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Comment by duskwuff | Hacker News Reader

Which is deeply disappointing, and makes me worried that fraudulent hosts will work around the issue by having a co-conspirator book their room to "verify" the listing.

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Especially since the Vice piece that sparked all this strongly implies that this is already happening:

> Even some of the positive reviews of Becky and Andrew’s Chicago rentals seemed odd, especially those left by other pairs of hosts. Kelsey and Jean, for example, said Becky and Andrew were “awesome and communicative guests.” But they themselves were based in Chicago, where it seemed they had at least two properties of their own. Why would they need to rent from someone else there?

That doesn’t seem strange at all to me. A friend of mines regularly rents their place on Airbnb. Then in turn they rent a cheaper property and pocket the difference.

For every odd situation I see in HN comments there comes somebody like you saying: "why, I just did that yesterday!".

A location getting good ratings from other people in the same city that rent 2 other apartments is so odd it should be denied by default and require manual approval. The odds of collusion are quite high. Of course sellers would help each-other with good ratings! Even at the actual cost of paying for a night (in AirBnB fees) it might still be worth it if you want good ratings.

So, no, this is pretty strange.

You don't even have to pay many AirBnB fees - you can steeply discount a night, and then get your friend to book it.

Not sure why you're downvoted. At least one place I stayed at in Switzerland, it was pretty clear something like that was exactly what was happening: The family were living in the house normally, and when someone rented it, they just vacated it and went somewhere else. (I sort of suspect that there had been a recent divorce and the mother was trying to figure out how to be able to avoid having to move due to changed financial situation.) It seemed a bit weird to be taking over this family's house, but they decided it worked for them, and the house was as described, so... shrug

Don't know where they went, but a cheaper AirBNB place nearby would be an obvious candidate.

This also strikes me as odd. I've recently been seeing extremely short reviews for places. That is, 10+ reviews per place that are basically "was great, would recommend!" or "the host was responsive, I'll come back!".

I can't tell if this is a thing people do or if they are somehow fake 5 star reviews.

ISTR last time I used AirBnB there was some flow that really pushed you to leave a review, which obviously leads to those kinds of uninformative reviews.

For a while AirBnB forced you to write a review before you could book another place.

During that time, I always just wrote expletives in the review box and gave everyone 1-star. I'm not going to be the unpaid QA person for AirBnB!

It's almost like we are intentionally bending over backwards to avoid hiring some human beings to do some real fucking work.

When did this become the mantra of every tech company? Any time a job is created it's viewed as an unfortunate mistake or side effect? Who are we even building all this for?

The founders, and, incidentally, the investors. Employees are a cost and customers are a burden.

> The founders, and, incidentally, the investors.

Isn't it the other way around?

Are you suggesting hiring employees to check every single listing on AirBnB? Does Craigslist verify every listing? For that matter, have newspapers ever done that with their advertising? AirBnB is a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Suggesting that a newspaper for instance send an employee to verify that an advertised car in a classified ad is precisely correct is a bit ridiculous but that’s what you seem to be suggesting with AirBnB. How is this any different than a student newspaper running ads for rooms for rent? On the hotel side, Booking.com doesn’t physically verify every hotel room listed either. Overstating amenities or even outright lying is as old as real estate and has nothing to do with “tech.”

Did you read the original vice article? The airbnb scam is much more harmful than an erroneous classifieds listing. If someone lies on Craigslist and you're smart enough to find out they did you walk away and all that's lost is time. The scammers on airbnb were promising a better place and then had them stay in a place that might as well be a squat. Wasting time, money, comfort, convince, etc.

When they say “We’re going to verify all our listings” I fucking expect them to verify listings.

When listings cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and they skim a significant fee off every rental they need to take some significant steps to eliminate fraud on their platform.

Craigslist is a horrible example because they don’t profit from most sales, and they don’t process the money between buyer/ seller. If AirBnb worked like CL, you’d be pay your host cash when you show up and if your host tried to pull shit like this you could just walk.

There are places on Airbnb that have never been rented. How would those places be verified, which is necessary if you want to say "Every listing is verified", if you do anything other than send employees to those places?

Craigslist, Booking etc don't make any claim that all places are verified so they don't need employees to do that work. If Airbnb are going to make that claim then they will need people to do the verifying.

> Are you suggesting hiring employees to check every single listing on AirBnB?

Yes.

Unless they don't actually plan to verify listings, in which case they should just state they don't verify listings. Then they don't have to hire anyone extra.

The promise to investors of "tech companies" is zero marginal cost, and hence infinite scalability. As soon as you have to have to incur meatspace costs per transaction instead of doing it all in software, these sky-high unicorn valuations go out the window.

Exactly. Frequently the ones who deflate are ones that hadn’t figured out the zero marginal cost bit in time.

Don't be silly. Real work would mess up the scam, which works roughly like this: 1) Build a software system that appears to perform a real-world function. 2) Offer that real-world function at a loss. 3) Founders and early investors collect sweet, sweet bagholder dollars. That, of course is a Ponzi scheme, but the S-1 makes it all legal!

That would be unlikely to work. It'll probably be like Yelp, where when you check in, they say "does this place have wifi" or "do they take credit cards". You don't verify everything all at once.

They'll probably have algorithms to determine who are legit travelers and ask them to do the most verification and of the most risky stuff.

And remember to make it a short stay because AirBnb is taking 25% commission on the booking. Friends reviews are costing an arm and a leg.

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