13 ms·

Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

341 points by matbilodeau 3y ago

giantg2 3y ago
Typical BS reasoning. The hidden cameras are already against policy. Do they really think expanding the policy to all indoor cameras is going to stop those actions? If anything, people looking to protect their property will now have more incentive to place hidden cameras if there are no options for allowable ones.
- Delumine 3y ago
  It feels to me that AirBNB hosts are an entitled group of people. They want all the benefits of renting out their place (in most cases, it goes against the original intent of renting a spare room, or family home), but want to make the experience less than ideal for customers. There's a multitude of rules, chores, invasions of privacy (Cameras, decibel monitors, et al). These are supposed to be vacations, not a walking-on-eggshells experience because the host is constantly spying on you. If there's damage, submit a claim against the person.
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    In a lot of countries many of the hosts are violating zoning laws and evading tax to. A lot of people are getting very tired of being subjected to weekend after weekend of stags and hen parties because the neighboring apartment was turned into a hotel room. Not to mention the extra pressure it's put on property and rents.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Secret recording is also a serious crime in most jurisdictions. I wonder if nuisance laws can be used against the host if repeated violations are coming from the same property, even if the renter is different.
    - Delumine 3y ago
      I agree. AirBNB was a mistake. It used to be that an apartment could be rented out for a decent amount above your mortgage, and expenses. But now there's no incentive to opt for long-term rentals, when a short-term one is more profitable. Then the rich get richer and consolidate more properties under their companies, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Think of people who had been making sacrifices so they could save up to purchase something, just to be outbid by collective groups of people just purchasing property to rent them out. There's no competing.
      - mistrial9 3y ago
        > now there's no incentive to opt for long-term rentals this happened very, very quickly in some markets.. +10 years ago
      - littlestymaar 3y ago
        The worse part is how the “success stories” or airbnb hosts have brainwashed lots of people: my middle class friends strongly oppose regulating airbnb because they dream of someday buying a place to rent on airbnb and get passive income, when they don't realize the reason their rents and housing prices are so high is because of this kind of behavior and that they'll never make it in the first place because of the high prices. The ones who owned before airbnb came where the ones who made real money.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Yeah, and this rule change won't change any of those problems. We can already see that the prior rules were being ignored by the problem hosts.
  - olliej 3y ago
    Yup. I have never had an Airbnb that was not clearly an illegal hotel.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > They want all the benefits of renting out their place (in most cases, it goes against the original intent of renting a spare room, or family home), but want to make the experience less than ideal for customers. In the first part of that sentence you characterize the transaction as akin to renting out a spare room, but in the second part you characterize the guests as "customers." Historically, if you rented a room from someone, you were subject to all sorts of rules, invasions of privacy, etc. In many circumstances, that's still the case (e.g. with live-in nannies). What's actually happening is that guests treat AirBnBs like hotel rooms, and hosts are doing the same thing. It's just a commercial, arm's-length transaction.
    - Delumine 3y ago
      Exactly, in the former situation you obviously don't have a full expectation of privacy. But when you're paying a premium for an entire property, onerous rules and spying are uncalled for.
  - jlarocco 3y ago
    We already have a solution, and they're called hotels. Society forgot why hotels were created, so now we're re-learning it via AirBnB.
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      "Hotels" does not solve "I'd like to stay in an isolated cabin in the countryside", or various other things that are readily available on vacation rental sites. (AirBnB has lots of other problems, but "hotels" alone are not a complete replacement for what it provides.)
      - jlarocco 3y ago
        Fair enough, hotels don't fully cover the entire AirBnB usecase, but cabin rentals and bed-and-breakfasts in the country have been around forever, too. My point is, commercial rentals exist because of the problems AirBnB are having. They're trying to "disrupt" the industry by not providing the protections and safeguards to save money, and basically running into all of the problems that led to the commercial rental industry in the first place. Their innovation is collecting a fee while pushing the dirty work off to unsophisticated 3rd party property owners.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
baby 3y ago
I had one once in my living room. I was pissed. The host told me it had written about it in the description. Sure enough it was there when I looked carefully. Still what the heck. In a Boston Airbnb with my parents visiting from abroad. I ended up leaving a one star review, and he begged for me to take it down. I explained long and large how wrong what he did was and left my one star review. Felt good.
- the__alchemist 3y ago
  That review was almost surely removed by AirBnb.
- neom 3y ago
  I had this happen in Seoul, the host messages me and asked me to not leave the AC on when I went out (it was a 10-minute walk down to the corner store) - I was a little confused how they knew I'd left it on, so I purposefully left it on and went out, sure enough I got a message as soon as I left. I messaged back and said it wasn't on, and they said they had a camera and could see it's on. I contacted Airbnb and they moved me to a hotel that day, but I wasn't super stoked.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Had an airbnb that locked out its thermostat within a range outside our preferences. Nothing an ice pack wrapped in a kitchen towel on top of said thermostat couldn’t resolve.
    - htrp 3y ago
      Out of the box solutions ftw
digging 3y ago
Making small changes to policy like this will continue to have no effect on the negative externalities of AirBNB rentals. Will this improve guest privacy? No, hidden cameras are too difficult to detect and too easy to install. Will this prevent AirBNBs becoming party houses/apartments in residential areas? No, obviously not, since that's apparently already banned. Will this collect commercial taxes from investment property owners illegally renting out AirBNBs in residential zones? Of course not. Et cetera.
- CapcomGo 3y ago
  My guess is it will stop property owners from using cameras openly indoors as they have been allowed to before.
- ActualHacker 3y ago
  But they get to remind everyone that they're the "good guys", and they're "trying"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- samtho 3y ago
  This does give AirBnB a reason enshrined in policy to take consistent action against misbehaving hosts, something that was lacking previously. Also, I am not sure why you are conflating AirBnB’s authority with a local government - or course AirBnB won’t address the issues you cite in your last paragraphs as that is not their job and to think it should be is totally ridiculous. We have local and state governance to pass laws regulating behavior that is not good for society at large. AirBnB’s job is to generate value for shareholders all while operating within those bounds.
