What Airbnb's Blockchain Authentication Proposal Means For Online Privacy (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Nathan Blecharcyzk, one of the co-founders at home rental platform Airbnb, has detailed the company's interest in blockchain technologies to help establish user reputation and trust. He revealed that in 2016 Airbnb would be looking into blockchain integration, or a similar distributed ledger system, to authenticate a user's reputation and establish trust on the platform. The proposal marks a potentially revolutionary step for e-commerce sites and peer opinion platforms looking to identify and filter out damaging reviews planted by competitors and trolls, or self-promoting posts which can mislead consumers. However, while protecting the integrity of some, the introduction of a blockchain-based reputation system holds a potential threat to anonymity and privacy online. A distributed and irreversible system for trust management, which stores personal data, could offer a hotbed for doxing and identity theft – and even undermine an individual's right to be forgotten.

Comments

Right to be forgotten

[Sowelu]

Right to be forgotten...I can see the Slashdot rebellion against this article already.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[fustakrakich]

Exactly. The concept is bullshit. But I'm sure these people would be the first to crowdfund the neuralyzer (flashy thingy), and make it a mandatory installation on all displays.

Re: Right to be forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately, you only have the rights you can enforce yourself. Assuming you want such a thing, good luck enforcing global erasure of information. -PCP

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Skewray]

Right to be forgotten...I can see the Slashdot rebellion against this article already.

Why? There is no such thing as a right to be forgotten. We don't rebel against Santa Claus, do we?

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Registered Coward v2]

Right to be forgotten...I can see the Slashdot rebellion against this article already.

What I find interesting in those who want a "right to be forgotten" and for it to be enforced beyond their borders also complain when some other country does things online or with data, that is perfectly legal under there laws, that impact their citizens. This of course, is not unique to the 'right to be forgotten' or any particular country or jurisdiction; all are equally hypocritical in that regard.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

This "right" only exists in France, and to a lessor extent, Japan. The rest of the world does not recognize this as a "right."

Re:Right to be forgotten

[GLMDesigns]

Why? The right to privacy is one thing. Establishing credible and traceable reviews are another. I am a huge proponent of privacy and the 4th A (the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures) but that doesn't mean that one can lie and cheat and get away and not get called on it.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't mean that one can lie and cheat and get away and not get called on it.

Nor does it mean the fact that one has been "called on it" in the past can be buried and/or made into a taboo topic that no one may further discuss.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[ADRA]

Money isn't real but we believe in it. I think people would revolt if the US gov decided to abandon money tomorrow. All rights are given by powers that be. There are no natural rights besides maybe the right to die (even then, most societies have fought hard against it).

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

All rights are given by powers that be.

Nope.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Archangel Michael]

If rights are not given, except by man, then Slavery is perfectly fine as long as those enslaving are in power. Tyranny becomes a right of the powerful.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[ADRA]

What is 'a right' and what are morally/ethically 'right' are very different.

Talking naturally, there is slavery, abuse, murder and a billion other bad things that happen which would happen if mankind or society is involved or not. These things only become morally or ethically bad when one (or many) deem it so. Today the EU decided that being forgotten is a right. At some point in the very recent future people -decided- privacy was a right. Maybe in the future, society will consider it a right to have both Coke and Pepsi sold at my local movie theatre, eh in my dreams...

At the end of the day, any rights are instituted by man, which is of course why we often disagree on what they are. Without the charter of rights and freedoms (Canada) or the bill or rights (American), etc.., these rights would amount to 'common sense' (social pressure). None of this can happen until people make laws or rules to establish these baseline rules upon which other laws are applied. Once again, all of these are 'legal' rights, since they're dictated by people making rules on how to live their lives.

As to your point, I think slavery isn't right at all, but that doesn't stop governments from legalizing it.

