> the ability for their platform to facilitate racism
Hunh? Care to elaborate on a) what specifically AirBNB does to facilitate racism, and b) what you'd expect them to change about their 'platform' to stop people from being horrible?
Hunh? Care to elaborate on a) what specifically AirBNB does to facilitate racism, and b) what you'd expect them to change about their 'platform' to stop people from being horrible?
They are aware of a problem with some hosts discriminating against certain guests. Here is an article describing some things they're trying to combat this in California in particular.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/28/airbnb-l...
Stuff like a black male tries to rent for a certain date, gets denied, and then an hour later a white female tries to rent it for the same date and is approved by the owner.
I believe in the example I'm citing the person affected actually created the second account of the "white female" and tried to keep the language very similar when they booked, so this example was pretty egregious.
There were also cases, although this probably fits in the category of mentally ill and just really mean, of people sending messages like "sorry no Asians" after denying a renters request.
AirBnB did respond though. One of the changes they made was how the profile picture was displayed during the booking process. Either they made it smaller or removed it completely if you were an owner approving people.