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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

This is the most intelligent comment I've seen about this whole business. The phenomenon isn't limited to YC companies-- we saw it in e.g. the reaction to Zuckerberg (at 20 or whatever) calling users "dumb fucks" and to Biz and Ev (jokingly) asking if they could cut in the food line at Facebook-- but the problem is at its worst with YC companies because we have to scale back on moderation.

When users work themselves into a frenzy over an ordinary issue and upvote a stream of mostly duplicate stories about it, we can just kill most of them. But with controversies about YC companies we can't or we'll get accused of censorship.

I don't know if there's a solution. We may just have to resign ourselves to the collective IQ of HN decreasing for a few days whenever there is a controversy involving a YC company.

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A comment that broadly accuses the HN community of jealousy, and questions the motives of everyone commenting, is the most intelligent comment you've seen about this?

Huh.

> ...an ordinary issue...

Nice.

I think this is a good illustration of part of what's wrong here. To the woman whose life has been upended by this, this is not "an ordinary issue". Similarly, everyone that's said so far that this has not been handled as gracefully as it could have been, and that there might be something we could all learn from that, should not be dismissed as just being envious of another company.

A comment that broadly accuses the HN community of jealousy, and questions the motives of everyone commenting, is the most intelligent comment you've seen about this?

Actually, it is. Nobody here should be making personal attacks or accusations without knowing the full story. And nobody here knows the full story, yet everyone feels entitled to act as Airbnb's PR team. It reminds me of the redesign attempts where the guy comes in and says "here's what you should do!" and they don't really understand why the decisions were formed or what lead up to them. Weren't we just here with Groupon and Yelp being ripped apart for supposedly being involved in extortion? It turned out to be a bunch of flailing business owners who were on their way down, Groupon and Yelp were just the catalyst. For every one of those complaints, you can find another happy business owner who says those companies have helped them tremendously. What do we see now? This woman is pissed off, and you can see another person who had the same problem happen to his apartment. Everything stolen, horrible experience. With meth addicts. Exact same story, Airbnb settled, he's happy and using Airbnb again.

Airbnb has no financial obligation to this woman. Yet we all still feel entitled to let them know how to run their business because of what happened to one of their customers, and with hardly any information. As if that's bad enough, some people have gone as far as calling Brian psychotic. I hope you realize how absurd that sounds to those of us who know him.

By ordinary issue I meant one not involving a YC company. E.g. software patents.

Well, this certainly clears it up. To those of you who have been concerned with Airbnb and PG's actions over the past few days... it's just because you're jealous and stupid.

Classy, Paul.

It's a kind of stupidity I myself have fallen prey to in the past. One of the things I learned from being one of the earliest users of reddit is how easy it is to let indignation cloud one's judgment. Time after time I'd be led into angrily upvoting some story, only to learn later that things were not at all as they seemed initially.

After many years of being faked out, I gradually learned to reserve judgment when my indignation buttons were (intentionally or unintentionally) being pressed, but I still had incomplete information.

Time after time I'd be led into angrily upvoting some story, only to learn later that things were not at all as they seemed initially

Exactly. To me it seems very suspicious that the airbnb accuser won't release original communication between her and airbnb. She can do that voluntarily. However, airbnb being a corporation cannot do the same unless as a court proceeding. On the same note, airbnb also cannot publicly indulge in setting the record straight and calling out a former customer no matter how much she may be at fault. Folks at HN simply appear oblivious to these finer points.

I'm more curious than angry, I want to know AirBnb's side of the story.

Unfortunately brianchesky's comments here are brief and he ignores the replies:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brianchesky

AirBnb are giving low-key responses given the coverage it's received. Perhaps this is for privacy or legal reasons, or for PR / reputation reasons, or they don't think their response will be perceived as adequate by the so-called "angry mob" here. Maybe it's just they don't think it's any of our business how they deal with this situation.

The incomplete information you mention is frustrating. I'm sure many people here like me would like to know how a company should deal with this kind of PR - and personal - crisis, and were hopeful we'd see more of this played out in public after EJ's blog. The visibility this story has received from the upvotes on the TechCrunch, FT, and blog post stories has led to us getting more information than we otherwise would have had.

Are we really being manipulated or "faked out" into voting, or is it not a rational response given that the visibility tends to lead to more information leaking out?

My guess is that it is for privacy and legal reasons. They cannot make public details about their conversation with a customer they have a contract with without potentially violating privacy agreements. The best they can do is release fluff pieces or remain completely silent. They went with the former though between those two choices, I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Now the accuser can easily clear all this up by publishing her original communication with airbnb and their exact responses. Instead she continues to post summations which the public here seems to take as a definitive word(wrongly, in my view).

I've a hunch that when the dust settles, we'll be reading a lot of mea culpas from HN users who rushed to judgement against airbnb.

That's the crux of it, simply that we should wait for more information before making a rush to judgment, the same reason we have a legal process instead of entering a liability verdict after the first day of media accusations.

> I don't know if there's a solution.

There's a very obvious solution: Airbnb need to do the right thing. Right now. Publicly and privately.

It's really not hard. Whatever they've done wrong in the past few weeks, they can make right pretty quickly, and the conversation will shift just as quickly.

Until then? All public evidence indicates they're still doing the wrong thing. Really, what do you expect? This is an issue of basic human empathy, and the apparent lack thereof. Business issues have been very much a secondary concern in all discussions about this.

You didn't read his comment. I'll simplify it for you: you have no idea whether Airbnb has done the right thing by this customer, but you seem to have no trouble telling everyone how simple this issue is to dispose of.

Has Airbnb even claimed to have actually done anything? I've seen empty words and no action or even claim of action. Have I missed something?

The full story is pretty irrelevant. What we have is clearly sufficient to know that Airbnb doesn't have a clue how to handle this, either with regard to the particular customer, or the wider PR disaster.

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