Bribes are generally illegal. This should be "compensates," not "bribes." "Bribes" is just hyperbole. This is standard practice for a lot of businesses in a similar space.
Edit: ok, here's an explanation.
We put quotes around "bribes" because that's the tiniest intervention I can think of that still addresses your concern. Why so tiny? That takes a while to explain, so read on if you want to understand how we approach this.
The title breaks the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) by being both baity and misleading. It also contradicts the article text (assuming I read it correctly), since it declares a thing to have happened which the text itself reports as not having happened, if you read it to the end. Such a bait-and-switch is a marker of a bad article.
Normally the moderation on this would be a no-brainer. We'd replace the title with one that is accurate and neutral, and we'd apply a standard downweight that we put on outrage stories which don't contain anything of intellectual interest, especially when the topic has appeared many times before. If we didn't do these things, HN's front page would consist of nothing but dime-a-dozen outrage and the elves would leave middle earth.
However, when the story is negative about YC or a YC-funded company, the regular rules don't apply; we still moderate, but we do it less. That is the first thing pg taught me about how to moderate HN, and the first thing I've taught every other moderator. I've written about this many times: e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date....
Frankly, it bites to see an article get away with this kind of thing on HN when we spend every day trying to keep the front page good. But that's the price we pay for being able to answer users' concerns about conflicts of interest in moderating HN. It doesn't prevent a few people from saying awful things about us—this is the internet after all—but it does let us answer in good conscience. Doing our best and answering questions seems to be enough to keep most HN users happy, which is the thing we care most about.
Then again bribe does not feel out of place. Offering direct deposit money outside of the official documented channel is akin to giving cash under the table. Even more when the recipient has to ask repeatedly to use the proper channel.
Instead of simply offering payment in exchange for the damage per their guarantee, they wanted something in return: Silence.
The problem with hyperbole is you will pay the inflation tax on your word choice. Crying wolf, basically.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bribe
I am using the word correctly. Perhaps you should consider if you're interpretation of the word is not biased?
Frankly, if you want to have an argument over the semantics of language and the interpretation of words, you need to be on top of your writing.
Apparently payments+NDA are part of the remediation process that they actually set up in practice.
There's also no reason to assume why a private remediation process should be universal and the same for everyone, it's not a court - it would be unfair to close down options that they advertised, but it's completely reasonable to offer extra options on a case-by-case basis if they want, even if they weren't included in the advertised remediation process.
The only thing that's might be viewed as dishonest is that their statement "The Host Guarantee will reimburse eligible hosts for damages up to $1,000,000." doesn't explicitly mention that certain conditions apply on how the Host Guarantee is implemented; though it does say 'eligible hosts' which quite likely is explained in the full Host Guarantee text as 'hosts that, among other things, agree to an NDA'.
Seems to me, using the words "Guarantee", "Trust" "Peace of Mind" is no different than the customer using the term "Bribe".
but maybe this is just situation where consumers need law degrees to fully understand what it is they are getting.
AirBNB relies on economies of scale, so the remediation process should be the same for everyone since the contract is more than likely the same too, and if it is not, then "Trust", "Guarantee", "Peace of mind" are the wrong words to being used to advertise the service.
The core reason Bribe is being used, is because AirBnB was withholding payment for something that they advertised as part of the service and would only release it in exchange for an NDA. That IS dishonest.
The described events don't seem to violate any promise that was actually advertised, the only mismatch is between reality and wishful thinking.