  - digging 3y ago
    Why wouldn't it be AirBNB's responsibility to prevent hosts from operating illegally?
- scarface_74 3y ago
cowpig 3y ago
Next they need to ban giving my personal info to 3rd party services. It's becoming common now to upload guests' personal info into cloud property management systems, and set up things like wifi with services that offer a discount if you provide guest info. It's gross and when I complain about it to AirBnB they do nothing.
- doomroot 3y ago
  I've seen this before too. Clearly shady.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  I went to an Airbnb where the host had a ledger of all the previous guests that had stayed, with their personal information and their passport number. And it was left in the apartment for you to sign, so I had access to the passport number of literally hundreds of people from all over the world. And it wasn't a mistake as the host asked you to sign the ledger when you arrived.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    In some countries, maintaining such a ledger is actually required by law.
    - cowpig 3y ago
      I think the parent poster is more concerned with the fact that the ledger was available for guests to read.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  As usual with tech companies, you are also the product...
- GJim 3y ago
  > they need to ban giving my personal info to 3rd party services. The GDPR makes this illegal. In fact, unnecessary personal information is now a liability, not an asset. Thankfully.
colechristensen 3y ago
[flagged]
- dylan604 3y ago
  I think the punishment needs to continue to flow uphill, and start hitting AirBnB directly. If I run an operation that continuously provides safe harbor to people knowingly and willfully breaking the rules, I get in trouble.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It could be "solved" in some way by requiring surety bonds to be provided to the city for each rental; bonds that could be seized if malfeasance was proven (now given that it is a physical property, that can also be seized). I suspect that AirBNB (like Uber) will eventually split into various affiliated but somewhat isolated entities, primarily to avoid liabilities.
    - colechristensen 3y ago
      Or just by banning these unlicensed rentals and treating them with the same qualifications, zoning, inspections, etc. as every other hospitality business.
- deleted 3y ago
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xvector 3y ago
I almost forgot how annoying Airbnb is until I started staying in hotels again. I will gladly take a smaller property in exchange for dealing with people that have actual hospitality training, daily room cleaning, room service, etc. Hotels are just a nicer experience. I don't want to spend my vacation cleaning the room or worrying about a "host."
- vundercind 3y ago
  Airbnbs are amazing for: - Group get-aways where the point is being together at the place, not seeing the sights of whatever area you’re in. - Families traveling, especially when not staying in a city core - Trial runs at living in a place - Areas poorly served by decent hotels They’re bad for lots of other scenarios. [edit] oh and the less time you’re staying the worse they tend to be—stuff like cleaning fees and having to tidy up before leaving really suck if you only stayed for a night or two, but aren’t a big deal if you’re there for a week.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    > Group get-aways where the point is being together at the place And how are the neighbours going to feel about your house party in their residential area? You can't call this model "amazing" for all concerned. Don't say that this doesn't happen, it really does. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669347
    - vundercind 3y ago
      There are lots of actual vacation properties on the service. Agree that it sucks in denser housing outside tourist areas. I’m sympathetic when local governments outlaw short term rentals.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I've often felt a bunch of the "love" for AirBNB comes from people who didn't realize that you could do short-term rentals of entire properties before it hit the market (and where you'd go for those).
endisneigh 3y ago
In my experience Airbnb isn’t even cheaper, just has more “interesting” housing available. Back to the topic - removing listings isn’t a sufficient enough punishment imho. And how would you even prove it from the guests side? Take a picture I suppose? But how do you stop bad actors? Not sure what the correct solution is. Someone who wants to spy can purchase a spy camera which is very abundant these days.
- bombcar 3y ago
  AirBNB "when it started" was quite likely to find you quirky and cheap options. Now it's commoditized and a business, and the quirky and cheap options are few and far between. Part of the degradation is both the company, the sellers, and the buyers - back in the very beginning it wasn't well known and most of the customers were well behaved - I'm not sure that's entirely the case now, as the customer base has grown.
  - casenmgreen 3y ago
    I'm a digital nomad. One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years. I used to use AirBnB all the time. They gradually become more and more, well, "large company". Governments gradually made AirBnB illegal or effectively illegal, largely or wholly killing off AirBnB in given cities, or countries. For example, it used to be about impossible to get into Amsterdam, because of rent control and renting regulations; no supply of places to let. Then AirBnB came along, and everyone and their dog let places on AirBnB. You could get in, and at a good price. Then AirBnB was essentially banned, and now you can't get into Amsterdam. It was always that there were a lot of people offering places who didn't know how to price what they had; so you'd see a lot of properties, but a lot were crazy money. Still, if there were enough, there would be enough places at sane prices you'd get somewhere. These days, I still look at AirBnB, but I see that their fees have continually risen over time, and are now like 10% or 15%, and there's just no content. I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews. Finally, AirBnB itself, regarding "large company", became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work. I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time. After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB suspending my account for a few days, until support get back to me. I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness. So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations. It was great, but now it's really not. The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month. I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
mholt 3y ago
I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts. Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their guests to do the cleaning. We just stayed at one this weekend, and like almost all our previous bookings, the host asked us to: - Take off all bedding and towels and start a load of laundry - Do all the dishes and start the dishwasher (but required to hand-wash some items) - Collect and take out all the trash to the curb - Clean the grill/stove/oven And we still had to pay a $200 cleaning fee when booking the place. A hotel would never require this of us or charge us extra.
- wdb 3y ago
  Yeah these days it is cheaper to rent a spot at apartment hotel. Might pay $75/night for it but to need to do any cleaning
- ohnoitsahuman 3y ago
  It's hard to gauge cleaning effort: if a guest uses every dish in the kitchen without doing a wash up, they cleaning crew could be there for hours. But if a guest is tidy, then the cleaning fee should be nothing. The hard part is that you need to reserve and pay for a cleaning crew as if it was always a disaster.
