Dear Forum and Airbnb,
in the debate about lack of profile picture, I would also like to express as a host (and traveler) my strong unsatisfaction and disagreement with the socalled new policy of Airbnb, which in fact is a step back for the community. Unless of course, Airbnb, is now aiming to become a new Booking.com with anonymous strictly commercial transactions, which I hope and doubt is the case. A community without a face is not a community!
Is there any public statistical documentation and thorough analysis of discriminatory cases against guests, and, for that matter against hosts? That would be essential for the discussion, and would probably show that the issue in the debate is mostly going one way, in favor of those (few?) guests who have felt that a decline of a request was based on discrimination. How to prove that anyway?
However, hosts are being discriminated against by weighing concern for the guest higher. Taking away one of the main features of an user account - the profile picture - is giving the host fewer tools in managing her/his listing. This is not fair.
The profile picture is part of the user's general profile and way to communicate with the world. Just as the other features like Other Verifications, CV, Reviews, Etc. are part of the profile. It has nothing to do with criterias of 'judgement' per se, but are basic - and essential - features to make a complex system like Airbnb work smoothly. The idea of introducing extra functionality buttons and request methods to ask for someone's profile picture, is making simple things complicated - and unnecessary.
It also creates a negative vibe in that, instead of welcoming a guest, hosts now need to ask for formalities that in fact should have been taken care of by the facilitator Airbnb, and should have been transparent from the beginning. The 'new' policy will also potentially create invalid and fake discrimination cases due to potential declining of a request after a booking has been confirmed. There can be X reasons of why a host needs to decline or cancel a request. We are not a hotel with staff, bodyguard, and a big insurance company at hand.
Airbnb enhances an open free world by connecting people from all continents, based on sharing economy, not on discrimination. So why discriminate hosts?
Best regards,
Jacob [Surname hidden]