Airbnb Is Banning People Who Are ‘Closely Associated’ with Already-Banned Users

They didn't ban her parents because they didn't like their daughter's politics, they likely had reason to believe Lauren attempted to circumvent her own ban by using her parents as a go-between or even through impersonating one or both of her parents (things like IPs, phone device IDs, etc can be used as signals although we all have to admit they aren't a smoking gun just hints). But due to legal risk are unable to disclose means or methods for how they did so or to comment publicly on the decision. So of course there's no way to prove this, but it would be typical of the types of systems that large tech companies' trust and safety systems use everyday. Ultimately with some situations like this they are making a judgment call and weighing brand risk if they get it wrong and retain a bad actor especially if said actor remains on the platform and does something even worse in the future VS the sort of injustice of removing a good actor due to being too careful/overly cautious. Guess which usually wins.

Source: work in Trust and Safety (not at Airbnb).

That's gratuitous and done for spite only. I really don't want to do business with a company that seeks revenge because of internal political activism. It's gross. Within their legal rights as it stands today, but gross nonetheless.

IIRC they banned Southern not for her politics but for being closely associated to people who had unacceptable politics, and then banned her parents for being closely associated with Southern.

“Very polarizing” is one way to put it, considering she’s been banned from entering the UK.

"Your politics hurt my feelings so you and anyone you know is banned from using my service."

How is this reasonable to anybody? Left wingers get mad when a baker pulls this on a gay couple but apparently it's ok as long as it's against someone they don't like?

Hotels have support. You can actually walk into the hotel and speak to the manager if it comes to that.

AirBNB is a faceless website. If you're banned your recourse seems to be a support line or chat. Escalating onto social media can be quicker depending on your network.

In a hotel the decisions would be made by a reasonably competent human, and can be appealed to a human if there's a problem.

In Airbnb, the decision would be made by a black-box algorithm, and appeals would be directed to an outsourced monkey who is neither given the training, nor the information, nor paid enough to give a shit, if not stonewalled directly with a canned response.

A hotel ban only applies to one hotel or to a chain, not every hotel. Airbnb have a monopoly.

How does AirBNB track the romantic relationship status of every single one of it's customers?

I would prefer privatized credit scores to centrally controlled. I would prefer i was on one bad person list as opposed to the only bad person list.

This coordination already exists on some level. If you rip off a hotel they may inform their competitors and share information. Generally they don't care so much about tweets or politics as they are just trying to run a business. But if it was state controlled it runs the risk of beung used as a tool to suppress dissent or wrong think.

Large tech unicorns like social media are kind of inbetween state actors and private businesses as we have seen from the high amount of communication between state actors and these businesses

> It's not that the US won't have social credit scores... they just will be privatized and opaque.

We already have a social credit score and it's privatized now. It's background checks.

From the story:

> While she does not have a criminal record, her boyfriend does, she said, telling Motherboard it was “a white collar charge,” though she did not go into specifics.

I find it a bit odd to let private companies do background checks when this really seems more of a function of government where as a society we can have input and reform the process.

In some European countries, people don't have credit scores, but when they're applying for a mortgage, they also need a collateral which costs about the same as the house or apartment they're trying to buy.

I'd rather have credit scores, tbh.

It's not right to deride their social credit scores, when we've had them for decades, in the form of actual credit scores plus criminal records plus a no-fly list.

All these new developments are just slight changes to the system at its edges, the core of it is quite similar. But our society is myopic to its own problems.

Bollocks. This isn't a social credit score, this is one company blacklisting bad clients, and doing their best to ensure said bad clients don't game the system by using someone else's account.

Yeah I don't love the potential for ubiquitous tracking and judgment, but this isn't central government, it's AirBNB -- use VRBO, or Mariott, or Days Inn instead. Most hotels have, and have had for a long time, blacklists, too.

Where do people advocate for stealing from Walmart?

It was never considered common sense.

Some variant of what you're thinking about might've been possible in a small society (say, when the shop owner in a village knew all his customers, and was able to keep an eye on the troublemakers).

But in modern world it would basically mean that you might get banned from thousands of stores across the entire country because a cousin you barely know is an idiot. Or more likely, you'll just appear on the "do not serve" list without even knowing you're on in or finding out why.

So yeah, treating these two as the same thing is dishonest.

It was more livable for the more socially acceptable and/or wealthy segments of society not for the lower segments. Someone who is poor or otherwise on the margins of society is much more likely to be associated with people society considers "the wrong sort of people".

Similarly, those in the upper levels of society are discouraged from associating with the lower levels for fear of being associated with the wrong sort of people.

It would be normal for an individual known for shoplifting or assault to be blacklisted. Not some associated with an unsavory individual, which can be involuntary - coworker, family member, neighbor.

You're confusing "you" with "someone you've been associated with".

Here's an archive of the page from the time she was banned: https://web.archive.org/web/20190606075214/airbnb.com/trust/...

I think it's objectively clear that she violated that policy, I don't think even she would deny that she engages in discriminatory behavior, bullying and harassment, and disturbing communities. It's not just about speech, she has for example been arrested in Italy for attempting to block migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean, which directly put lives at risk.

AirBNB don't have a monopoly. Aside from obvious alternatives like hotels, VRBO is quite good and I used it successfully in the past.

I suspect the real reason this happens is a mix of recruiting ex-tech firm employees (they seem to treat abuse as if they were running a social network), and some internal data that shows just one or two bad experiences can cause a host to drop out permanently. There are way fewer hosts than customers, so if one customer repeatedly creates bad experiences then they need an ultra-tough policy as otherwise they'd burn out their supply of hosts too quickly. Hotels don't have this problem because they're much more committed to being hosts, such that a few bad customers occasionally won't cause them to simply shut up shop.

While chargebacks might get you your money back, won't they also get you banned for life from Airbnb?

I think there's a material difference between Hyatt refusing to host an event, and banning individuals for social proximity.

It's almost always cheaper to stay in hotels than airbnb everytime I look. It has been this way for years.

Unless you want a whole house/cabin to yourself for the week/month (discounts) then hotels almost always end up being less fuss and cheaper.

Heck, most hotels in my area have banned an entire class of people -- locals.

Locals are much more likely to trash their rooms.