Hacker News

points by sailfast 4 days ago | 0 comments

How many billions of dollars in taxes went unpaid? How many overnight accommodation laws were broken? How much consumer harm has occurred due to lack of rights where they might otherwise have redress? Just a few that come to mind.

[–] jmuguy 4 days ago

So Airbnb is responsible for the individual hosts who decide to do something illegal? People have been doing short term rentals for a long time, including online, before Airbnb - what specifically did the company do that was so bad that its the same level as the gambling enabled by Kalshi etc?

[–] sailfast 4 days ago

This might be a controversial take, but if you take a small cottage industry and make it a consolidated global platform that is growing the practice on purpose by thousands of percentage points, then the platform IS actually responsible.

As for the gambling bits I guess if I had to answer it would be property investors that bought thinking they could rent on AirBnB - speculation but also driving up prices in popular areas to price out locals.