Here's some food for thought, If we're to abide universally by natural rights (vs. social laws):
1. How is capital punishment (or even captivity) not an obvious violation?
2. How does the murder or animals not a violation? (Oh wait we're xenophobic god children who are the only life forms blessed with rights)
3. Name some strictly natural laws that aren't being violated in some way by your government (any government really)..

Its a fairy-tail thought experiment by philosophers trying to order a purely academic concept of the universe. That that, its totally fine. But, if you want to judge what is or isn't a 'right', then you establish laws (much like the EU in the whole right to be forgotten thing).

Re:Right to be forgotten

[thegarbz]

You have a right to be forgotten for crimes, not for statements.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[AmiMoJo]

It exists in the EU, where businesses store data about or belonging to you. It doesn't affect individuals remembering things or writing about their memories, obviously.

The right even exists to some extent in the US. There are rules governing what credit agencies can report about you, for example, and some things must eventually be forgotten by them. Purged from their records, no longer reported to customers asking for ratings. It's just much stronger in the EU.

Re:Right to be forgotten

[apoc.famine]

How do you know that they haven't done this already?

Re:Right to be forgotten

[Archangel Michael]

morally/ethically 'right' are very different.

Depends on whose morals you're supporting. I'm sure you don't agree with the morals of the WBC do you?

Again, who gets to decide which morals are acceptable? The people with the power. This is how cutting off heads becomes acceptable moral stance.

1) Capitals Punishment doesn't violate natural laws, any more than locking people up in jail does. They are however, responses to people who violate certain civil laws, and held in check by other laws designed to make sure they are applied only when needed.

2) Animals (natural laws) kill each other all the time, for food, and for power. Murder is a violation of civil law, with murder being defined certain ways. IMHO if a man kills another man, there are only TWO versions, intentionally, or accidentally. You either intended harm or you didn't. In the case of DUI, you are intending to only give a shit about yourself, therefore it is willful negligence, and therefore intentional.

3) Natural laws apply like this. You are alone on an island. what you do, affects nobody but yourself. You can speak as you wish, worship whichever rock you want, dress (or not) as you like, go where you like. You add a person to that island, almost nothing changes. Add another, and another. Natural laws haven't changed, but society rules (traditions, culture etc) does.

Concepts like "Right to be forgotten" don't work in Natural law. Because if you move to the other side of the island, you cannot require something of the person you're avoiding to "forget you" (and all that they remember about you) This is where I have a problem with modern "rights" that require of others things that people wouldn't have alone on an island. Think of it this way, do you have a right to FREE healthcare? Why can you require of someone else, that they provide for you, for any reason? How does this differ from Slavery or indentured servitude ?

The problem is, that we have muddled the differences between Rights and Privileges, and often reversing the two, where a Privilege becomes a "Right" and a Right becomes a Privilege.

Blockchain is irrelevant

[JoeMerchant]

What AirBnB really needs is a Trust network - if they implement it on top of a blockchain, then they'll need a blockchain maintenance infrastructure, but either way, they need to establish a Trust network.

Re:Blockchain is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all overkill. They just need to ONLY allow reviews for properties from customers that have actually PAID to stay at that property. Each reviewer would have an indicator of how many nights they have paid for and how many reviews they have made. Simple, effective, and understandable.

Re:Blockchain is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good step forward, but not sufficient.
Apparently a common pattern with fraudsters offering rentals via ABNB is to cancel someone's reservation at the last minute (presumably because they got a better offer and didn't want to honor the commitment). When you've taken the time off from work, made all the arrangements, booked plane tickets, etc... a last minute cancellation can be quite unsettling.
There's feedback to be provided even if you don't go through with the payment, and that makes it a bit complicated.

Re:Blockchain is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

But that could also be negated pretty easily by introducing penalty clauses for last minute cancellations.

Re:Blockchain is irrelevant

[JoeMerchant]

The last minute cancellation (and we've experienced this on other networks, not just AirBnB) would be pretty easily revealed in stats:

1) How many vendor initiated cancellations?

2) How close to time of arrival?

3) How pissed were the cancelled customers?

