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Comment by elmerfud | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.

They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested using it because it was cheaper.

It was awesome place, host was great, so left a fantastic review. It was taken down and I was called a liar. When I asked to speak with someone about why I'm accused of being a liar in my review customer support promised me many times I would get a call back. Never once did I receive a call back from anyone at Airbnb instead I would get an email that they had conducted a thorough review and their position still stands that I am a liar. I'm not sure what thorough means in their mind but since they asked me zero questions or confirmed no information with me directly it's impossible that they conducted any kind of thorough review.

Airbnb is a horrendous company along with all of these gig economy companies. They need to be regulated in the same manner as they're non-gig counterparts are. I can't imagine that any Airbnb executive actually stays at Airbnb places not with the kind of customer service that Airbnb offers.

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This is why I went back to hotels. Airbnb is a scummy company and can’t seem to survive without out of control “gotcha” fees added by either itself or its hosts which now make many hotels cheaper. I also am not obligated to do work for the host with a hotel. Some of the hosts have become super entitled over the years due to Airbnbs policies. It’s a shame as using Airbnb was an excellent experience when it first began but that obviously was on borrowed time much like the rest of the gig economy.

I’ve stayed in 100+ Airbnbs and literally never have paid or been asked to pay an extra fee. I have, however, been surprised several times by hotels charging an extra “resort fee” upon arrival.

You’ve never had to pay a cleaning fee?

These are so egregious and can be 50% of a night cost.

I’ve had so many bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s never like in the pictures. It’s always noisier, low quality mattress and furniture that looks good on pictures but isn’t functional or breaks if you touch it. I also feel like I’m living in ikea showrooms around the world. And given how expensive the cleaning is, it’s rarely passably clean. Moldy corners in the bathroom, dirt under the bed, chipped dishes…

And good luck trying to get Airbnb to help you. Best they can usually do (after you explain your case over from scratch because it’s always a new customer service person) is “alright we’ll check you out, you get a refund, and good luck finding a place for tonight out of pocket”

Never again. It’s hotels for me every time as well.

>It’s hotels for me every time as well.

I like to search for newly built hotels as they usually offer the nicest accommodations.

Not the OP, but at least in my jurisdiction (Norway), AirBnB dutifully lists any cleaning fees before I press the 'confirm booking' button.

I think the point was 'No -surprise- fees.

They clearly meant a surprise fee, from context. The AirBnB cleaning fee is expected and already included in your bill.

Edit: top context is “That is against AirBnB rules” and “refunded” i.e. AirBnB has explicit rules against surprise fees or bonds, and it can enforce rules.

I am guessing you just responded quickly but it is always good to spend time to try to “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think you're guilty of what you're accusing the responder with. The exorbitance of a $200+ cleaning fee is a well-known criticism of Airbnb.

And no, not until recently could you see the actual total prior to sunken cost of Reviewing your booking. That too, Airbnb finally implemented once the Biden administration compelled them by law - that is, not before making much fanfare about it with the pretense of them "doing it for the customers"

$200 cleaning fee? How big are the houses you stay in?

$200 isn't even that large of a cleaning fee by AirBnb standards (i'd say that closer to the median for a full home in the markets I travel in).

The last 3 bedroom home I rented on AirBnb had a $500 cleaning fee. We were there 4 days. Its ridiculous, but it's becoming the standard on AirBnb.

When I used a cleaning service 10 years ago, it was $275 for 2 maids to clean 1100sqft house. 1 bath, 1 bedroom, vac+mop everywhere, kitchen dishes. They were done in ~3 hours. NYC area.

> The exorbitance of a $200+ cleaning fee is a well-known criticism of Airbnb.

People criticize all sorts of things they don't understand. Our cleaning service charges us $280 per turnover. Separating the cleaning fee from the nightly rate makes our property more appealing for longer stays, which we (and our neighbors) prefer. It's not like a hotel, where the cleaners come every day; why should guests pay every night for a cleaning which will only happen once, after they leave?

As long as its transparent and included in the per-night price calculation so I can easily compare multiple properties I do not have an issue with any fee regardless of its name.

People are annoyed because these fees are often sneaky or not apparent at first sight which makes the UX annoying.

It is not the hotels, who charge it, but governments, most often the municipality. Usually there is no obligation to hide that from the guest or include it in the price. Just to pay. You can also go pay it straight in the town hall, the hotel is just doing you a favor.

A resort fee is not the same as a tourism tax.

Tourism taxes are per head, per night and generally Airbnbs are required to charge them as well (though they often don't).