  - adra 3y ago
    Any service that's so pedantic about cleaning isn't a service that most customers would want to use. Airbnb is trying to have it's cake and eat it too putting the responsibility on "hosts" to be the bad guys. It's just lazy and callous to not have strict bounds of responsibilities customers are expected to engage with.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      And that’s reason #13563 I would never do an AirBnb and we just stayed in hotels during our year of “nomadding”.
      - 3y ago
sccxy 3y ago
[flagged]
rdtsc 3y ago
> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces That might be easy to game either way. Hosts can claim they didn’t keep tabs, just had a hunch to come over and check; and guests can claim the camera in the yard could see some part of the interior through a window and ask for a refund. One interesting effect is that now hosts with hidden cameras can't offer the footage as proof during disputes.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
  Sure they can. They simply 'forget' that there was a camera there but when a dispute comes up then they suddenly realize that actually there was one and surprisingly there is relevant footage, too.
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    That might work once but then they'll have to be more creative. And, of course, it would depend on the consequences of breaking the "no camera" rule. If they can show the guest smashing an expensive TV or something, it might be worth the consequences.
notatoad 3y ago
Airbnb did previously allow indoor cameras?!
- kube-system 3y ago
  Yes, I stayed in one that had one in the entryway pointed at the interior of the front door. Very uncommon in my experience, but this was in someone's home that they actively lived in, but were away for the weekend, so I found it to be understandable.
  - GJim 3y ago
    > I found it to be understandable I'm astounded you found it understandable. If I'm renting rooms, I certainly don't expect the landlord to be in the business of filming myself or family, especially as we may well be walking around sans clothing. Not only is this rather illegal, I suggest plenty of people would find themselves responding to the landlord rather violently in such a situation. And I would not blame them.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      My experience was such that it wasn't that way at all. The camera was indoors but not in areas of the house where someone would be walking around without clothing, and they were clearly disclosed in advance before booking, and they were clearly visible in the home.
      - kwhitefoot 3y ago
        Why would I not be able to be naked in all parts of the house?
        kube-system 3y ago
        Some houses have areas where it is fairly reasonable that people wouldn't be running around naked, e.g common areas shared with others, or rooms with a large amount of glass open to the exterior of the home. And in some cases it might even be illegal for you to be naked in those areas if exposed to others.
65 3y ago
Not sure how AirBnB has a $100 billion market cap. The use case for an AirBnB, which is mostly large group travel, seems limited when comparing to the use case for a hotel (every other type of travel). Marriott and Hyatt combined have a lower market cap than AirBnB.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Airbnb has a PE of 22 and is a money printing machine. Airbnb makes 10x the profit of Hyatt, which has a PE of 75. Use case of hotels might be bigger, but it is a highly contended market. Airbnb has a huge chunk of a smaller market. Also, the margins are much better on hosting a website than building hotels and paying thousands of service employees.
  - whompyjaw 3y ago
    What is PE?
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Price to earnings. Market cap divided by profit. It is loosly associated with how long until you can make back your investment with current revenue. If you have a business that makes $1/year after costs and taxes and are selling it for $20, your P/E is 20.
    - fjni 3y ago
      i suppose price/earnings ratio
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - mraniki 3y ago
      https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-earningsratio.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-earningsratio.asp
Havoc 3y ago
Amazing that this even needs to be stated
- jimt1234 3y ago
  Exactly. I always thought there was a presumption of privacy when renting any residential space, long or short term, and that presumption was legally binding. And I just assumed that interior cameras violated that. For example, I've read about creepy landlords installing cameras in their rental units, mostly to spy on their female tenants. The creepy landlords always got arrested. Furthermore, if a large hotel chain like Hyatt or Hilton was found to install cameras inside hotel rooms, people would not tolerate it, because, just like an apartment, there's that presumption of privacy inside a hotel room. But for some reason, AirBNB was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, "Owners can do whatever they want. Not our problem."
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
mcculley 3y ago
I feel like a grumpy old guy every time I read about AirbedAndBreakfast, because that is how it was initially pitched on this site. If people would just keep thinking of it as a way to get an airbed and sleep on someone’s floor, they would have appropriate expectations. I’ve never used the service, because I prefer real beds cleaned as required by the local health department.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Buried in the sea of vacation-style rentals filled with thrift-store decor, there are still a few gems on the site that follow the spirit of that initial pitch. While they don't usually have actual airbeds, they're often cleaner than even a nice hotel, because nobody cares about a property more than an owner-occupant.
happytiger 3y ago
I’m stunned people still use AirBNB after most hosts turned their high paying customers into unpaid housekeepers.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Because maybe that hasn't been the case for the people still using it? It certainly hasn't for me, and I've seen other comments in this very thread saying as much[1]. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669973
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Hasn't been a problem for me. I apply common sense and do the absolute minimum, usually starting the dishwasher. They can ask me to do whatever they want but it has no teeth. I've never seen one of our hosts complain in a review either.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Which also shows you how little oversight they have - I guarantee that there are a sizeable number of places that are not inspected after each stay, let alone clean.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      Wouldn't that be obvious though? You know, the bed not being made, dishwasher full, towels on the floor...
    - darkwizard42 3y ago
      This would be so obvious I have trouble seeing how you might believe it. The bed wouldn't be made, the dishes wouldn't be cleaned, the items of the house wouldn't be put back. It is also trivial to look at a bed and see if the sheets have been cleaned even if the bed was made -- hair shows up easily if not other stains.
- campl3r 3y ago
autoexec 3y ago
> The change comes after numerous reports of guests finding hidden cameras within their rental, leading some vacation-goers to scan their rooms for cameras. Checking for cameras seems like a smart move no matter what their policy is. You just never know.
- bonton89 3y ago
  How do you reliably find cameras?
  - digging 3y ago
