Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

If asked to name the top three people I'd be most unlikely to work with, I'd only be able to name one: Aaron Greenspan. I am so tired of the constant stream of whining (on his blog, HN, twitter, quora, etc) about how everyone is against him and everything is not fair. And now he's bad-mouthing more people, all as part of his overall theme of whining about how Facecash is a brilliant idea that obviously can't get any traction because of the big bad unfair regulators who don't get what he's trying to do.

Aaron, please, please, for everyone's sake, find something more constructive to do with your obviously impressive intelligence. This is just sad.

The theme of the original blog post upon which this article is based is that "Silicon Valley criminals should be held to account for their actions" just as those who are the focus of Occupy Wall Street's protestations should be. This is, in essence, a political argument supported by the blog author's view that an elite few control and dominate society and are able to abuse its laws in order to promote their economic gain.

A few thoughts on this:

1. The subject matter here concerns the idea that laws are selectively enforced to favor a few elites and, whether one agrees with this or not, this is really political subject matter that is not proper for HN.

2. The "crime" allegedly being committed by Airbnb today rests solely on the blog author's assertions that: (a) Airbnb and many other prominent tech startups are handling money in ways that violate California's money transmittal statutes and (b) that fact in turn violates federal laws that make it a crime to commit such violations. While it is conceivable that the laws mentioned might some day be interpreted in this way, it is a huge stretch - indeed, even a frivolous assertion - to say that Airbnb is committing "crimes" simply by operating its business in accordance with its prescribed business model. As matters now stand, however, this is only a layman's conclusion about a complex body of laws - and one that is not supported by the actions or interpretations of those charged with enforcing such laws. In this context, there is no basis for calling anybody here "Silicon Valley criminals" unless it is in a generalized political sense (e.g., the robber barons were "looters and criminals") - that is, through use of the word "criminals" in a hyperbolic, non-specific manner. This is really another way of saying that the subject matter of the post was as much political as anything else.

3. It is irresponsible for VentureBeat to take this underlying material and concoct a headline stating that "allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder." The clear implication of this headline is that there are serious allegations of criminal misconduct currently affecting this particular individual and that is objectively false. No crimes of any kind have been charged. No activity is being engaged in by this individual that has even remotely raised concerns by the public authorities of criminal activity. The relevant activities are said to be "criminal" based solely on a lay interpretation of laws that is not supported by the relevant regulators, by existing case law, or by any criminal enforcement actions of prosecutors. The picture painted by the headline, then, is plainly misleading if not false.

4. The factual background as recited by the blog author may be true or not. Only the persons involved really know. Taken as a whole, the facts themselves are here dwarfed by the problematic legal conclusions set forth as fact by this piece. I would therefore call it a "hit piece" or unfair attack as presented by VentureBeat. The blog author made an essentially political argument in his piece; this follow-on piece, though, attempts to recast that argument as legal fact about alleged crimes and this goes way over the line in my judgment.

Anybody who thinks I am being unfair in so describing the VentureBeat piece need only imagine like allegations being made about you simply because you ran a successful Silicon Valley venture that handled money in some manner, whether as payments or deposits or otherwise. If you don't mind being called a "criminal" when there is no hint that you are doing anything at all to violate current laws, then more power to you. For the rest of us, I think "unfair" is a very understated way of describing it.

So he's right? Every response on this thread seems to be ad hominem. No one seems to be defending AirBNB guys.

It is relevant because any online business necessarily has a lot of information about its customers. Spamming is both illegal and immoral (free riding on the commons), so I would choose not to give my business/info to people with a known history of such activity.

Does anyone know what year this was in?

I was pretty active in the spam world in high school circa 2002-03. Of course we all had nicknames so I wouldn't know. Learned much and glad to have moved on from days of Dark Mailer and fighting "antis" :)

That aside, the bigger news is that Aaron Greenspan continues to a bitter man and a constant dick. Grow a pair and build some shit of your own instead of peddling gossip to valley blogs. Seriously.

