Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmarquez | Hacker News Reader

Account deleted. Honestly given the pandemic (variations of cleaning standards between homes and hotels, and increased pricing) this was an easy choice.

From the email: "We know your privacy is important"

Airbnb should prove it by making this opt-in instead of opt-out (and not hiding the choice with a bunch of boilerplate). I expect these dark patterns from a shadier website, not Airbnb.

Edit: If you go through "Account settings" you are only given a choice to "deactivate" your account. To actually remove your information, go here: https://www.airbnb.com/privacy/manage-your-data

View on HN

I think they're justified to make this clearly flagged (sent out emails), created with some of the leading privacy researchers, and provide an explicit opt-out, and in the service of revealing racism and discrimination on the platform. I got an email, read it, decided I didnt want to be involved, and decided to opt-out. Glad they were transparent and gave advance notice, not sure what else is reasonable to expect.

Not everybody will see that email though and they are probably relying on that. I am sure, given the choice to opt in, most users would not (regardless of the cause) - Similar to Apples new anti-tracking in iOS 14

Few people just opt in to having their rights violated

At this point in time I'd say that opt-out is a dark pattern.

It's really only done because they know few people will voluntarily opt-in to something like tracking or profiling.

Given the usual "Your privacy is important to us" guff this makes their privacy terms look even shadier.

Did Airbnb confirm that they deleted account? They are using vague term “cancelled your account”. That is a fishy use of “cancel” word where “delete” should have been used. I don’t trust Airbnb.

Same concern here. I don’t think it was actually deleted from their database. Just flagged as deleted.

On the very last page of the process it said Airbnb might need to contact me to prove I made the request. I don't trust them either, but it's certainly better than the "deactivation" they were pushing.

I think it is still deactivation.

Most companies don't delete accounts when you request to delete account, they only disable your access to account. So, before cancelling I prefer to go into account, remove as much info as possible and change all other info before requesting to delete account.

AirBnb wouldn't even let me access my account until I accepted their new T&C and upon declining they just moved me to cancel account with no chance to make any changes to existing info.

If one lives in California with the CCPA, cannot one ask them to delete the data?

Even in Europe (where the GDPR is present) you can't always insist that they delete the data. If there is a legitimate interest, like a legal data retention requirement for transaction billing records, you can't force the covered data to be deleted while that interest remains valid. Also other data can often be acceptably anonymized by removing the linkage with your personal identifiers, rather than truly wiped from existence.

But yeah, a lot of companies don't even do what the GDPR actually requires, let alone what people think it does.

Yes, I've deleted my Airbnb account a few months ago and had to go through their confirmation process. I've never booked anything, I've never provided any ID etc., and yet I had to provide a copy of my ID to prove that I'm the owner.

"Please stop collecting and selling my data."

"OK, send more data!"

Did you really delete your account because they want to measure whether people are being discriminated against (with an opt out available)? That seems pretty awful given all the racism that people are fighting hard to stop.

As far as the pandemic goes, Airbnb has a lot less turnover than hotels and there are mandated days between guests to ensure the virus cannot live on any surfaces. That’s much safer than you’re going to get at a hotel with a lobby that has hundreds of guests coming in and out every day. Half the things you pay extra for at a hotel are now useless (gym, room service) whereas the benefits of an Airbnb like having a real kitchen and more private space are worth more now.

> Did you really delete your account because they want to measure whether people are being discriminated against (with an opt out available)?

Man, this comment and some similar sibling comments betray this mentality where racism is the ultimate evil and, thus, anything done in the name of fighting racism is justified.

In particular, multiple people seem to think you're not allowed to criticise Airbnb's approach to handling private data _because Airbnb purportedly is using it to somehow fight discrimination_. Nevermind that:

* There's no transparency about how this 3rd party will use the data

* There's no data on how effective their approach will be.

* The default is opt-in, not opt-out.

* Airbnb has done ethically dubious things before.

Yet, according to some comments, if you don't let Airbnb use your data, you're supporting the racists/being tone deaf.

How is deleting their account worse than opting out? Or are you implying that opting out of their studies is also an awful thing?

Deleting or opting out is fine if that’s what you really want to do. But making a big public announcement that you deleted your account because they started an optional study to try to stop discrimination is pretty awful. You’re basically sending them (and everyone on this forum) a message that if they try to help discrimination then they will lose users. It’s a lose-lose for Airbnb. They either do nothing and people blame the platform for passive discrimination or they try to improve it and then have to deal with people blaming them for being big brother and deleting their accounts in a fit of rage.

MIT just had to remove a major AI dataset that was used to teach hundreds of AIs. It had numerous examples of black people and monkeys labeled with the N-word and has trained systematic bias into our algorithms. This type of bias cannot be fought by hiding from the problem. What Airbnb is doing is courageous and you are free to opt-out if you don’t like it, but taking a big public stand against an organization for actually trying to improve things for minorities in 2020 is pretty tone deaf.

Airbnb is a for-profit company with a controversial record, not a credible research institution. If they wanted to do this with no controversy, they would have a) had an institution send out the email to provide credibility, b) provide clear opt-ins, c) not hide behind a "We know your privacy is important" cliché instead of actually acting that way.

> but taking a big public stand against an organization for actually trying to improve things for minorities in 2020 is pretty tone deaf

From the email: "we’ll use first names and profile photos from hosts and guests to help us understand the perceived race someone might associate with them...We’ll use this information to help us understand when and where racial discrimination is happening on our platform."

So if I get rejected for trying to book a room, my brown face will be labeled "minority" and be used as a datapoint to help improve the company. I have every right to disagree with how Airbnb is going about this especially from a privacy perspective, and do so vocally.

Yep you have every right, you just come across as an entitled white dude who doesn’t give a fuck about the problems in this country. You’re still arguing it should be opt-in which misses the obvious point that something like this could never get enough opt-ins to work because people are lazy and aren’t even going to bother to read it.

> you just come across as an entitled white dude who doesn’t give a fuck about the problems in this country

Oh wow, first time a guy on the internet calls me a white dude. If you saw me in real life, or made any inferences based on my HN username, you would know better.

Didn’t say you were. Said it’s how you come across. It’s sadly true that it’s become a meme especially amongst many white males to hate every attempt to identify or prevent discrimination. The standard playbook is to say it’s an invasion of privacy, it’s a liberal company being too PC, and let’s start some right-wing version of the site where we can all be “free” which usually means a bunch of skinhead wannabes.

I apologize for being rude but to be honest it’s pretty frustrating that people would be so selfish as to make a big stink about it instead of just opting out. Do you know how many times Facebook or LinkedIn has opted me into research and sharing that I didn’t opt in to and no one even bats an eye most the time. Now that the research is about discrimination instead of advertising profits it’s some big invasion of privacy that we need to delete our accounts over. Not to mention that Facebook and LinkedIn typically don’t let you opt out at all.

You're one of those people actively driving away otherwise decent people from a worthy cause. Congratulations.

That’s fair, but also a strawman. I haven’t seen anyone make a statement against the actual research they want to do, the issue is regarding the opt-out approach that they hide behind a “forced opt-in to share your data for the good cause”.

I don’t think anyone would complain if it was implemented as an opt-in.

No one would complain if it was opt-in because only 0.1% of people would even notice it was happening and sign up. It’s not a straw man because one can’t study racial discrimination at scale by having a few random users opt-in to sharing their race. You either design an effective program or why bother to pretend you’re helping?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com