A resort fee is a bogus surcharge added by hotels to "cover" advertised amenities, like if a cinema charged you a Dolby Surround fee after you showed your ticket at the entrance.

Anecdotal evidence, I have paid tourism taxes on both hotels and AirBnBs.

Ya we got charged a mandatory 20-30$ a day fee at a hotel recently for their “arcade”, which was 2 pinball machines.., and “bar“, which was a mini fridge in the lobby… (1 “free” drink a day).

I've always refused to pay the resort fee and only a single time has the hotel not caved. Course this only works if the hotel isn't sold out.

I tell them its a separate service because not everyone uses it. So if I am not using say the pool or the gym then I shouldn't have to pay it.

The single time I paid the fee was when it included Internet service which I needed. I wrote the CEO of the chain after my stay arguing that charging extra for Internet is like charging extra for electricity or water. Never received a reply.

I was inclined to say "speak for yourself", but then that would have been rude and your username indicates we are living half way across the planet.

Things are different on this side of earth, rest assured. I have paid extra every single time.

Further, there is always things like "parking available", but then either its not free of charge or always busy or its....public parkings.

Same with internet access. Available, if you pay and if its tourism months. And the internet you get comes from a router in the hallway and is shared and at times it seemed like it has the capacity for one concurrent user.

Airbnb enables hosts to publish such things in the name of revenue.

But if a host gets in trouble, they have a half arsed wannabe collection team which will drop them like a hot potato soon.

There are no reviews of truthfulness of the offers etc.

If you have had a good experience, then irs thanks to the host, not thanks to airbnb.

I have also found some Airbnb ads to be inaccurate.

Online descriptions and reviews should be more regulated.

Google, for instance, keeps removing legitimate reviews from myself and others regarding a builder that rented / sold houses with horrible snagging problems, e.g. bursting pipes and leaky roofs.

I have a similar experience with Google removing negative legitimate reviews while not removing fake positive review from the owners itself + family & friends.

The latest scam is having to pay either a $1500 deposit, or $59 "deposit insurance", which I assume the host gets some kickback on. I know I'm not going to trash the place. But I also don't like just putting $1500 out there either. A deposit that high only exists so someone can make money off the deposit insurance.

They, speaking of the hosts, do not make anythong from deposits, I am working in finance, rest assured the reason is a different, much more nefarious one.

They want to charge you for potential damages, done by you or not, as well as wear and tear.

Never, ever put a deposit for them, not even by credit card.

And if you pay for the stay, always , always use a credit card, not a debit card. That way, you can pull the chargeback trigger on them.

A chargeback is their worst nightmare, trust me, it can have so many implications and hurt airbnb so badly if they are subject to chargebacks.

> And if you pay for the stay, always , always use a credit card, not a debit card. That way, you can pull the chargeback trigger on them.

You can chargeback with a debit card, I’ve done it a few times myself.

Isn't it only possible within the first 24-48 hours?

Not in my experience. The network carrying the transaction may still be mastercard or visa in most cases and a chargeback is just debiting the merchants account for the amount.

Keep in mind you should treat chargeback as nuclear weapon. AirBnB/other website will terminate your account.

I was already losing satisfaction in AirBnb but have been open to it if traveling companions were into it. But the nail in the coffin is these deposits. The last few AirBnBs that I have vetted have had these $1,000+ deposits. There was even one I found that had $2,500 deposit (granted it was a large house).

I can stay at a 5 star hotel for a $50 deposit on my credit card. I'll just do that instead. Like you said, its not even really about tying up the money either. I would put this on my AMEX which has no credit limit, so tying up $1,500 isn't really the problem, its the need to authorize a host that I don't personally trust to be able to make any claim they want to justify keeping part of that deposit. I have much more trust in Marriott or Hilton and they only need $50. In all the traveling I've done, I've never had them refuse to release a deposit in full. By contrast, I've met enough crazy AirBnb hosts, that i wouldn't trust them with $100, let along $2,500.

Cleaning fees are also ridiculous. I've seen a lot of $500+ cleaning fees. Come on! What kind of cleaning are you doing for $500?!

I don't really care. If people want to go to AirBnbs, then great. I've had some good experiences with them, but i've also had several bad ones. I don't like the risk I need to take each time with the host. I also am getting fed up with the calculating the "real cost" for each one when comparing them. I'd rather go to Marriott or Hilton where they treat me like a God. So I'm basically done with AirBnb at this point.

It forced hotels to have more competitive prices.

Honestly, there was not much else it could do in the long term.

