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Comment by techiferous | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb is a Y Combinator company, so that is a big reason why this story is generating a lot of interest on Hacker News. It's quite on-topic for this particular community.

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I'm aware that it's a YC company, but I still don't see why such a random event counts as a data point... Sometimes weird and twisted stuff happens... it doesn't mean anything.

That "it" happened doesn't "mean anything". I think what you mean is that when bad shit happens to a person, it doesn't mean that person is bad. But even if that is what you mean, that it happened does "mean" something to EJ. It also most definitely "means" something to AirBNB. I don't know what yet. I suspect that the internet is so fickle, and that even if the cost/benefit analysis demonstrated that AirBNB is a universally bad idea, that people would still do it because they perceive less risk in events they choose [1]. Equally, the whole thing could just be overblown because its news.

"People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can’t control. When people voluntarily take a risk, they tend to underestimate it. When they have no choice but to take the risk, they tend to overestimate it."

  [1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_risk_2.html

Of course the event itself doesn't mean anything. It's how Airbnb handled it that means something. IMO, the fact that Airbnb said the word "funding" to the victim is pretty damning.

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