    There are numerous techniques needed to search but, crucially, nothing can guarantee you've found them all. I'm struggling to find it, but I read an article a few months ago where a team placed about 30 cameras hidden in a home and tried to find them all. Most methods found low single digits. Even the best ("an advanced lens detector" for $400) brought the total up to fewer than 20. Really wish I could find that because now all I'm finding is dogshit articles claiming it's easy. edit: found, it was from CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-in-a-hotel-room-or-house-we-tested-5-ways-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-... You can also check what devices are connected to the wifi but there's no guarantee they don't have a second network just for the cameras which you can't access.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I guess we can always tape up tarps to cover the walls and then drape some over the furniture. That won't stop audio from being recorded though.
    - bonton89 3y ago
      It looks like the best method only found 11. It looks like 17 is the total amount of cameras they found using all methods. Pretty crap really. The advanced lens detector was the most effective and only found a third of them. The only method I can think of that might work is one of those media sniffing dogs the cops have, which is super impractical obviously.
jmbwell 3y ago
One more rule written in blood. How much abuse has it taken to reach this point? Incalculable. This is how you do it. Come in as a "disruptor," ignore all the rules the establishment has already learned the hard way, and make shitloads of money for as long as you can without pesky old oversight or constraints. Eventually, you wind up with the same rules the establishment had, if not more. Your catalog gets clogged with cottage enterprises that game your algorithms to steal your customer equity. While you're neck-deep in customer complaints and bad press, you're reduced to a clearinghouse for someone else's business -- little more than a classified ad service. You lose, your customers lose, and -- unless, god forbid, they get organized -- your original suppliers lose. Everyone loses except the scalpers and the scammers. Except now you've run out the competition, and consumers have little other choice. In this example, why use AirBnB when all you get is either a Sonder that is more hassle and no better than a hotel, one of a dozen apartments leased by the same weirdo, a retirement-home-in-waiting in a bland suburb, or a sketchy individual's greasy rathole? In the end, welcome to niche status. You do actually have a unique product (in this case, places for big groups to stay for several days), but the market for that isn't big enough for perpetual "growth," so you're on track to be acquired by a hedge fund, rolled together with your former competitors, soaked with debt, and then put out to pasture. But your founders are long gone, booking corporate speaking engagements between yacht voyages. Some "vice president" decides your labor pool stays cheapest if you disincentivize things like career development. Eventually everything is parceled out altogether. What's left of the value of your brand gets smeared over commodities. "Welcome to AirBnB, powered by Motel 6 (an SV Capital Partners, LLC experience)."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ddasdassds 3y ago
I'd put this under "enshitification". I've had plenty of complaints in the past about terrible airbnb hosts, but this seems to me to be clearly motivated to bring more money into AirBNB at the expense of the hosts and neighbors. Just like Paypal made conscious decisions to ignore customer fraud and hold sellers liable for everything, now AirBNB is trying to squeeze more out of the hosts by supporting and enabling bad behavior by guests, removing options for hosts to control or respond to terrible customers. I stopped using AirBNB several years ago, but then I noticed that hotels have copied AirBNB's shitty policies, like the price doubling on the last page due to unexpected fees. They're enshitifying the whole hospitality industry.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  Hosts, like hotels, can simply document before and after if they're concerned about damages. Disallowing potential spying on guests and requiring disclosure just sounds sane. Nobody should be monitored without their knowledge.
sschueller 3y ago
I find it sad how Airbnb has taken a market that worked (in many places) and re introduced all the problems that have been resolved through decades of regulations being put in place for hotels etc. Chances of finding a camera in a hotel room are near zero while at Airbnb you have no idea what kind of pervert the renter is. At this point prices for Airbnb have rissen so high why not get a hotel? It's like we don't learn at all from history or just like to forget so we can make an extra buck.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Most people these days get a hotel anyways. Also I only took a airbnb once in my life. Anybody who takes airbnbs regularly has for sure slept on somebody else's dried body fluids.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    I'd wager the chance is higher in a hotel. Source: worked at a hotel.
  - pas 3y ago
    Well, maybe. Hotels are big (so they definitely capture a big chunk of the tourists), but in big dense cities building hotels is a lot harder than spinning up apartments for booking/airbnb. And. I guess I'm not alone in preferring apartments. (And nowadays with lockboxes and WhatsApp-savvy rentors/lessors the lack of a reception desk is not a problem.)
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Sounds like an ad from the Hotel lobby. People should still be able to rent out their homes if they want.
- al_borland 3y ago
  This sounds like a lot of tech companies that look to shake up an old industry. They say they’re starting from first principles and try to reinvent every wheel. It usually ends up meaning pain for the customers as they rediscover why the old players in the industry do things the way they do them, and then act like they discovered something new.
hashtag-til 3y ago
This reminded me that AirBNB is a crap service. I wanted to delete my account but never got around to do so. So I did it now!
spacecadet 3y ago
Signed on just to say, like that Figma post garbage quickly moving off the main page... Forget AirBnB- These businesses lacked justification to begin with and followed the selfish whims of their boards. Abandon these paid dog food products and go out and build/support open replacements for them.
- spacecadet 3y ago
  Who ever down voted this is clearly a capitalist scumbag.
jgalt212 3y ago
Pablum. Near impossible to enforce.
WestCoastJustin 3y ago
Imagine for a second, that you checkin at a Marriott/Hilton/Fairmont and there was a camera in your hotel room. It's amazing it even lasted this long with airbnb.
thimkerbell 3y ago
Are they also banning the host practice of renting out multiple rooms to guests who are strangers to each other? I would prefer indoor cameras as protection from other guests.
AlecSchueler 3y ago
Definitely always scan your rooms. I volunteer with helping women who were filmed involuntarily for sexual purposes and the level of voyeuristic content from AirBnb hosts has been skyrocketing.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
toss1 3y ago
Good to see that they are also thinking at least one step ahead: >> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces, either, nor can they use them in “certain outdoor areas where there’s a great expectation of privacy,” such as an outdoor shower or sauna. There are certainly hosts who would instantly put a camera in the tree looking in the windows. They'll still do it, but they can't use the pictures without incriminating themselves. The arms race continues, but slightly better for guests.
exabrial 3y ago
How about we just ban Airbnb and solve part of the housing crisis while we're at it?