It did not.

Booking.com did that.

I do however always choose an apartment for corporate trips, but always via booking.com.

This is sort of a funny argument. I promise that AirBNB prices have no impact or influence on hotel prices. It is generally the opposite, AirBnB rates are often influenced by the prices of surrounding hotels.

The number of travelers staying at an Airbnb versus a hotel is under 1%. This is clear by looking at overall inventory available. Even a decent market _might_ have 100 AirBnB listings, that same market will have several thousands (possible 10,000+) of hotel rooms.

Generally the opposite is true. AirBnb hosts will justify their nightly rate based on comparable hotels in the area. But the average Marriot for example isn't all that worried about the handful of AirBnbs nearby that they might be losing customers to.

That depends on the place. Where I live the near touristic destinations have poor tourism infrastructure so AirBnB and similar is thriving there.

I've never had a terrible experience with AirBNB (although the week I spent working in Montreal living on top of one of the greatest party corners came close but it wasn't the fault of the host or AirBNB.)

Personally though I've come to appreciate hotels more and my experience is that you can usually find a decent hotel room for about what an AirBNB costs and I usually like going to a hotel better. (There was that one in Chinatown in NYC that the experience of finding it was somewhere between The Blade Runner and a James Bond movies, I'm not sure if that is a good review or not.)

To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem.

There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist.

Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.

It seems like Airbnb is doing the gamification and manipulating it as well. I’d rather all reviews stay, good and bad and let the consumer decide for themselves. As soon as some reviews get promoted and others hidden I stop paying attention to them

> I’d rather all reviews stay, good and bad and let the consumer decide for themselves

That's not a realistic solution.

If all the reviews were fake 5 stars but it's just the property's friends always leaving reviews then when you got there, you feel there's no way it's 5 stars. But less obvious is property manager says, hey i'll give you a 5% discount for 5 stars, when really the place was a 3-star at best.

Those shifts in star ratings are material in your personal decision making process.

Is there anything currently in place that prevents the 5% off situation? Seems like nobody is able to solve that one. Or wants to tackle it.

Airbnb is incentivized to have higher scores because lower ratings might not push people to other properties - it might discourage them from booking all together. They need them to not be totally worthless, but score inflation is definitively in their best interest.

I left a negative review on a product on Amazon whose seller was doing this (but much higher than 5%). Amazon deleted the review.

I wish I could post the review on my own site and users could easily discover it when browsing items. That makes me develop and risk a reputation.

I don’t trust sites like Airbnb and I understand how sites have problems with review fraud.

If I posted with a unique signature then over time people could learn that mine aren’t fake.

Also would be nice to know that the Airbnb reviewer also rated a restaurant and some headphones, etc.

You should also be able to give extra weight to reviewers that broadly line up with your own reviews. That way; the things that are important to you will show up. It also incentivises you to leave honest reviews.

In my mental lazy file there’s a company called antipode that is able to find people with opposite and like reviews and can help people identify and avoid items.

So you can basically collect people who review in ways that are useful to you and layer that over the web to rank search results, apartments, blenders, etc etc.

Someone should just scrape airb&b reviews as they post and never take them down. Internet archive of air B&B of sorts

It is a problem, but it's also partially self-inflicted.

Compare reviews on Steam to reviews on Airbnb. You'll quickly notice something, Steam shows you far more information at a glance. You get to know whether someone bought the game themselves or if it was given free to them, how many hours they played before the review, how many hours they played in total, their rating, how other people feel about that review, how many other products the user has, if the review was edited, and of course review text.

Airbnb's reviews has a scoring system that was generalized, and review text, maybe a translation badge if the review was translated.

Reviews work best when you are given as much information as possible. Without it, you might as well be relying on an anonymous 5 star system.

You can also only review an Airbnb once you have stayed within. Difference of opinion, I do not find the game examples would be relevant or safe to disclose in the scope of an Airbnb review.

Steam Reviews really should be a model for everyone else imo. They still have problems such as review bombing, but they are way better than anything else.

That’s true. Another reality is that there are bad actors on the customer side too. A single person who gets off on being awful to people can leave an unwarranted bad review and materially harm an Airbnb host’s business.

> To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem.

True but also one they’ve created for profit. They choose to ignore complaints about hosts to avoid losing their fees, they choose not to audit reviews, etc. There’s an entire industry of people who get paid to do mystery shopping to review customer experiences, which is quite effective but not free since you can’t automate it at scale.

