Airbnb and its cooperation with the French governement

[Florent207]

Good evening,

While scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I stumbled upon a very peculiar article from a newspaper. In fact, the sheer upcoming backlash of this article came up to my attention. 

The French newspaper LeMonde published an article stating, and I quote from a Twitter user (to whom I owe a pretty spot on translation) :

"According to @lemondefr the French State & @airbnb are to cooperate in identifying “individuals renting out villas with pools to organise single-sex bathing (swimming) for women.”

The first reaction of a sane person would be along the lines of "What. The. F*ck."

After the initial shock though, we may inquire on a simple fact : Is this actually a true statement or is it simply the doing of a newspaper willing to sell more by using the shock and awe strategy? (being clickbaitey sells a lot, anyone who used Youtube for a reasonable amount of time should know this by now).

If the statement is correct, how will Airbnb face the oncoming backlash coming from French hosts whom refuse to cooperate with such policy?

I truly hope all of this is just made up and will be clarified in due time.

Ps : The article in question : https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2022/01/10/lutte-contre-le-separatisme-islamiste-l-arsenal-de... 

[Sarah977]

@Florent207  Sounds exceedingly strange. There's either more to the story or it seems like some sort of joke.

Was there maybe some incident where a host was advertising his villa for this purpose and then surreptitiously filming the women?

[Florent207]

Let us say that the actual political climate in France makes it sadly believable, and Le Monde is not the kind of newspaper to pull out jokes, moreover of this sort. 

Here, apparently, it states that Airbnb can give informations about how people will use the swimming pool at their disposal in order to make sure that muslim women can't use it as a gathering place of some sort. I don't want to tackle the political subject here, but France has now a long history regarding its muslim population and ways to control them.

[Sarah977]

@Florent207  Ah, I understand now. Yes, unfortunately it isn't just France that has these sorts of discrimination issues. 

But I'm rather surprised that Airbnb would involve itself in something like that, considering all their rhetoric about non-discrimination. 

I couldn't read the article without accepting their cookies, which I don't want to do.

[Helen744]

Helen@744 In Australia public swimming pools do organize not only same sex swimming sessions but lessons as well. Aussie muslim women have famously invented a swimming costume for women to wear at the beach. I do not know that it would be strange at all for groups of women to take advantage of pools in private homes . Maybe some enterprising person should do that but insurance may be an issue. I just do not get the issue here H.