341 points by matbilodeau 3y ago

Typical BS reasoning. The hidden cameras are already against policy. Do they really think expanding the policy to all indoor cameras is going to stop those actions? If anything, people looking to protect their property will now have more incentive to place hidden cameras if there are no options for allowable ones.

Delumine 3y ago
It feels to me that AirBNB hosts are an entitled group of people. They want all the benefits of renting out their place (in most cases, it goes against the original intent of renting a spare room, or family home), but want to make the experience less than ideal for customers. There's a multitude of rules, chores, invasions of privacy (Cameras, decibel monitors, et al). These are supposed to be vacations, not a walking-on-eggshells experience because the host is constantly spying on you. If there's damage, submit a claim against the person.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  In a lot of countries many of the hosts are violating zoning laws and evading tax to. A lot of people are getting very tired of being subjected to weekend after weekend of stags and hen parties because the neighboring apartment was turned into a hotel room. Not to mention the extra pressure it's put on property and rents.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Secret recording is also a serious crime in most jurisdictions. I wonder if nuisance laws can be used against the host if repeated violations are coming from the same property, even if the renter is different.
  - Delumine 3y ago
    I agree. AirBNB was a mistake. It used to be that an apartment could be rented out for a decent amount above your mortgage, and expenses. But now there's no incentive to opt for long-term rentals, when a short-term one is more profitable. Then the rich get richer and consolidate more properties under their companies, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Think of people who had been making sacrifices so they could save up to purchase something, just to be outbid by collective groups of people just purchasing property to rent them out. There's no competing.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      > now there's no incentive to opt for long-term rentals this happened very, very quickly in some markets.. +10 years ago
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      The worse part is how the “success stories” or airbnb hosts have brainwashed lots of people: my middle class friends strongly oppose regulating airbnb because they dream of someday buying a place to rent on airbnb and get passive income, when they don't realize the reason their rents and housing prices are so high is because of this kind of behavior and that they'll never make it in the first place because of the high prices. The ones who owned before airbnb came where the ones who made real money.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Yeah, and this rule change won't change any of those problems. We can already see that the prior rules were being ignored by the problem hosts.
- olliej 3y ago
  Yup. I have never had an Airbnb that was not clearly an illegal hotel.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > They want all the benefits of renting out their place (in most cases, it goes against the original intent of renting a spare room, or family home), but want to make the experience less than ideal for customers. In the first part of that sentence you characterize the transaction as akin to renting out a spare room, but in the second part you characterize the guests as "customers." Historically, if you rented a room from someone, you were subject to all sorts of rules, invasions of privacy, etc. In many circumstances, that's still the case (e.g. with live-in nannies). What's actually happening is that guests treat AirBnBs like hotel rooms, and hosts are doing the same thing. It's just a commercial, arm's-length transaction.
  - Delumine 3y ago
    Exactly, in the former situation you obviously don't have a full expectation of privacy. But when you're paying a premium for an entire property, onerous rules and spying are uncalled for.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  We already have a solution, and they're called hotels. Society forgot why hotels were created, so now we're re-learning it via AirBnB.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    "Hotels" does not solve "I'd like to stay in an isolated cabin in the countryside", or various other things that are readily available on vacation rental sites. (AirBnB has lots of other problems, but "hotels" alone are not a complete replacement for what it provides.)
    - jlarocco 3y ago
      Fair enough, hotels don't fully cover the entire AirBnB usecase, but cabin rentals and bed-and-breakfasts in the country have been around forever, too. My point is, commercial rentals exist because of the problems AirBnB are having. They're trying to "disrupt" the industry by not providing the protections and safeguards to save money, and basically running into all of the problems that led to the commercial rental industry in the first place. Their innovation is collecting a fee while pushing the dirty work off to unsophisticated 3rd party property owners.
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baby 3y ago

I had one once in my living room. I was pissed. The host told me it had written about it in the description. Sure enough it was there when I looked carefully. Still what the heck. In a Boston Airbnb with my parents visiting from abroad. I ended up leaving a one star review, and he begged for me to take it down. I explained long and large how wrong what he did was and left my one star review. Felt good.

the__alchemist 3y ago
That review was almost surely removed by AirBnb.
neom 3y ago
I had this happen in Seoul, the host messages me and asked me to not leave the AC on when I went out (it was a 10-minute walk down to the corner store) - I was a little confused how they knew I'd left it on, so I purposefully left it on and went out, sure enough I got a message as soon as I left. I messaged back and said it wasn't on, and they said they had a camera and could see it's on. I contacted Airbnb and they moved me to a hotel that day, but I wasn't super stoked.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Had an airbnb that locked out its thermostat within a range outside our preferences. Nothing an ice pack wrapped in a kitchen towel on top of said thermostat couldn’t resolve.
  - htrp 3y ago
    Out of the box solutions ftw

digging 3y ago

Making small changes to policy like this will continue to have no effect on the negative externalities of AirBNB rentals. Will this improve guest privacy? No, hidden cameras are too difficult to detect and too easy to install. Will this prevent AirBNBs becoming party houses/apartments in residential areas? No, obviously not, since that's apparently already banned. Will this collect commercial taxes from investment property owners illegally renting out AirBNBs in residential zones? Of course not. Et cetera.