This seems like it’s basically a VC playbook now: focus on growth numbers and assume you’ll be able to convey the shiny tech imagine until you reach market dominance, and avoid spending money visibly on “menial” jobs to support the image that you are about to be unbelievably profitable.

> To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem.

I wonder if "tipping" could improve things.

A new platform like airbnb could have an expected tip built in to the platform. Hosts are expected to provide good service and get a tip.

Customers are encouraged to tip at the end of their stay (with a lower base price than airbnb to account for that).

Hosts can see the average, median, max, and min tips of potential customers (along with distribution, and percentage calculations) and use that to determine whether to accept them as a guest.

Customers can see the average tip a listing received, and use that to determine if they'd want to stay there. Of course, they would sometimes leave $0 or a low number as a tip, but they'd be incentivized to also provide good tips for good service, because a low tip average would reflect poorly on them and make them less likely to be hosted.

I suspect tying things to real value for the customer and host would lead to better service and a more honest indication of host/customer quality.

But perhaps it would just lead to hosts literally bribing customers for good tips.

Personally I hate tipping. Long term it just makes everyone frustrated. Socially, it used to be 10% now the bare minimum is 15% if give 18% people then people start becoming happy.

Now I'm forced to expect my price to be 15-20% more expensive than the list...

> Now I'm forced to expect my price to be 15-20% more expensive than the list...

If the industry moves to service included, then the prices will still be 15-20% higher, or more, than they are today. You will have removed the incentive for those that want to provide better service however.

Multiples of 5% calculations is pretty simple and keeps the brain sharp. It’d also be easy to show the price with tips, but dark patterns.

> You will have removed the incentive for those that want to provide better service however.

The incentive to provide better service for individual employees should be provided by their employer.

The incentive for the employer to provide better service to customers is competition with other service providers the client might choose.

Which is how it works in all the jobs that aren’t within the weird and arbitrary bounds of tipping culture.

So then how do you make people care enough to do a good job if there is no monetary incentive? Should the employer cover this? That’ll will still end with the same, increased prices.

Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure. People don’t like surprise fees, inflated prices, etc. They don’t mind tipping as it gives them some control back.

My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.

> So then how do you make people care enough to do a good job if there is no monetary incentive? Should the employer cover this? That’ll will still end with the same, increased prices.

Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices.

> Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure.

It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.

> My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.

Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.

> Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices.

The market said no.

> It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.

That’s great, but it didn’t work in the US. Some of the larger corps ran the experiment for 4 years and when the waiters lost income they complained. You see, here tipping culture means they make more money.

> Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.

It’s exactly the same. It’s lay I would not have received otherwise.

Do you then also get ran after you when you don't leave a tip on top of the service fee the restaurant charges? Pretty crazy experience that was in the USA

Last thing we need is more adoption of tipping which leads to oassive aggressiveness around the event

Oh god please no more tipping. It's spreading like a virus. Each time I visit the USA there's more pestering for tips from every possible angle. Just pay people a fair wage already.

I don’t mind tipping, as it incentivizes people to perform better than standard work. I can’t see being forced to pay 20% to someone that can bring food on time for instance. Either way, this is Airbnb, the owner of the property sets the “wage”.

This is the correct stance to take. I've been to other countries where tipping hasn't been implemented, and the service and quality has _always_ been worse than in the grand USA.

You mean like in Japan?

> hasn’t been implemented

I’m not going to evangelize what a correct stance on this is, but IMHO tipping is a big, not a feature.

Southern conservative states in the US have much better service than in Japan, because it's authentic and enthusiastic. Other countries service is adequate, but there is always a tinge of resentment and jealousy of us here in the US.

I’ve actually been to Japan, I’m not sure how their service is substantially better than the US. the restaurants I went to you order from a kiosk and get the food yourself. There really is no service to tip for. One restaurant I went to was a mom and pop and there was some service there as they struggled to find forks for us. We tried to tip and they counter tipped and gave us the small beer glasses we were drinking out of.

Please email me at laforza@yahoo.com. I'm starting a class action lawsuit against Airbnb . I had reviews removed from my place because Airbnb claims I had a relationship with the guest, and they failed to provide evidence. We need to determine how Airbnb is obtaining it's data to access these relationships. Huge violations of data protection and illegal practices to act based on unsubstantiated evidence.

> have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb

See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history.

Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.

Since when is a social media account required to do online business?

You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?

Don't exaggerate. There is a difference between doing online business and leaving an optional review.

OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.

I'm not the same person, and the question still applies. If you're so pedantic, then,

> Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews?

It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.

