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Airbnb Unveils Changes To Address Racial Discrimination (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Acknowledging that his company has "been slow on this issue," Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky is rolling out changes aimed at addressing discrimination complaints against the home rental service. Among the changes: de-emphasizing the role of user photos in arranging stays. Here are some of the other changes Airbnb announced Thursday: Providing assistance to people who feel they've experienced discrimination; Anti-bias training for all staff; Setting public diversity goals for staff; Partnering with historically black colleges and universities to strengthen their recruitment pipeline. The move comes after longstanding complaints from African-American Airbnb customers who said their booking requests were turned down at a high rate. Black Airbnb users vented their frustration with the phenomenon of being rejected for a booking date -- only to see the same place get listed once again -- spawning the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack on Twitter. And those frustrations were borne out in a study that sent 6,400 requests to AirBnb hosts in five large U.S. cities; the requests were identical except for the customer's name. As the Hidden Brain podcast reported, "requests with African-American sounding names were roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than their white-sounding counterparts."
Whatever policies the company staff are subjected to, unless the renters are somehow compelled to rent to people against their will — however misguided, hateful, or bigoted that will might be — the complaints will not go away.
The government may compel a business-owner by threatening fines and withdrawal of license. Fortunately, AirBnB does not have the government's power and monopoly. Whatever they do is doomed to failure.
They know this and are going through the motions only to deflect criticism (and the government's wrath) against themselves.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
the company is telling its employees what policies to implement, instructing their employees on how to behave, and overall exercising control over its employees. Just like a hotel does.
Except that training staff and setting diversity goals for recruitment is not going to do anything when it is the *hosts* that are discriminating. In most cases, if the host also lives there, it is not even illegal to discriminate. Most places have rules that let you discriminate on gender and other random requirements when dealing with roommates or in some cases even sharing a close dwelling like a duplex.
First off, I would never rent my house for a week or two. I just don't trust people that much.
Second, if I was going to rent my house out for a week or two I would look at age first. That 50 year old black couple is going to beat the 20 year old single white dude. Every. Single. Time.
If the renter can supply a good credit rating it should be safe.
Nobody runs a credit check for a one or two night AirBNB stay. Even if they did, that is not a fix to discrimination, since blacks, on average, have worse credit scores.
Because blacks tend to have worse credit scores, in 2007 the state of Washington banned the use of credit reports in hiring. This of course, made discrimination worse. This is an example of a market for lemons. Since employers could no longer tell "good" black candidates from "bad" black candidates, they played it safe by just hiring fewer blacks overall. Yet another perverse unintended consequence of a regulation.
If you really want to have fun, err... I mean take this to the next logical level, then forbid owners from running criminal background checks on the renters. After all, not wanting to rent your expensive home to criminals is racist, since a black person if far more likely to have a criminal record than a white person. Airbnb should make renters agree to rent to any criminal that applies.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I live in France, I am not sure if it counts as whining. I think they just have a different attitude - I don't think they ever gush with praise.
Some guy I (an anonymous coward) met said their education system works as follows. All kids start the year with 20/20 full marks. But for each bit of work they do that is less than perfect they lose credit. And everyone always loses credit. In say the UK, it wouldn't be too hard to get around 90% for most things, but I think anything over 80% in France is really pretty exceptional. I took some courses with clever hard working people and the top score in the class might only be 15/20 or 16/20.
I saw some of a patisserie competition where people were making ridiculously beautiful delicious looking things that in the UK would only receive gushing praise and scores of 8.5/10 or more, but in France the praise was very much tempered with criticism and scores were closer to 6/10.
A friend of mine has a French wife and he thinks that the French in general have a very fatalistic attitude towards things, don't generally expecct things to go well etc.
In general I would give a 5 star review on airbnb and consider it being polite, unless there was a problem, similarly with amazon. But I think really a 3 star review means everything was fine right? 5 stars should be for exceptional? Or at least I think that is how the French might see it.
I don't know what the point I am trying to make is - definitely don't take it personally, it is probably a cultural difference which airbnb and any other future renters (frustratingly) won't really be able to take into account.
3* for everything good and expected sounds reasonable. Unfortunately the star ratings have become something like this:
5* Everything worked as expected. Clean, owner was there on time etc.
4* Kind of skeezy but whatever there were less than 3 rats visible at any one time.
3* The bed was on fire.
2* Turns out the apartment was floating above hell itself. Would not rent again.
1* WiFi was slow and unreliable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.