CapcomGo 3y ago
My guess is it will stop property owners from using cameras openly indoors as they have been allowed to before.
ActualHacker 3y ago
But they get to remind everyone that they're the "good guys", and they're "trying"
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samtho 3y ago
This does give AirBnB a reason enshrined in policy to take consistent action against misbehaving hosts, something that was lacking previously. Also, I am not sure why you are conflating AirBnB’s authority with a local government - or course AirBnB won’t address the issues you cite in your last paragraphs as that is not their job and to think it should be is totally ridiculous. We have local and state governance to pass laws regulating behavior that is not good for society at large. AirBnB’s job is to generate value for shareholders all while operating within those bounds.
- digging 3y ago
  Why wouldn't it be AirBNB's responsibility to prevent hosts from operating illegally?
scarface_74 3y ago

cowpig 3y ago

Next they need to ban giving my personal info to 3rd party services. It's becoming common now to upload guests' personal info into cloud property management systems, and set up things like wifi with services that offer a discount if you provide guest info. It's gross and when I complain about it to AirBnB they do nothing.

doomroot 3y ago
I've seen this before too. Clearly shady.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
I went to an Airbnb where the host had a ledger of all the previous guests that had stayed, with their personal information and their passport number. And it was left in the apartment for you to sign, so I had access to the passport number of literally hundreds of people from all over the world. And it wasn't a mistake as the host asked you to sign the ledger when you arrived.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  In some countries, maintaining such a ledger is actually required by law.
  - cowpig 3y ago
    I think the parent poster is more concerned with the fact that the ledger was available for guests to read.
Ekaros 3y ago
As usual with tech companies, you are also the product...
GJim 3y ago
> they need to ban giving my personal info to 3rd party services. The GDPR makes this illegal. In fact, unnecessary personal information is now a liability, not an asset. Thankfully.

colechristensen 3y ago

[flagged]

dylan604 3y ago
I think the punishment needs to continue to flow uphill, and start hitting AirBnB directly. If I run an operation that continuously provides safe harbor to people knowingly and willfully breaking the rules, I get in trouble.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It could be "solved" in some way by requiring surety bonds to be provided to the city for each rental; bonds that could be seized if malfeasance was proven (now given that it is a physical property, that can also be seized). I suspect that AirBNB (like Uber) will eventually split into various affiliated but somewhat isolated entities, primarily to avoid liabilities.
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    Or just by banning these unlicensed rentals and treating them with the same qualifications, zoning, inspections, etc. as every other hospitality business.
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xvector 3y ago

I almost forgot how annoying Airbnb is until I started staying in hotels again. I will gladly take a smaller property in exchange for dealing with people that have actual hospitality training, daily room cleaning, room service, etc. Hotels are just a nicer experience. I don't want to spend my vacation cleaning the room or worrying about a "host."

vundercind 3y ago
Airbnbs are amazing for: - Group get-aways where the point is being together at the place, not seeing the sights of whatever area you’re in. - Families traveling, especially when not staying in a city core - Trial runs at living in a place - Areas poorly served by decent hotels They’re bad for lots of other scenarios. [edit] oh and the less time you’re staying the worse they tend to be—stuff like cleaning fees and having to tidy up before leaving really suck if you only stayed for a night or two, but aren’t a big deal if you’re there for a week.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > Group get-aways where the point is being together at the place And how are the neighbours going to feel about your house party in their residential area? You can't call this model "amazing" for all concerned. Don't say that this doesn't happen, it really does. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669347
  - vundercind 3y ago
    There are lots of actual vacation properties on the service. Agree that it sucks in denser housing outside tourist areas. I’m sympathetic when local governments outlaw short term rentals.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I've often felt a bunch of the "love" for AirBNB comes from people who didn't realize that you could do short-term rentals of entire properties before it hit the market (and where you'd go for those).

endisneigh 3y ago

In my experience Airbnb isn’t even cheaper, just has more “interesting” housing available. Back to the topic - removing listings isn’t a sufficient enough punishment imho. And how would you even prove it from the guests side? Take a picture I suppose? But how do you stop bad actors? Not sure what the correct solution is. Someone who wants to spy can purchase a spy camera which is very abundant these days.

bombcar 3y ago
AirBNB "when it started" was quite likely to find you quirky and cheap options. Now it's commoditized and a business, and the quirky and cheap options are few and far between. Part of the degradation is both the company, the sellers, and the buyers - back in the very beginning it wasn't well known and most of the customers were well behaved - I'm not sure that's entirely the case now, as the customer base has grown.
- casenmgreen 3y ago
  I'm a digital nomad. One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years. I used to use AirBnB all the time. They gradually become more and more, well, "large company". Governments gradually made AirBnB illegal or effectively illegal, largely or wholly killing off AirBnB in given cities, or countries. For example, it used to be about impossible to get into Amsterdam, because of rent control and renting regulations; no supply of places to let. Then AirBnB came along, and everyone and their dog let places on AirBnB. You could get in, and at a good price. Then AirBnB was essentially banned, and now you can't get into Amsterdam. It was always that there were a lot of people offering places who didn't know how to price what they had; so you'd see a lot of properties, but a lot were crazy money. Still, if there were enough, there would be enough places at sane prices you'd get somewhere. These days, I still look at AirBnB, but I see that their fees have continually risen over time, and are now like 10% or 15%, and there's just no content. I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews. Finally, AirBnB itself, regarding "large company", became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work. I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time. After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB suspending my account for a few days, until support get back to me. I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness. So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations. It was great, but now it's really not. The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month. I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.

mholt 3y ago

I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts. Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their guests to do the cleaning. We just stayed at one this weekend, and like almost all our previous bookings, the host asked us to: - Take off all bedding and towels and start a load of laundry - Do all the dishes and start the dishwasher (but required to hand-wash some items) - Collect and take out all the trash to the curb - Clean the grill/stove/oven And we still had to pay a $200 cleaning fee when booking the place. A hotel would never require this of us or charge us extra.

wdb 3y ago
Yeah these days it is cheaper to rent a spot at apartment hotel. Might pay $75/night for it but to need to do any cleaning
ohnoitsahuman 3y ago
It's hard to gauge cleaning effort: if a guest uses every dish in the kitchen without doing a wash up, they cleaning crew could be there for hours. But if a guest is tidy, then the cleaning fee should be nothing. The hard part is that you need to reserve and pay for a cleaning crew as if it was always a disaster.
- adra 3y ago
  Any service that's so pedantic about cleaning isn't a service that most customers would want to use. Airbnb is trying to have it's cake and eat it too putting the responsibility on "hosts" to be the bad guys. It's just lazy and callous to not have strict bounds of responsibilities customers are expected to engage with.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    And that’s reason #13563 I would never do an AirBnb and we just stayed in hotels during our year of “nomadding”.
    - 3y ago

sccxy 3y ago

[flagged]

rdtsc 3y ago

> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces That might be easy to game either way. Hosts can claim they didn’t keep tabs, just had a hunch to come over and check; and guests can claim the camera in the yard could see some part of the interior through a window and ask for a refund. One interesting effect is that now hosts with hidden cameras can't offer the footage as proof during disputes.