An 18 year old would have to engage in some pretty dark stuff for me to indict them later in life as a subpar founder, partner or person. Spamming and porn don't even come close to qualifying.

I have seen Aaron spam mailing lists for FaceCash. When I search his name in Gmail, I see a few of gems like this:

"Aaron, this is not an appropriate posting. This is not a list for advertising."

Pot meet kettle.

I'm not sure what this will do for the AirBnB founder's reputation, but the pattern of incessant whining from Greenspan certainly has lowered my opinion of him.

I fail to see how ad hominen attacks on Greenspan are adding to the discussion. If you feel that he's whining too much, downvote and move on.

Onto the article itself, I find it concerning that some people can break the law and get away with it while others can't.

>Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per week

At millions per week, that would make him just slightly less effective than a 12 year old Chinese skiddie. Given that there are 604800 seconds in a week, even 100M emails is just over 150/s. Not much of an ROI for "custom hardware and software".

While it is easy to focus on the messenger being annoying, his message does have a reputable citation(found on his blog): http://web.archive.org/web/20030512215305/http://www.spamhau...

Mind you, innocent or well meaning persons can end up on Spamhaus list, but this does not seem to be the case here.

All it means is that Airbnb quite likely knew about the Craigslist spamming done by their affiliates. Legally they seem to be in the clear, but morally is another matter.

People insulting Aaron Greenspan just don't understand him.

If you want to understand him, just imagine a very sensitive precocious child raised on a rigid deontological morality by highly rigid and argumentative parents. This values system is characterized by a rigid logic that mainly focuses on things that are disallowed. For instance, lying is disallowed, betrayal is disallowed, and perfect obedience to official rules and legitimate authority is seen as the highest life virtue. The legitimacy of the authority though is dependent on the attempt of the authority to enact fair rules.

Aaron, as a precocious and sensitive boy who was mature for his age and learned logical reasoning early, absorbed his moral lessons very well and set them up as a set of rigid unbendae rules in his psyche.

When this kind of compex, highly integrated, high integrity, rigid value system encounters reality it finds outrage absolutely everywhere because the truth is that most authorities are quite incompetent and very far from fair. The hackers who are willing to break the rules have an unfair advantage over Aaron, who is literally incapable of breaking the rules due to his early programming. To rectify this intolerable unfairness he must demonstrate how the authorities are not properly punishing the rule breakers and t is hoped that this will ameliorate the unfairness.

I have a lot of sympathy for Aaron. He is really a victim of his short sighted parents who deeply indoctrinated him with this ideology that puts him at a major disadvantage in the modern day. It's not a simple thing to change or break this ideology even if he wanted to, because there are tremendous anxiety barriers stopping him from breaking any rules. He would feel extremely guilty and worried if he used patently selfish intentions and engaged in borderline unethical behaviour like spamming porn for money.

Aaron did everything right. He never lied, never stole, never even used deception or committed a lie of omission. He always shared with others and always engaged brotherly love. He had plenty of chances to betray people's trust for profit and did not take them. He worked hard and long with perfect integrity - moral perfection. And what did he get for it? Nothing. Zuck got 4 billion and his name in the history books for lying, cheating, breaking the rules. That could have been aaron, but Aaron was too morally perfect. It's just not fair!! And it's all the fault of Authority for failing to punish those who broke the rules.

Aaron - society is not to blame for rewarding cheaters. Your parents are to blame for giving you a crippling moral compass that is out of touch with reality.

Spamming isn't illegal. In fact, it can teach you a lot about marketing. I'm actually impressed than an 18 year old could make enough with it to pay for school.

What I found more interesting than these allegations was the link to the angel investor email about the 21.5 million cashout by the airbnb founders.

Aaron Greenspan hates people and loves to whine. That's his whole thing.

Aaron Greenspan, hater extraordinaire.

Controversy. It is definitely a tried and true publicity method. Whenever someone creates some, I sing it like the prince song and then move on with my life.

Aaron Greenspan's constant attacks of other people read like the theories of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other people. In other words, complete nonsense.