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Airbnb To Hand Over Data On 124 Hosts To New York Attorney General

Posted by Soulskill on from the quasi-legal-operations-sometimes-have-consequences dept.

Peer-to-peer lodging service Airbnb has agreed to hand over data on 124 of its hosts in New York as part of an investigation by the state's Attorney General into the operation of illegal hotels. The AG first requested data for almost all of Airbnb's hosts in the state, but after "legal wrangling," that number was whittled down to the current 124. The data in question will be unredacted personal information, meaning names and addresses. In a blog post, Airbnb's David Hantman said, "nothing about these hosting profiles suggests [the Attorney General] is after anyone but individuals who may be flagrantly misusing our platform." Airbnb is confident that the targets of this request are hosts considered to be "bad actors," but they don't explain what classifies somebody as a "bad actor."

2 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bad actors? by drolli · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No - there are always definitly easy to spot bad actors on such platforms. These can range from stupid assholes who want to rent out their garbage collection room, people who are acting like they ren something out in private, but in reality operate a full-scale business circumventing regulations and possibly taxes.

    It seems that in NY there are 10000s of hosts. Figuring out the most criminal 1% of these has nothing to do with killing innovation but more wit doing a service to the customers (reputation for the hosts and safety for the customers).

  2. Re:Bad actors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People actually want hotels and motels regulated. A few reasons I can think of:

    1. Most people don't want a motel to pop up next door. By that I mean they don't want you renting out your house in the neighborhood to random people. Ask a few homeowners what they think about someone turning their neighbors house into a rental (and that's medium term).

    2. Most people don't want an actual motel within a mile or more of them. Again, it represents passers through. Also motels are notorious for crime and housing some unfavorable types, depending on the location, scale, and many other factors. But people fear the worst.

    Okay, that's all I could come up with.