alt Hacker NewsIt's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.
Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.
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I recently used airbnb quite a bit in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and found quite a bit of that old vibe, ranging from a spare room in a young brother & sister's house, to more suite-style accomodation. I was very happy with all my stays, specifically the hosts who balanced privacy with friendly helpfulness.
...and you believed that it was ?
Staying with my family and friends and helping with common household chores, the same as I would be doing at my own home, is a completely different thing than paying $150-350 a night to some rando.
These things are banned because they became the Amazon equivalent of low balling rates and tacking on shipping fees.
The relationship to homliness really has nothing to do with this. Your friends never charged you to stay then charge 4x that because you left some trash.
I agree about how one should conduct themselves in someone else's home, but is it really that interesting how they progressed as a technology company? To me it seems like the tried and true formula of enshittification. It's the startup playbook.
You went by a "vibe" they wanted you to believe instead of the fact that you pay hotel rates to stay at these houses?
You do those things when you’re staying at a friend or family member’s place. But your friends and family aren’t charging you hundreds of dollars a night, plus a $250 cleaning fee.
It’s not just Airbnb the company that moved away from it, it’s the Airbnb hosts that moved away from it as soon as opportunists started becoming mega landlords renting out ikea-furnished party houses. It hasn’t been the original “person with a spare room for a weekend” Airbnb in a long, long time.