pi-e-sigma 3y ago
Sure they can. They simply 'forget' that there was a camera there but when a dispute comes up then they suddenly realize that actually there was one and surprisingly there is relevant footage, too.
- rdtsc 3y ago
  That might work once but then they'll have to be more creative. And, of course, it would depend on the consequences of breaking the "no camera" rule. If they can show the guest smashing an expensive TV or something, it might be worth the consequences.

notatoad 3y ago

Airbnb did previously allow indoor cameras?!

kube-system 3y ago
Yes, I stayed in one that had one in the entryway pointed at the interior of the front door. Very uncommon in my experience, but this was in someone's home that they actively lived in, but were away for the weekend, so I found it to be understandable.
- GJim 3y ago
  > I found it to be understandable I'm astounded you found it understandable. If I'm renting rooms, I certainly don't expect the landlord to be in the business of filming myself or family, especially as we may well be walking around sans clothing. Not only is this rather illegal, I suggest plenty of people would find themselves responding to the landlord rather violently in such a situation. And I would not blame them.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    My experience was such that it wasn't that way at all. The camera was indoors but not in areas of the house where someone would be walking around without clothing, and they were clearly disclosed in advance before booking, and they were clearly visible in the home.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      Why would I not be able to be naked in all parts of the house?
      - kube-system 3y ago
        Some houses have areas where it is fairly reasonable that people wouldn't be running around naked, e.g common areas shared with others, or rooms with a large amount of glass open to the exterior of the home. And in some cases it might even be illegal for you to be naked in those areas if exposed to others.

65 3y ago

Not sure how AirBnB has a $100 billion market cap. The use case for an AirBnB, which is mostly large group travel, seems limited when comparing to the use case for a hotel (every other type of travel). Marriott and Hyatt combined have a lower market cap than AirBnB.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
Airbnb has a PE of 22 and is a money printing machine. Airbnb makes 10x the profit of Hyatt, which has a PE of 75. Use case of hotels might be bigger, but it is a highly contended market. Airbnb has a huge chunk of a smaller market. Also, the margins are much better on hosting a website than building hotels and paying thousands of service employees.
- whompyjaw 3y ago
  What is PE?
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Price to earnings. Market cap divided by profit. It is loosly associated with how long until you can make back your investment with current revenue. If you have a business that makes $1/year after costs and taxes and are selling it for $20, your P/E is 20.
  - fjni 3y ago
    i suppose price/earnings ratio
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - deleted 3y ago
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  - mraniki 3y ago
    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-earningsratio.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-earningsratio.asp

Havoc 3y ago

Amazing that this even needs to be stated

jimt1234 3y ago
Exactly. I always thought there was a presumption of privacy when renting any residential space, long or short term, and that presumption was legally binding. And I just assumed that interior cameras violated that. For example, I've read about creepy landlords installing cameras in their rental units, mostly to spy on their female tenants. The creepy landlords always got arrested. Furthermore, if a large hotel chain like Hyatt or Hilton was found to install cameras inside hotel rooms, people would not tolerate it, because, just like an apartment, there's that presumption of privacy inside a hotel room. But for some reason, AirBNB was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, "Owners can do whatever they want. Not our problem."

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

mcculley 3y ago

I feel like a grumpy old guy every time I read about AirbedAndBreakfast, because that is how it was initially pitched on this site. If people would just keep thinking of it as a way to get an airbed and sleep on someone’s floor, they would have appropriate expectations. I’ve never used the service, because I prefer real beds cleaned as required by the local health department.

kube-system 3y ago
Buried in the sea of vacation-style rentals filled with thrift-store decor, there are still a few gems on the site that follow the spirit of that initial pitch. While they don't usually have actual airbeds, they're often cleaner than even a nice hotel, because nobody cares about a property more than an owner-occupant.

happytiger 3y ago

I’m stunned people still use AirBNB after most hosts turned their high paying customers into unpaid housekeepers.

jjulius 3y ago
Because maybe that hasn't been the case for the people still using it? It certainly hasn't for me, and I've seen other comments in this very thread saying as much[1]. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39669973
barbazoo 3y ago
Hasn't been a problem for me. I apply common sense and do the absolute minimum, usually starting the dishwasher. They can ask me to do whatever they want but it has no teeth. I've never seen one of our hosts complain in a review either.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Which also shows you how little oversight they have - I guarantee that there are a sizeable number of places that are not inspected after each stay, let alone clean.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Wouldn't that be obvious though? You know, the bed not being made, dishwasher full, towels on the floor...
  - darkwizard42 3y ago
    This would be so obvious I have trouble seeing how you might believe it. The bed wouldn't be made, the dishes wouldn't be cleaned, the items of the house wouldn't be put back. It is also trivial to look at a bed and see if the sheets have been cleaned even if the bed was made -- hair shows up easily if not other stains.
campl3r 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

> The change comes after numerous reports of guests finding hidden cameras within their rental, leading some vacation-goers to scan their rooms for cameras. Checking for cameras seems like a smart move no matter what their policy is. You just never know.

