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Comment by moonlighter | Hacker News Reader

EJ writes: "And I was - but no longer am - scared of Airbnb’s reaction, the pressure and the veiled threat I have received from them since I initially blogged this story."

Wow. That sounds quite different from what Brian Chesky claims here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbn...

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Chesky's claims are addressed directly in the blog post, and don't look good.

"...don't look good." is quite the understatement. If he tried to manage the fallout, it totally backfired, and now they have a full-blown PR nightmare to deal with, which could've been avoided.

>>Once our host’s safety was secured, our attention moved to further strengthening our system.

In the context of this article, this sentence from their PR statement takes on a new and depressing overtone-- that of "Okay, we think the guy is arrested, so you're fine, right? We don't need to pay attention to you anymore, right? By the way, can you take down that blog post now?"

I don't like to be vulgar, particularly on HN, but it really needs to be asked.

Is anyone here really all that surprised Chesky is a douche?

I know Brian personally and he is one of the nicest persons I've worked with in the valley. He also sincerely cares about his customers. I am surprised that anyone would think of him in that way.

I'm making this analogy extreme for the sake of clarity not because I think it's legitimately comparable:

Charles Manson's friends and followers were pretty fond of him too.

Leadership of a company tends to attract rather extreme personalities in all kinds of directions. One of the tendencies that is extremely common is sociopathy. Sociopathy is usually found is charismatic, likable people, but those people don't actually care about your welfare.

I don't know if Chesky is a sociopath or not, I can't say one way or the other, but the way he spoke to EJ smacked of the single-minded self-absorption of one.

But that doesn't mean a sociopath can't be charming as hell at a party. That's how they succeed.

Let me clear this up for you: Brian Chesky is not a sociopath.

Definitely not a sociopath (he and Joe are great guys; the AirBnB people I've met have all come across as much more social and friendly than most other startups).

Actually, a sociopath with $5b at risk over $10-20k might actually do a better job managing this kind of thing than a genuinely good guy who doesn't constantly think about how to defraud of hurt people and then lie to cover it up.

I'm sorry, but how could you be surprised? If the facts are as laid out in the post, he doesn't always care about his customers enough. That wouldn't be opinion, but objectively true. I don't see any room for surprise here, especially given that most people here don't personally know Mr. Chesky and are likely more even-handed in their assessment than you are.

Ironically, much like AirBnB as a company, I like to assume people (even ones who run companies) are generally good.

This is certainly making me rethink that stance, at least in this specific case.

He's a spammer. He hired people to poison the well. He'd have to dedicate his life to feeding baby seal orphans to get upgraded to douche.

As I noted in another comment, the way he spoke to EJ smacked of the way a sociopath speaks to someone in pain when they're really interested in something else.

Pretty jarring.

Or it might just be that the guy is under a lot of stress and making bad decision. Watching your company potentially go up in flames with one incident is probably not an easy situation in which to make decisions.

We don't know the whole story. I understand the host stance also, basically on both sides they see things they've invested a lot into (her personal life and belongings, the company) be destroyed.

I'm not saying they are on the same level here (Her personal life and stuff is not easy to fix and she can't fail with that, at least not as easy as doing another company to me).

In the private sector, excellence in the absence of pressure isn't worth any accolades.

Incidentally, the same is true of moral character.

I understand what you are saying. You are completely right, people can act and claim to have ethics but it's only under major situations where those ethics are challenged that they can be judged. But currently we have tidbits of information about the situation, we don't know how it's being played out inside AirBnB or exactly what was said to whom and who's pressuring who (inside AirBnB I mean, not the cofounder pressuring the host) and what not. I just don't like this internet justice vibe going on. It feels very much like what Nancy Grace would do.

I agree. I can't even start to imagine the pressure. It's easy for us to say "he should have done like that" because we can think clearly from a distance.

This guy was one of us reading HN and hoping to make it a couple of years ago. Now he's managing millions.

Nobody really prepared him for that. I can imagine phone calls from people above him counseling to kill the story.

He may even had wanted to take a different approach but bend to pressure for what we know. Money talks loudly.

I don't like the was he's dealing with it, I just want to say that it must be very hard to take good decisions in such a situation.

If managing millions robs you of the empathy that is necessary in this situation then there is something very wrong in the whole situation.

A user of your service had their life upended as a direct result of loopholes in your vetting model. The LEAST you can do is reimburse them in full for their loss, take the monetary hit, and plug the holes in your model. If you are managing this in any other way you deserve to have your job forfeited.

Brian Chesky is not a douche. Whatever he did regarding this situation, he did with one billion dollars worth of pressure on him. If he made some kind of mistake, then it was much more likely due to the pressure of the moment than a flaw in his character.

He's actually one of the few truly good people that I've ever met. When I read the other day that he had reached out to the woman with support and money, I figured the issue was settled. I'm sure that he and the entire AirBnB team feel horrible about this and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it go away.

You, indeed, should not have been vulgar. Particularly here on hn.

he did with one billion dollars worth of pressure on him The amount of money at stake is not an excuse. Sorry.

[…] and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it go away. It's not going to go away, and he and ABnB have massively compounded the problem by wanting to "make it go away", instead of dealing with it in a humane and sensitive manner.

"are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it go away."

I think you're right. But seriously, while it's not his job to be her counselor it's also pretty bad he tried to roll her. I'm sure he's charmed many people but good for her to call him out on this. He'd have been better off letting the CS reps handle it.

No, I think you have captured what many may be thinking quite nicely.

'Veiled threat' is strong language not yet supported by the other details provided.

It's not surprising that communication became colder after the initial blogpost. As soon as a company knows something is likely to be played out in the court of public opinion (or actual courts), there are new risks for them to consider in every interaction.

A photo op at a $10,000 check presentation would've short circuited all this shit anyway. AirBnB has blundered dramatically here. In no way have they handled this appropriately at any step.

edit: I say this even if the blog author is not representing the truth 100% accurately. A check and some photos of that check would've at least given people some positive news to latch onto. Instead we've just got her out here shooting AirBnB in the face.

This is the kind of story PR people put in slideshows at conferences and use to justify their existence to their boss. Absolutely classic public relations nightmare that has been handled in exactly the wrong way.

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