Airbnb to Verify All 7 Million Listings

[Suzanne302]

In case you missed it:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/airbnb-verify-million-properties-improve-trust-66800644

This is great and something that should have been a no-brainer. Plenty of bad listings out there. But it still seems to be vilifying the hosts when the biggest need is to address bad GUEST behavior.

Thoughts?

[Suzanne302]

@Elena87  Wow. When you do the math that looks impossible.

So now the question would be, What is Airbnb's definition of "verify"?!

[Susan17]

@Suzanne302 

The first 7 minutes of this video will answer your question...

 Brian Chesky speaks at New York Times Dealbook Conference - 11/6/2019

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/watch-airbnb-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky-speak-live.html

• Brian Chesky: We will make sure that a 100% hosts and a 100% listings will be reviewed by the end of next year.
  
  

• Andrew Ross Sorkin: You mean 100% reviewed by the company and not by a star system of users?
  
  

• Brian Chesky: It will be a combination of the company and the community. We're gonna use technology, we're gonna use guests, we're gonna basically get a confidence score, we're gonna make sure we can stand behind every single listing and every single host. We'll make sure that every single listing is accurate, the information is accurate, the photos are what they say they are, the addresses are accurate, they meet minimum standards, they meet basic safety protocol, and the host is who they say they are and what their identity is.

•  
• Brian Chesky  We're gonna do this in collaboration with the community. 70% of guests who book on Airbnb do leave a review. But they leave a 5 star review. We are actually now going to work towards asking them specific questions..."Was this address correct?", "Was this true?", "Was that true?"... and we're going to use that with our team and with our technology to try and triangulate information.

[Mark116]

@Susan17   This company is really hilarious.  So, they demand an artificially inflated review system so that a basic apartment has to have more stars than The Mark or the Four Seasons....and now, since they have rendered the review system basically meaningless, they double down by adding an extra decimal, and attempting to, once again, prompt guests to criticize the listings.

I notice that the idea they floated of letting hosts delete one outlier rating a year quietly went away.  

[Sarah977]

@Mark116  And every time he has mentioned "community" in all these recent media blatherings, what he in fact clearly means is "guests". Hosts are obviously not included in "community".

My first response to that update about outlier reviews, where I pointed out that what they had proudly announced what they were going to do to address the issue was a paltry and inappropriate solution, has garnered almost 3000 thumbs up. If you consider that the number of hosts who participate in this forum is minor compared to the number of hosts on the platform, that 3000 would indicate that several times that many hosts would agree. 

That it was totally ignored by Airbnb tells you all you need to know.

[Susan17]

@Mark116 

If we were to compile a list of all the things Airbnb has promised/"committed" to over the years, that never actually materialised, it would be a very, very long read! 

This is a response to I wrote on another thread in relation to this issue...

Basically, what Brian is saying is that the balance of power will be skewed even further in the guests' favour, by requiring them to further police us by reporting even more information on us to Airbnb.

Along with the ridiculously intrusive spy charter/data heist that is the current review form our guests get to fill in about us, now they get to snitch even more on us by responding to another raft of probing questions about us and our homes. Charming. 

Data is now the world's most valuable resource. The oil of the digital era. (And we're all handing ours away for free, to Airbnb and its fellow tech giants)

How predictable of Airbnb to turn a crisis/tragedy into a money-spinning opportunity, while exponentially  tightening their tyrannical stranglehold over us. 

[Susan17]

Also, I had to call Airbnb last week (I've lost count of how many times I've had to do this now),  after my listing had relocated itself to another part of the city, and the system had corrupted my address yet again.

So I gave the CX agent my correct address, and checked it after she had input it from her side. I told her that it was backwards... street name first, then house name, number.. and mentioned that's not the way our addresses are formatted here, so it would inevitably lead to confusion with guests trying to find our homes. The response? "Well that's the way Airbnb chooses to do it". 

I guess we can all look forward to being delisted in the near future,on foot of guests reporting us for address violations that actually are completely down to Airbnb itself.

[Sarah977]

@Mark116  And remember the "Host Voice" section that disappeared? We were told it was undergoing updating to make improvements and that it would be up again soon. That was like a year and a half ago? Never to be seen again.

They seem to think we have really short memories.

[Sarah977]

"Verifying" 7 million listings is about as real as the 1 million dollar guarantee.

[Susan17]

....and the million dollar guarantee is about as real as the ludicrous claims that there a 7 million listings on Airbnb! It would be interesting to know how many of those are actually unique, active listings, as opposed to duplicates (or triplicates), or listings that were active for about 5 minutes back in 2009...

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Sarah977  Chuch Norris would verify all of them in one day 🙂

[Emilia42]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 Bbbbbahahahaha!

[Kelly149]

Are ABB intending to "verify" listings because a GUEST shot up a Host's Home? or are we conflating that tragedy with the expose on scam listings? Is it just dumb luck that these two things happened at the same time? The choices here are beyond absurd.

*I realize that I'm jumping in late... maybe y'all already discussed this. Good grief.

[Susan17]

@Kelly149 

There's been a lot of confusion regarding this - and understandably so - because in a calculated move, Airbnb has chosen to announce the new "security measures" relating to both the Orinda tragedies, and the Vice article on scam hosts/listings,  all wrapped up in one tidy little package, without any distinction between the two (and indeed, without alluding to fraudulent listings on the site at all)

Of the 4 changes announced - all listings/hosts to be verified, full refunds and rehousing for guests who complain about the "accuracy" of a listing, 24/7 hotline for neighbours to report hosts/listings they have an issue (real or imaginary) with, and flagging of "high-risk" reservations - the first two relate to the scam listings, the final two are intended to address the issue of unauthorised parties.

Tellingly, in all official communication from the company on the subject - and in Chesky's Dealbook interview - the new "initiatives" have been announced in exactly the order I listed above... ie, addressing the scams first, and the Orinda tragedies second, almost as an afterthought

[Emilia42]

@Kelly149  Airbnb had a hard week . . . Mass shooting in Airbnb home in CA, extensive investigative expose on scam listings, and a landslide losing vote on short term rentals in Jersey City . . . . all within one week.

[Sarah977]

@Susan17  It would be interesting to know how the number of complaints about scam listings stack up against the number of complaints about party houses.