Show me where Airbnb promises to accept every review? I'm waiting.

Edit: furthermore spam prevention takes all sorts of random signals in to account. Having no online presence other than a single stay in Airbnb certainly looks suspicious.

Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy.

What indication do you have that such a policy is even remotely in use at Airbnb or another company?

Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy, but there is also no evidence whatsoever that social media presence was in any way shape or form used to make the decision here. Airbnb at no point mentioned it, nor would it have been something that crossed your mind if original commenter didn't mention it as a fact about themselves.

Maybe we're aggresively agreeing with eachother?

I'm not arguing that Airbnb does use presence/lack of social to make a decision here. I just objected to you saying

> Since when is a social media account required to do online business?

I interpreted that as you being outraged that Airbnb requires some form of social presence to do business. I felt you were exaggerating and responded by saying its just about the review. I meant that even _if_ Airbnb is checking this, it's not a big deal cause this is just one of many signals that could feed into spam detection and we're only talking about the _review_ not the ability to use Airbnb at all.

You raised a valid point earlier, I doubt they're actually checking this, my point is just that even if they are, who cares. OP looks suspicious by having no online presence at all and only one stay on Airbnb. That combined with the language in their review probably tipped the spam filters to say "hey it's probably safer if we don't let this review through, doesn't seem legit"

> they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet

Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time.

Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd.

My theory on this is the same as usual – Airbnb outsources or understaffs their customer service department as usual; some stressed out agent closed the case without even looking at it. Making some noise and opening a separate case will probably work if you're bothered enough.

Proving you paid for it doesn't prove that you have no affiliation with the host.

Indeed. It's easy enough to funnel the money back to somebody you know, paying the 3% commission to Airbnb. There are probably tax ramifications too but as a business cost for a glowing review with no effort, worth it.

Yeah, but I don't think Airbnb has sophisticated enough infrastructure to figure out if every person leaving a review has an online presence before deleting their review.

It's possible there's something more mundane, like not having a browser cookie when the review was left or something like that.

Weird part about this is that, at least when I onboarded, Airbnb made me do ID verification to make sure I wasn’t a bot or a puppet.

After that, they’ve already made the fees on the stay. Most people won’t be losing 20% or whatever to farm good reviews.

Why would the final and optional review step be the part where they decide to verify if the stranger staying in someone else’s house is a real person.

It sounds like they suspected you're in cahoots with the host. They don't need to verify that you are in cahoots or not for booking, if a host wants to put themselves then whatever, but if the review looks supisiocus they'll delete it.

>they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.

Implying that a "bot" or "puppet" is paying to stay at AirBnB's just so they can write salty reviews?

In the case I commented on they left a positive review. I'm sure many hosts will accept the Airbnb fees once to boost their rating. Especially if they're starting out, early reviews carry more weight.

Yes this is exactly what they do, and what happens with many Amazon items as well, and for Booking.com

It is not really a big cost because you only really need to pay the platform fee (you control both sides of the transaction do the only real cost is the middleman).

Reviews are super important and it is hard to get booking when you have 0 reviews so it is not surprising that some hosts would spend some dollars for 3-4 fake positive reviews to kickstart their property (many people will bounce off the ad without at least a couple positive reviews, so it changes your business radically)

Except you are describing the opposite of what is being done. Not positive reviews, but negative reviews. I can certainly see astroturfing your own properties with great reviews, but negative ones? That is a situation where you do not control both sides of the transaction, so a high price to pay to put a "fake" negative review on a property!

Read the top comment that started this thread. It was about a positive review.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34219765

> Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.

They buy profiling information from data brokers. Cataloging online accounts is one of the services they offer.

Any idea who these brokers are? How do we opt out

> How do we opt out

Effectively, you can't.

Californians can opt out but you have to go to every company and there are dozens. Start with the big ones like Acxiom and Bluekai.

Many of them collect their data via third-party scripts so you should ensure those are blocked.

https://incogni.com/

I feel like, the reason is in the text in itself and the ML software flagged it, because it's to similar to fake reviews..

You're not wrong. However, if a company uses my presense (or lack of) on social media as a way to make judgements I will not give them a penny of business.

It's important to note that they were happy taking money from Guests. It's only the reviews they're blocking.

Reviews are an auxiliary cost to Airbnb. They need moderating and their Hosts complain and use up support time if bad reviews are let through. I suggest profiling users is a quick and cheap way they've done the sums on to weed out the easiest level of abuse (on both sides).

They're not going to lose any business until it affects you.

That doesn't explain the "We have detected a relationship" thing.

