Something I've long wondered about in Airbnb's communication platform and guarding their earnings: When a host answers a customer and attempts to put a phone number, an email address, a URL, the word "craigslist", or spelling out a number like three six seven..., it gets replaced by "(HIDDEN FOR YOUR PROTECTION)".
The frustration at that point leads one to suspect that it's actually hidden to prevent anything that could lead to transactions outside of the platform, where Airbnb would be unable to take their cut.
If there does turn out to be a means to establish contact, and a rental then happens outside of Airbnb's systems, do the terms of service actually restrict this? It just seems strange to me at the outset. As far as I know Amazon sellers aren't prohibited from also selling off-Amazon, but maybe housing and other industries have some conventions that are comparable?
> RMS’s mere presence on the scene in this way has served to make it harder to deal with other cases of bad leaders’ bad behavior.
which echoes what you said:
> his pro-pedophilia views have probably helped normalize a general lack of concern over pedophilia and sexual abuse in programming and internet culture
Stripe YC S2010 gets cited as often doing it right with launches across all social channels including Hacker News, with the founders jumping into the threads to answer questions.
This does not generalize to the broader gig economy, but I expect quarterly losses will increase for Uber and Lyft, whether due to adhering to or fighting the bill.
While I’m not a fan of either company, heavy blows to both have the risk of putting Lyft into a downward spiral as they have far less capital to weather a storm than Uber. If the duopoly becomes more like a monopoly that would give Uber even more leverage over drivers.
The frustration at that point leads one to suspect that it's actually hidden to prevent anything that could lead to transactions outside of the platform, where Airbnb would be unable to take their cut.
If there does turn out to be a means to establish contact, and a rental then happens outside of Airbnb's systems, do the terms of service actually restrict this? It just seems strange to me at the outset. As far as I know Amazon sellers aren't prohibited from also selling off-Amazon, but maybe housing and other industries have some conventions that are comparable?