Of course, you'll expect most cancelled customers to be pissed, but if a vendor initiates more than one cancellation per 2 or 3 years or 300 rentals, I'd start to question their sincerity regarding early reservations on high demand days. If the cancelled customers aren't too upset, that's an indication that they didn't get burned too badly by the cancellation and maybe it's just a fluke.

Won't rule out self-promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I can't post self-promotion as myself. But I can use a paid shill. Don't need to cost any money either - I shill for you, you shill for me . . .

Re:Won't rule out self-promotion

[sexconker]

We all shill for ice cream?

There is no anonymity

[Etherwalk]

What are you, kidding? You have no real anonymity. AirBNB, Uber, your wireless carrier, and police license plate scanning databases already contain more than enough information about you to assemble your life fairly accuracy if you, for example, use vehicles. What you have is a thin veneer of anonymity that reduces the chance you will be held to account for online statements that nobody bothers to sue or prosecute you for.

Re:There is no anonymity

[delt0r]

I also wonder how your suppose to stay at someone else house anonymously, or hop in someone else car while they are driving it? I guess you could were a paper bag or something.

Anonymity doesn't make sense for somethings. Airbnb is one of em.

Re: There is no anonymity

[Anonymous Coward]

If I book a taxi, stay at a hotel, or buy a meal in a restaurant I don't give the owners of those businesses permission to see my facebook connections, credit record, or the history of what I have written on the internet. At the most they might get my name and address. If they ask for more than this information, and I can't either decline or provide bullshit answers, then they won't get my business. But this is what Airbnb is asking for or leading towards. I stopped using them years ago when they started asking for scanned copies of my passport and other nonsense.

Re:There is no anonymity

[AmiMoJo]

It's becoming increasingly necessary to have multiple identities. At a minimum use different pseudonyms on each web site (mine is only used on Slashdot, beware impersonators!), but it's worth doing in real life too now. It's really easy to set up too, as most places don't check your name is real when ordering stuff, and the places that do consider letters and bills with the fake name on to be sufficient evidence.

If one persona gets screwed up you can simply kill it off. For example, unsubscribing from some catalogues you get every month after making a single order is impossible, so just tell the post office that the persona is deceased or has moved and to stop sending mail for it to your address.

I wish more phones supported dual SIM cards, or operators supported adding a second PAYG number to your main account.

Re:Airbnb

[Anonymous Coward]

It died

So finally,

[Anonymous Coward]

a productive use for blockchain technology beyond that of nerd bucks.

Re:So finally,

[Anonymous Coward]

No this still isn't a productive use.

Shocked

[DRJlaw]

I am shocked, shocked I say, that a system intended to "establish user reputation" might be incompatible with anonymity, privacy, and a right to be forgotten.

It's almost as if one is expected to build a reputation, be accountable to that reputation, and tolerate discussion of that reputation by others in order to foster relationships more wide ranging than "I know this guy" friend-of-friend contacts.

In a business where trust is a key factor, Blecharcyzk suggested that the site could require higher levels of reputation from users in order to access more exclusive types of accommodation.

Yes, because I'm not going to permit johnsmith_2016 to have the run of my (hypothetical) million dollar furnished house while I'm away for two weeks, whether AirBnB provides insurance or not. Even in a more modest place like my own, insurance is a poor substitute for damaged or destroyed items of sentimental value.

I don't get it

[wonkey_monkey]

I don't know enough about blockchain to understand it, I guess. Who says you have to put personal data in the block chain? Can't you just (simplifying grossly) put user_ids, or something, in there instead? These then link to your Airbnb profile, which you can kill at any time.

Or does this just shuffle trust issues around without actually addressing them?

