the one hand not to own the premises and the goods stored in there but to pretend that they own it and set the rules about who can and can't come there.

Nobody is going to admit to discrimination, even if they do agree, people will come up with alternative reasons for not allowing the people they do not wish to stay in their private homes, so nothing will change but Airbnb will look good.

After all, what proof will they use to tell a host they are discriminating.

If Airbnb wants to be able to dictate the terms at that level they should build a nice large building with a front desk with people they employ and a bunch of rooms they let out aka a hotel.

I used to work in a camping site in Northern Italy many years ago. We were openly told not to accept people from the south of Italy as they statistically were more noisy. I didn't like it but it actually made sense. It just wasn't viable to mix Germans and Napoleteans in a tight space. I guess Germans earned that right with politness. Then one day I let gipsies in and I almost got fired.

It's sad to see the tech community, which used to be very libertarian, move towards a hard-left progressive view of social issues. It wasn't that long ago that Friedman's arguments against equal pay laws[1] would have held sway here. The idea that the market punishes bigotry and so can be relied upon to advance freedom and equality used to be a core belief of the tech community. Now, it seems companies are falling over themselves to come up with ever more progressive and authoritarian solutions to problems that have only been complained about in the tech media--driven largely by people who care far more about culture wars than they do about tech. It's hard to see these developments and not feel that something important has been lost.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsIpQ7YguGE

People discriminate every day. I discriminate against restaurants and babysitters and businesses all the time. Sometimes those discriminations are because of a feeling. Sometimes they are are based on my internal biases. Sometimes I disagree with the choices a business has made and if affects whether or not I do business with them.

Why do we make such a big deal about "discrimination?" It's built into who we are as people.

I don't use Airbnb and most likely never will.

However, let's say for argument sake I do want to rent my extra bedroom out. What if I don't want rent to some weirdo crust punk? I wouldn't feel like my children are safe. I would probably only rent out to single professionals only.

I guess Airbnb is not a good fit for hypothetical people like me.

> I agree to treat everyone in the Airbnb community—regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age—with respect, and without judgment or bias.

This isn't really "non discrimination", this is a vague non binding statement. The FAQ doesn't even says what happens when that "commitment" is broken. Just that you have to accept it. So the title here is misleading.

They can do that when the host will be protected against abuse of by law as well. Hell, it even wouldn't be needed. If you as a host knew, you would be compensated by any ill means done by the one renting - meaning AirBnb would claim responsibility - this clause wouldn't be such an issue.

Because here's why this happens: people start declining to certain others based on experience. Some hear about others experience and don't want to even go down that road in the first place.

Modern "PC" way of thinking caters to the minorities. Rights, rights, rights and so on. Businesses market on that. Media gets clicks and views based on that. But the modern western societies have forgotten that rights are only one side of the coin, there have to be RESPONSIBILITIES too.

Responsibilities are harder, long term gratification and can cause non happy feelings. But no one can enforce rights without them, or we get to see the extreme effects as we do now.

This opens up a hole for a competitor - there are legitimate reasons to discriminate guests, e.g. religious tourism, gay tourism etc.

I a frankly appalled with this new heavy handed "commitment" required. Rules - do not change people! When will we learn this - Anyone can sign this document and continue doing anything they want.. these are people's private homes we are talking about - the whole issue here was to develop a welcoming environment - or was it? One again "big daddy" wants control. I did not let my child just play with anyone or invite just anyone home - is that racist or lacking in inclusiveness? No I was responsible for her safety the environment she grew up in. I had to decide what was in her best interests for her development - all parents do this - race was never a deciding factor in my home but behavior was - if I am hosting an Air B&B guest I want to be able to use my "intuition" and be trusted to welcome people fairly - I need to feel comfortable with these people - not just accept anybody. I personally have never stayed at a B&B with anyone who I thought was racist or discriminatory in any way - why make rules for the minority and the exceptional... we need less rules and more trust - TRUST breeds TRUST - rules do not do that! Suzanna

Somehow Airbnb mostly doesnt work for me. You find a nice/cheap place to stay, message the host and wait for 24 hours for a revert. Fairly often, the host declines for seemingly specious reasons. The bigger problem is the wait than the refusal.

An Indian startup called OyoRooms has a much better solution to this problem.

I have personally experienced that many hosts do not like to rent to young males. Some even restrict this in their description i.e "only for females". I hope this discrimination ends now

I think this is long past due.

For some background. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/opinion/how-airbnb-can-fig...

if someone is turning you down on airbnb based upon some arbitrary discriminatory factors, do you think you'd really want to stay with a person like that to begin with?

I think it's ok to require pictures if who will be staying in your house prior to deciding if you want to allow the rental or not. As an owner it's always you choice. If I dint want some who looks dirty , or a drug dealer in my house who I going to make you. Freedom if choice. If they don't like it there are other apps and sited to list vacation rentals on. Such as the big 4

Sad that we have to codify this in 2016 as it seems obvious. I don't think the community commitment goes far enough.

If you’re in the business of providing a service to people you shouldn’t be discriminating against them on any grounds apart from ability to pay, which is not an issue on the Airbnb platform.

So renters are now AirBnB employees as well? /sUber

I will always discriminate and not allow certain people in my home. I will take the risk that I'll be kicked off the platform. That's better than taking those people into my home.

Airbnb is a essentially "middle man" - a company that facilitates private individuals who wish to rent out their homes to strangers. This is a wonderful and much appreciated way of connecting strangers and building civil society bonds. But dictating to its members exactly on what terms and to whom they should be renting out their own bedrooms and homes seems to be, no matter how well-intentioned, to be self-defeating: it fosters an atmosphere of distrust and removes renters' freedom to exercise discretion about who stays in their home.