A lot of moderation is made to sound more certain than it is.

"We have a suspicion based on this data we don't have that you might not be a real customer so we're blocking your reviews" invites a whole lot more customer support time than "We're not accepting your reviews."

It is simply cheaper to be firm, however unfair it is when they get it wrong.

They mentioned not having social media accounts to show that AirBnB couldn't have any information about them or them being related to the host. (OTOH, their namesake may have a social media account and that may be linked to the host. In theory.)

I'm confused, you think AirBnB should pay random people as employees to let them host short-term stays in their house? And this will help make AirBnB's moderation of reviews more honest?

I think based on context it's clear they mean "regulated like hotels".

How exactly do you regulate it like hotels without changing the legal structure? Hotels either directly run their various locations (aka run by their employees) or franchise it. That's a totally different business model.

So just saying "regulate it like hotels" doesn't mean much.

You would do it by changing the legal structure, but not by requiring any employees of Airbnb to manage the properties themselves, any more so than TripAdvisor employees manage hotels today.

Require Airbnb hosts to pay for a license, have regular inspections, etc.

Right, so you're not regulating AirBnB directly really, you're regulating the local AirBnB hosts.

And how does this help with reviews on airbnb.com?

That’s what Airbnb plus was - vetted properties, annual inspection. They utterly failed to market it properly.

I don’t think this does much to solve the problem - “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”.

the idea of a secret shopper is common. i suspect abnb already does this. obviously they get extremely limited coverage if they do so

No reason AirBnB can't invest in improving their average host quality if they invested in it. Consumers just need to push back publicly.

These sorts of HN posts is often how change happens.

shhhh... you are on pg's forum. 'Member when he was shilling for this new billion dollar unicorn that was airbnb and how it would revolutionize the hotel industry? Pepperidge Farm remembers....

Why do you care so intensely about this?

Edit: I should have expanded on my post a bit. It's quite obvious that the review was flagged by some ML model, most likely not because the reviewer is a liar but probably because the host has a high prior for shenanigans. Combined with the lack of social signals for the reviewer, I could see why an ML model might be overzealous. But back to my original question: nobody is being called a liar, why take it so personally?

Because we can't trust the systems we need to live our lives.

You can always book a hotel. AirBNB will not and cannot provide you a 100% care free experience because some guests are indeed liars and there are all sorts of scams both on the guest and host side. It's a kind of ebay. It's always a hit or miss.

If that’s the case, all the more reason to be mad at Airbnb for removing legitimate reviews.

Perhaps they rely on some flawed signals to make their decisions such how many positive reviews you have (the buyer) vs seller's reviews(i.e who is more likely to lie).

There could also be bad faith from Airbnb as some comments frame it but I believe most of the time it's just a tricky business. Check ebay and you see the same issues or even worse.

I'd much rather have one legit review removed for every 20 fake one, rather than have to wade through 20 fake reviews just to find a single authentic one.

I imagine being indirectly or directly called a liar/fraudster by a giant multinational is personally upsetting to the parent poster.

“Indirectly” is likely an understatement. I doubt at any point airbnb called this person a “liar”, that’s just their own interpretation of events

For me, reviews are a primary parameter when selecting a "thing" from "a platform". So when I experience that the platform is manipulating the reviews, I not only feel manipulated (maybe all previous times I overpayed, missed opportunities etc?) but I feel that what we all do know: we are there only to make that platform a nice revenue; it doesn't care about giving it's users the best value, it only cares about it's bottom-lines, which apparently don't align with my needs.

Why don't you? Our economy is becoming increasingly intermediated and employees are increasingly losing their rights (and access to basic services like healthcare) by being mislabeled as contractors. There's a myriad of issues with affordability in the housing market and AirBnB exacerbates them.

Because a huge amount of value in AirBnB is its reviews.

That’s how you’re supposed to know where is worth staying and where isn’t.

If those can’t be trusted, then it’s an inferior B&B platform with doctored reviews that you can’t trust.

My advice to those reading this is just to get a hotel unless there is no alternative.

AirBnB was fine for a bit when it was cheaper than alternatives, but, in my experience, it’s now as expensive (if not more) as the hotels they’re trying to replace.

There’s usually a massively inferior experience when compared to Hotels the majority of the time. At least, that’s been my experience.

> Because a huge amount of value in AirBnB is its reviews.

Reviews that you can’t leave unless other party reviewed you which self censors whenever there’s a slightest disagreement

See reviews for same places on booking.com and they are consistently 1 star less

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