As I say, I'm not even clear on how using a blockchain helps anything. If someone posts a bad review, what stops it getting added to the blockchain? (if that's what they're even going to use it for)

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Associating personal data is enough, I think. Once a fairly pervasive and stable uniquely identifying system is in place, even if originally meant for a single purpose, there will be the temptation, if not outright pressure, to use it as a scaffolding to associate anything possible that can be tied to the same person. Just like nowadays the Facebook login is used to authenticate to other services, the Airbnb blockchain could be used for the same thing. Initially probably related services to travel/lodging, but once a loose network is in place, other things can be tied to it and then it becomes easy to paint a fairly detailed picture of a person. Once that's done, many other seemingly unrelated sets of information gathered through other means (medical questionnaires, purchase history, innocent sounding phone 'surveys', etc) can be tied to that identity. It only takes one *sure* link, and it all falls into place. That's the danger, I think.

Re:I don't get it

[Nixoloco]

A blockchain ledger relies on their being lots of nodes to maintain the ledger along with a mechanism to produce consensus. I think their idea is to produce something that could be used across all sorts of other "sharing economy" services and not just AirBnB. That is kind of the only way the idea would work using blockchains as AirBnB shouldn't control all of the nodes. I don't think the point is to avoid bad reviews, but to establish some level of trust in the source of the reviews. I'm largely speculating because the article doesn't have much detail.

Will they apply their system to themselves ?

[alexhs]

The proposal marks a potentially revolutionary step for e-commerce sites and peer opinion platforms looking to identify and filter out damaging reviews planted by competitors and trolls, or self-promoting posts which can mislead consumers.

Preliminary tests at Airbnb have shown that the system was filtering out Airbnb itself. Technical teams are currently trying to fix this issue, but so far their attempts have been unsuccessful.

They completely missed the point of blockchains

[Anonymous Coward]

A block chain is a method to create an tamper-proof log. Is AirBnB telling us that they can't be trusted to keep an untampered log without "blockchain technology"? In that case, how do they expect us to trust their block chain? Because that trust has to be established. It doesn't happen automatically just because you split your log into blocks and add a hash over both the block and the hash of the previous block to each block, which is really all there is to "blockchain technology". In the Bitcoin system, establishing trust is what the "work proof" is about: The chain with the most work (processing power) put into it is the true chain, because it would take at least as much work as has been performed on the true chain since the block that you want to modify. How do we know what the true AirBnB chain is? They're going to tell us? Blockchains have to be public to be trustable, because you need all the blocks to verify the chain. That is a significant drawback even for an application like Bitcoin, where nothing is attached to a real person directly. It is an absolute nightmare for subjective ratings about people. One can only hope that someone's playing buzzword bingo and not seriously considering to use a blockchain in this ill-advised manner.

random smbc very apropos

[markjhood2003]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...

Am I missing something here?

[timholman]

The whole point of a blockchain is that multiple nodes are maintained by different entities, so that no single party can alter it. That works for a cryptocurrency, because its users have a vested interest in keeping their investment secure. They will go to the expense and effort of running a full node, to keep everyone else honest.

But who is going to host AirBnB's blockchain? The only party who would have any incentive to do so is AirBnB. And if AirBnB is the only keeper of the blockchain, what prevents someone from altering it?

Am I missing something here, or is this yet another example of "ooh, this technology sounds neat, let's take this hammer and see how many things look like nails"? When even Bitcoin is seeing a steady drop in the number of nodes hosting its blockchain, you have to wonder if people are really thinking this concept through.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Fnord666]

Am I missing something here, or is this yet another example of "ooh, this technology sounds neat, let's take this hammer and see how many things look like nails"?

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.

Is that you, Hans?

How does he think that will work?

[Fnord666]

I go on to ask about blockchain technology, which can help build trust in a given network by underlying it with an immutable database. "I think that, within the context of Airbnb, your reputation is everything, and I can see it being even more so in the future, whereby you might need a certain reputation order to have access to certain types of homes. But then the question is whether there's a way to export that and allow access elsewhere to help other sharing economy models really flourish. We're looking for all different kinds of signals to tell us whether someone is reputable, and I could certainly see some of these more novel types of signals being plugged into our engine."