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Comment by privateSFacct | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb has had problems with people finding out where hosts work, where they have other business etc and leaving offsite reviews for airbnb stays on those platforms.

My question - would you rent out a room in your house for a night if someone starts leaving crappy reviews about you everywhere? Many people would not.

I think Airbnb AND homeowners should carry much more liability for some of the fraud on Airbnb, so I hope to see airbnb paying big penalty bucks in the future.

Airbnb likely dislikes third party reservations, offsite payments and offsite bookings for business reasons as well. I wouldn't be surprised if folks going off-site are asked not to participate on-site - fair or not.

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I 100% believe the authors side of this charade, and I think the answer to the hypothetical goes something like this:

1. 90% of Airbnb hosts are not going to run into that problem because they’re going to do everything to make it right, so to fear it would be akin to being worried about getting hit by lightening.

2. 10% of Airbnb hosts are psychotically delusional and create problems, do nothing to fix them, and empowered by Airbnb, leave the only remaining outlet as off-site reviews. These people don’t have any business renting property.

So that is to say — the “problem” of off-site reviews is a secondary repercussion of Airbnb letting nearly anyone rent their places, and then not doing enough to prune bad hosts out. It’s a fundamental misalignment in their business model to tilt this heavily towards hosts, because hosts have illiquid property in mostly crowded markets (expendable) while customers have extremely liquid capital and lots of choice.

Having run into nutty hosts (and before that landlords) would you as a guest feel good if one of those hosts started posting negative reviews about you offsite based on your stay at Airbnb?

Ie, if their only outlet for a guest that "created problems" "did nothing to fix them" was off-site reviews?

I've found folks with the approach of I should be able to slam you publicly react TERRIBLY when they themselves start receiving off-site reviews. And I've found the nutty hosts / nutty guests often have the most time to pursue things like off-site reviews as an "outlet" for their aggression.

I have stopped saying at airbnb when traveling except for big group trips and paying for very premium places because the quality of hosts is problematic as you describe, and airbnb should ABSOLUTELY shut down the false advertising hosts (extra charges after / poorly disclosed "rules", cameras in all the rooms etc). But I do have an outlet, I book a nice room at a hotel - a very predictable experience! And I'm not the only one.

I probably wouldn’t feel great (and I wouldn’t post negatively either), but who’s running the business and receiving money and who is spending money? Paying money to get blasted would be a new low yet being a business and getting blasted is kinda a time-honored situation. This actually is kinda aligned with what I’m talking about because the bad owners don't realize they’re running a business when they rent their property, and their problems are caused by not caring about what businesses have to care about, which is reputation and value of name.

But yeah overall agreed, esp. about who has the time & energy to go ballistic about these things and the long realization that this is why hotels are a much better place to spend money.

I'm less confident that an airbnb "business" might not go off-site to slam customers. We already have regular businesses suing yelp users etc for bad reviews even if factual.

I'm not a huge fan of the hunt people down across the net and in real life to destory them modern approach to problems - even if you as a user claim you need the "outlet".

Someone shows up to your airbnb in Berkeley wearing a trump hat. You're telling me no Berkeley hosts would go slamming these guests as racists online if they could?

Someone shows up down south on vacation with their partner but hasn't yet come out yet as gay - has a bad host interaction with someone bigoted - if airbnb allowed off-site reviews you are sure no one would out this couple?

I get the urge to publicly destroy people, just realize there may be folks with opinions different than yours who may then want to spend time trying to destroy you.

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