It is inevitable that some renters will bring racist or xenophobic or other prejudices to the table when they decide who to rent their homes to. But there will be a whole range of positive and negative preferences about the type of person one wants to stay in one's home, many of which many not be motivated by racism or xenophobia, but by personal judgments about who one is prepared to open one's home to.

Airbnb is trying to micro-manage how people exercise their judgment about who is a good fit for their home. They are trying to force people to trust everyone equally or to feel equally well-disposed toward all potential renters, as a condition for using their service. They may have the LEGAL right to do this, but it will be impossible in many cases to enforce with any reliability.

Besides the notorious difficulty of enforcing this sort of discrimination edict without high levels of inteference and second-guessing of complex judgments, in my view, the new policy is likely to undermine, not promote, greater trust and respect betweeen renters and landlords, by fostering a more adversarial culture in Airbnb homes, where any refusal to rent is met with an air of suspicion and resentment and exclusion, as though opening your home to someone (even for money) was not a delicate matter.

Cultural change and reform comes through education and experience. Airbnb permits people to be exposed to different cultures and values by opening up their home to strangers (and receiving payment in return).

But I see no reason why Airbnd should appoint itself a sort of "moral policeman" to ensure that all renters are equally open to different cultures and communities. That kind of openness can be encouraged but it is quite absurd to think that it can be truly fostered in a positive way by getting people to tick a "community commitment" box before renting out their homes.

In fact, I would argue that this new "community commitment" could be considered ethically dubious at best, since it will provide a strong reason to people who rely on Airbnb but wish to exercise their own judgment about who stays in their home to lie on the website. Furthermore, the effort to get people to formally "commit" to what is essentially an ethical attitude in a quasi-contractual way, as a condition for using this type of renting "middle man" is an extraordinary act of over-reach, it seems to me, insofar as it essentially means that Airbnb feel they can appoint themselves the arbiter and judge of people's private motives and prejudices, whether through some formal declaration on their part, or through a statistical analysis of their behaviour.

Which raises the question, if Airbnb is worried about unjust discrimination in society at large, why does it think that setting itself up as a sort of "thought police" for its customers is a wise move? How can they not anticipat the inevitable resistance and backlash that will unleash, and its almost certain failure in practice to reform people's behaviour and attitudes (tick the box and move on)? And what does this sort of policy tell us about the type of authority that a middle man THINKS he has over his clients and their values, preferences, and lifestyles choices?

Is there some sort of "saviour" complex going on here, where a company thinks they must engage in an aggressive campaign to control their users' mindsets and micromanage their own decisions about who to rent their homes to? Or is the new Airbnb policy, as some have suggested, just a response to some legal or social pressures to "look good and inclusive"?

Whatever the answer to these questions, it strikes me that setting aside the legality of this new policy, the level of micromanagement and control it extends into clients' USE of the service and indeed into their values and attitudes regarding hosting people in their home, suggests a lack of trust in people's goodness and an unwillingness to take risks on people's goodness, to give them reasonable discretion to exercise their own judgments in the sphere of their own home (even if it is being rented out for profit).

Indeed, this sort of campaign, which comes close to being a sort of indirect "mind control," seems to bespeak an impatience with the messiness of human life and human relationships, and of course impatience with idiosyncratic and unstructured nature of the motives of people who rent out their own homes. Sometimes, in order to foster or preserve an atmosphere of trust and respect in general, you have to allow within a system for the possibility that some people will exercise bad or unfair judgments, or treat some people without the full respect they deserve. Making a rule to compel everyone to be respectful is not always the best way to foster a culture of respect.

Turning a modest facilitating service into a crusade for full inclusion and a change in cultural mindsets completely changes the nature of the Airbnb service, bringing it into the zone of a sort of "mind police" whose edicts will frequently be impossible to enforce.

It is an excellent example of the trend in our society to attempt to control from on high, with relatively crude regulations, the delicate flow of human relationships and attitudes between different groups, ethnicities, value identifications, religions, etc.

To be clear, I am not advocating racisms or invidious discrimination, but I am suggesting that (a) some degree of discrimination and profiling is a fact of life especially in the business of renting out one's own home, and it is not necessarily invidious, especially in situations of sparse information; and (b) to the extent that people do engage in invidious forms of discrimination when they rent out their homes, Airbnb is certainly not the appropriate entity to be rooting this out systematically - education and cultural reform must be carried out by winning over people's hearts and minds, and this work is already being done by the mere fact of cultural exchange permitted by the Airbnb network. Why spoil that work by implementing a policy that is likely to foster distrust, suspicion, and resentment among renters and proprietors?

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I discriminate against people based on their national origin AMA.

Despite this, I feel Airbnb isn't doing enough to fight discrimination.

They need to ensure that the host cannot see anything that can identify a user's race, ethnicity, age, etc. No photos, no names, and a moderated comments and rating system. Until they do that they are placing their profits above principle.

White people continue trying to speak for minorities, there's more to us than just black people you know, you can be skeptical for your safety if that's all the information you have.

In a recent thread (too lazy to link), many users agreed that roma people ~suck in ~europe (because they keep to themselfes and their own culture, which sucks, and they don't integrate). I probably would discriminate against one if I was renting my "thing". It's time for airbnb(github/twitter too) to start dying I think.

Edit: I welcome you to show your counter examples.