bonton89 3y ago
How do you reliably find cameras?
- digging 3y ago
  There are numerous techniques needed to search but, crucially, nothing can guarantee you've found them all. I'm struggling to find it, but I read an article a few months ago where a team placed about 30 cameras hidden in a home and tried to find them all. Most methods found low single digits. Even the best ("an advanced lens detector" for $400) brought the total up to fewer than 20. Really wish I could find that because now all I'm finding is dogshit articles claiming it's easy. edit: found, it was from CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-in-a-hotel-room-or-house-we-tested-5-ways-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-... You can also check what devices are connected to the wifi but there's no guarantee they don't have a second network just for the cameras which you can't access.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I guess we can always tape up tarps to cover the walls and then drape some over the furniture. That won't stop audio from being recorded though.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    It looks like the best method only found 11. It looks like 17 is the total amount of cameras they found using all methods. Pretty crap really. The advanced lens detector was the most effective and only found a third of them. The only method I can think of that might work is one of those media sniffing dogs the cops have, which is super impractical obviously.

jmbwell 3y ago

One more rule written in blood. How much abuse has it taken to reach this point? Incalculable. This is how you do it. Come in as a "disruptor," ignore all the rules the establishment has already learned the hard way, and make shitloads of money for as long as you can without pesky old oversight or constraints. Eventually, you wind up with the same rules the establishment had, if not more. Your catalog gets clogged with cottage enterprises that game your algorithms to steal your customer equity. While you're neck-deep in customer complaints and bad press, you're reduced to a clearinghouse for someone else's business -- little more than a classified ad service. You lose, your customers lose, and -- unless, god forbid, they get organized -- your original suppliers lose. Everyone loses except the scalpers and the scammers. Except now you've run out the competition, and consumers have little other choice. In this example, why use AirBnB when all you get is either a Sonder that is more hassle and no better than a hotel, one of a dozen apartments leased by the same weirdo, a retirement-home-in-waiting in a bland suburb, or a sketchy individual's greasy rathole? In the end, welcome to niche status. You do actually have a unique product (in this case, places for big groups to stay for several days), but the market for that isn't big enough for perpetual "growth," so you're on track to be acquired by a hedge fund, rolled together with your former competitors, soaked with debt, and then put out to pasture. But your founders are long gone, booking corporate speaking engagements between yacht voyages. Some "vice president" decides your labor pool stays cheapest if you disincentivize things like career development. Eventually everything is parceled out altogether. What's left of the value of your brand gets smeared over commodities. "Welcome to AirBnB, powered by Motel 6 (an SV Capital Partners, LLC experience)."

deleted 3y ago

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ddasdassds 3y ago

I'd put this under "enshitification". I've had plenty of complaints in the past about terrible airbnb hosts, but this seems to me to be clearly motivated to bring more money into AirBNB at the expense of the hosts and neighbors. Just like Paypal made conscious decisions to ignore customer fraud and hold sellers liable for everything, now AirBNB is trying to squeeze more out of the hosts by supporting and enabling bad behavior by guests, removing options for hosts to control or respond to terrible customers. I stopped using AirBNB several years ago, but then I noticed that hotels have copied AirBNB's shitty policies, like the price doubling on the last page due to unexpected fees. They're enshitifying the whole hospitality industry.

NegativeK 3y ago
Hosts, like hotels, can simply document before and after if they're concerned about damages. Disallowing potential spying on guests and requiring disclosure just sounds sane. Nobody should be monitored without their knowledge.

sschueller 3y ago

I find it sad how Airbnb has taken a market that worked (in many places) and re introduced all the problems that have been resolved through decades of regulations being put in place for hotels etc. Chances of finding a camera in a hotel room are near zero while at Airbnb you have no idea what kind of pervert the renter is. At this point prices for Airbnb have rissen so high why not get a hotel? It's like we don't learn at all from history or just like to forget so we can make an extra buck.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Most people these days get a hotel anyways. Also I only took a airbnb once in my life. Anybody who takes airbnbs regularly has for sure slept on somebody else's dried body fluids.
- matsemann 3y ago
  I'd wager the chance is higher in a hotel. Source: worked at a hotel.
- pas 3y ago
  Well, maybe. Hotels are big (so they definitely capture a big chunk of the tourists), but in big dense cities building hotels is a lot harder than spinning up apartments for booking/airbnb. And. I guess I'm not alone in preferring apartments. (And nowadays with lockboxes and WhatsApp-savvy rentors/lessors the lack of a reception desk is not a problem.)
mlrtime 3y ago
Sounds like an ad from the Hotel lobby. People should still be able to rent out their homes if they want.
al_borland 3y ago
This sounds like a lot of tech companies that look to shake up an old industry. They say they’re starting from first principles and try to reinvent every wheel. It usually ends up meaning pain for the customers as they rediscover why the old players in the industry do things the way they do them, and then act like they discovered something new.

hashtag-til 3y ago

This reminded me that AirBNB is a crap service. I wanted to delete my account but never got around to do so. So I did it now!

spacecadet 3y ago

Signed on just to say, like that Figma post garbage quickly moving off the main page... Forget AirBnB- These businesses lacked justification to begin with and followed the selfish whims of their boards. Abandon these paid dog food products and go out and build/support open replacements for them.

spacecadet 3y ago
Who ever down voted this is clearly a capitalist scumbag.

jgalt212 3y ago

Pablum. Near impossible to enforce.

WestCoastJustin 3y ago

Imagine for a second, that you checkin at a Marriott/Hilton/Fairmont and there was a camera in your hotel room. It's amazing it even lasted this long with airbnb.

thimkerbell 3y ago

Are they also banning the host practice of renting out multiple rooms to guests who are strangers to each other? I would prefer indoor cameras as protection from other guests.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

Definitely always scan your rooms. I volunteer with helping women who were filmed involuntarily for sexual purposes and the level of voyeuristic content from AirBnb hosts has been skyrocketing.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

[dead]

toss1 3y ago

Good to see that they are also thinking at least one step ahead: >> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces, either, nor can they use them in “certain outdoor areas where there’s a great expectation of privacy,” such as an outdoor shower or sauna. There are certainly hosts who would instantly put a camera in the tree looking in the windows. They'll still do it, but they can't use the pictures without incriminating themselves. The arms race continues, but slightly better for guests.

exabrial 3y ago

How about we just ban Airbnb and solve part of the housing crisis while we're at it?