zlacker

Dan it's really unusual you're coming into the conversation like this. I'm recounting a year of very direct, repeated personal experience: if they do care, they've had every opportunity to show it.

Other Airbnb neighbors may have a great time, but that doesn't mean I'm 'generalising' about them in a 'not fine' way when recounting my honest feelings after repeatedly dealing with them.

It's an odd coincidence my comment went from the top comment on this article to far down the thread in a single reload.

>>nailer+(OP)
I think I disagree with Dan here (on the substance, not the process).

But it's not unusual for him to wade into conversations like this. What he's objecting to is an instance of a pattern that he has consistently been objecting to over the the last 9 months or so: commenters extrapolating the public policy intentions of organizations based on reporting about the behavior of those organizations. There's a term for that kind of reasoning: fundamental attribution error.

Given a couple minutes with the HN search bar, you can quickly find several other recent places where Dan has raised the same objections with respect to other companies.

I think "not attributing unproven intentionality to organizations" is a pretty good norm for HN to adopt.

That doesn't mean you can't make the argument that Airbnb is having a toxic effect on particular cities! It just means you can't make the lazy emotional appeal that Airbnb is run by people who don't care about toxicity.

>>tptace+03
Well, to be fair: Airbnb is run by people who intend to profit from the toxicity of their business -- for places like Berlin, where what they "disrupt" is not so much the hotel industry but the city's housing politics, and many local communities.

>>tptace+03
> commenters extrapolating the public policy intentions of organizations based on reporting about the behavior of those organizations

I am recounting a year of direct personal experience, no reporting is involved.