Since I laughed out loud at this, perhaps I should explain the joke, since it's obvious that no one "got it."
You see, the original quote was "As a famous man once said: "Trust, but verify"."
Now, if you heed this advice in full, you can only trust that the famous man actually said "Trust, but verify" if you verify it first. A citation is simply a way to verify that a famous man actually said it.
Yes, this exactly. You're not letting your friends use your house. Trusting random strangers, getting burnt, and then saying that it's all the fault of the person who introduced you to them as a stranger makes no sense. Airbnb wasn't vouching for their renters any more than a hotel booking site does. You think hotels leave expensive unsecured items in all their rooms? Do you think hotels don't have a way of charging for damage? This person didn't think their actions through at all and now they're blaming everyone but who they should, themselves.
My eastern European friends have told me that Americans are strange with the example being that they need their coffee labeled hot whereas "normal" people know that coffee is hot. This is the same thing. Leaving very valuable things out when inviting strangers to stay in your house when you're not going to be present is just something "normal" people know not to do.
> Airbnb wasn't vouching for their renters any more than a hotel booking site does
The victim in this case stated that, before using Airbnb, she would normally perform background checks on potential renters. Airbnb, though, marketed themselves as a safe and reliable way of vacation renting, and implied that they took on the responsibility of this sort of screening. In fact, they make it impossible for users to do it themselves. Whether or not they do in fact screen renters, it doesn't sound unreasonable for the victim to have believed that they do.
> Leaving very valuable things out when inviting strangers to stay in your house
At one point in her blog, she does mention that she had taken everything of value and locked it in a closet that the guests did not have access to (and presumably did not know the contents). They literally broke the locked door down. Valuables aside, they also went on to damage or destroy nearly everything else in the house, valuable or not. Removing valuable items from the house entirely would still not have prevented the violation of her home.
I don't think it's at all fair to blame the victim here. It's not a simple matter of an American lacking common sense.
> they make it impossible for users to do it themselves
That seems like a fundamental problem with their business. I'm inclined to agree that unless they make a serious shift in the information they're providing to people providing rooms, their business isn't going to work much longer.
> locked it in a closet that the guests did not have access to
If it was the only locked closet in the house then it would have been rather obvious. You point is essentially valid though, hiding her stuff would not have prevented someone not interested in financial gain from destroying her house. However, not taking that basic step, irregardless of the intent of the strangers, seem to still lack "common sense".
I think warning stickers are just an odd artifact of an adversarial legal system designed to achieve safer products and services. People don't 'need' 40 safety stickers on a ladder or a 'warning: hot' label on a cup of coffee. In litigating personal injury suits, plaintiff's lawyers simply use e.g. lack of a sticker as grounds for a claim. The defendant says fine and adds another sticker. It's a messy system that sometimes results in pointless measures, but overall it has resulted in goods and services being much safer than they otherwise would be. And if the coffee reference refers to the McDonald's case, I think that one is totally different: they handed that lady a 180+ deg cup of liquid - that was negligent of them.
What about your TV? An expensive rug? Any desktop computers? Why doesn't AirBnB tell you that you may need to move hundreds of pounds worth of stuff out of your home to use their service safely?
What's to stop them from cooking meth in your home? From what EJ says, her bathroom smelled deathly horrible, and the arrested suspect had meth on them. You don't need valuables around for someone to turn your home into a meth lab.
Finally, this type of rental is advertised by AirBnB as a main use of their service. And they don't tell you that the only way to do so safely is to clear your home out of anything you'd like to see again - saying that up front is pretty bad for business.
And if you do, you should take as many precautions as possible. Airbnb handled this badly, but in truth it can just as easily happen to anyone renting out a property.
I don't understand why Airbnb aren't as rigorous as regular rental companies? And why they are not better educating their customers on security and crime prevention.
> I don't understand why Airbnb aren't as rigorous as regular rental companies?
Because they wouldn't be profitable if they were, it's too complicated and doesn't fit in their model. The regular rental companies would soon copy their model outpace them if they went that route.
Did anyone ask about this in their YC interviews? ;)
