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Comment by fivea | Hacker News Reader

> Does Airbnb offer other alternative methods of identifying riffraff?

The newspiece mentions a problem of racial discrimination based on checking profile pictures and how a name sounds. Do you feel it's appropriate to equate someone's ratial background with "riffraff"?

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No, not based on immutable characteristics like race and gender; but, I want to see other signs that might indicate somebody I don't want to rent to. For example, I'm going to be very leery of renting to somebody with neck tattoos or a teardrop tattoo. Others might not want to rent to somebody who wears a MAGA hat in their photo. Owners have a right to decide who stays in their house.

Side note: it seems HN memory-holed the article altogether: not flagged, showdead has no effect. It's just....gone.

Owners do not have an unlimited right to decide whom to rent to. They can decide to rent to no one, but once they start offering to rent they must follow the law.

This is naive. There are an infinite number of ways to legally discriminate. Not all discrimination is bad. When you buy a five star product over a one star product you are discriminating.

This makes no sense, your analogy.

When you're SELLING a five star product, and you choose only to SELL it to [people who you look upon favorably] then you're discriminating.

Someone looks at one star homes (for example) on AirBnB, and five star. Chooses a five star. They haven't discriminated against any protected class in choosing the five star home. The homeowner absolutely can by refusing.

But discrimination based on things other than race, gender, etc. is not necessarily illegal, or even wrong. When a company is considering candidates it discriminates based on skill, experience, demeanor (and the vague "culture fit", which is indeed worthy of criticism as a criterion). With AirBnB, the renter applies, and the owner has the [now quickly eroding] right to refuse. Basing that on things other than immutable characteristics is not necessarily wrong.

You can do the reverse, it's not uncommon for an eBay seller to refuse to complete a sale if a buyer has a poor rating.

Of course not. Same goes for their general appearance. Just saying that there needs to be a way to rate risk. If the ratings are reliable and can’t be gamed then that is one and probably the best method.

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