Guest profile picture

[Doris124]

How can Airbnb all of a sudden decide to take guest profile picture away why?

Putting a face to a name makes the host comfortable It doesn't make anyone discriminate!. We are allowing people into our homes! Its more than money.

I have accepted both male and female, black and white, never discriminated so why would Airbnb change things all of a sudden? 

What happens if another person turns up infront of your gate? We will now have to call or email airbnb? How much stress can hosts take?

[Rebecca181]

@Doris124 That's exactly what I decided to do - My new (and identity-free) profile pic should be visible soon.

[John2437]

I agree completely, we the hosts have all invested significant sums of money to purchase a rental home or welcome guests into our own homes, and now Air bnb makes it harder to see who it is in our home?   What the hell?   The hosts are being discriminated against.  A business decision that may end up in a court.  

[John1080]

@Susan17  @Doris124, yes it sounds as if they will eventually go with no names at all, along with no photos prior to acceptance. Personally, I host remotely and don't really care what guests look like or where they're from, as long as they understand and respect my rules. 

However, I can see the point many hosts have made almost universally on these threads concerning safety and simply knowing who is coming to their door in a shared space booking. 

For many, it really boils down to the essential theme, which we see over and over again, that Airbnb doesn't respect hosts and places the value of guests well above hosts. It's really a slap in the fact to hosts because Airbnb is essentially saying that we hosts cannot be trusted not to be bigots. 

[Daniel1598]

@Doris124 I'm sure that there are many instances where this has prevented discrimination. Everyone has some built-in subconscious bias, it's just the nature of the human mind. Perhaps going off of messaging, written profile information, and verified ID is the best way to start things off when a guest inquiry reaches a host.

[Doris124]

That same bias is then built in guests as well. So if we really want to be fair why not try taking off hosts profile picture.

For me Its not about bias; I have hosted both male and female, black and white all of it, I just love to know who I am messaging and who I am bringing into my home. If we really have to avoid descrimination as I said earlier we should also do away with names and just use initials because some names tell you exactly their origin.

[John1080]

@Daniel1598, I agree and in my experience, the best determining factor when judging whether a potential guest will be 'good' or 'poor' is how well that person communicates in the first message and whether my questions are answered in a satisfactory manner. 

I would never accept a booking without a verified government ID and prefer several verifications. The profile photo has never been especially important to me, especially since I do not share the space with my guests, but I can understand why some hosts would prefer to be able to maintain control over profile photos as a safety precaution. 

[Daniel1598]

Couldn't agree more. Communication is by far the most important factor for me as a host.

[Zacharias0]

What a headache! Im not letting anyone in my units until I feel comfortable. Its not the missing photo thats usually the problem. Its everything else that is MISSING- no reviews, lack of verifications, no reason for stay, no time of arrival. Just a random person with nothing to say. It works my nerves to the inth degree! Then the host has to do ALL of this back and forth messaging to understand who the heck they are dealing with. If AirBnB is going to take away photos then replace with mandatory verifications and making potential guests answer simple questions about their upcoming stay.

[Daniel1598]

@Zacharias0 Sorry to hear about the negative experiences. Surely this isn't 100% of the time. Sometimes I have inquiries that come with little to no information, but they are few and far between. In committing to become hosts I think that we should accept the fact that we will be messaging back and forth and leaning-in to investigate what we are dealing with. In the end you can decide to take it or leave it.

[Rebecca181]

@Zacharias0 - That's exactly what I've been saying in multiple comments elsewhere. That's the real issue, to me. Not the missing profile photo. What is unacceptable to me as a host is the missing...EVERYTHING.

[Susan17]

@John1080 @Daniel1598 @Doris124 

Firstly, if this policy really was about discrimination, surely Airbnb would have introduced it back in late 2015/early 2016, when it was first mooted and Airbnb was coming under fire as a result of a barrage of high-profile allegations regarding discrimination on the platform? It seems a little tardy, 3 years after the fact. Some might even say it looks suspiciously like it has a lot more to do with making it as quick and easy as possible for guests to complete bookings, thereby ramping up the numbers with an inevitable IPO on the horizon. 

Re. the Harvard study I mentioned on the previous page, the following conclusions from the report are worth noting... 

"Our  results  are remarkably  persistent.  Both  African-American and White hosts  discriminate  against  African-American  guests; both  male  and  female  hosts discriminate; both  male  and  female  African-American  guests  are  discriminated  against. Effects  persist  both for  hosts  that  offer  an entire  property  and for  hosts  who share  the property  with  guests. Discrimination persists  among  experienced hosts, including  those with  multiple  properties  and  those  with  many  reviews.  Discrimination  persists  and  is  of similar  magnitude  in  high and low  priced  units, in diverse  and  homogeneous neighborhoods" 

"Because hosts’  profile pages  contain  reviews  (and  pictures)  from  recent  guests,  we can cross-validate  our  experimental  findings  using  observational  data  on whether  the  host  has recently  had  an  African-American  guest.  We  find  that discrimination  is  concentrated among  hosts  with no African-American  guests  in  their  review history. When  we restrict our  analysis  to hosts  who have  had an  African-American  guest  in  the recent  past, discrimination  disappears  –  reinforcing  the  external  validity  of  our  main results, and suggesting  that  discrimination is  concentrated among  a  subset  of  hosts"

"That  said,  we note  that discrimination  disappears  among  hosts  who have previously  accepted  African-American  guests.  One  might  worry  that discrimination against  our  test  guest  accounts  results  from  our  choice  of  names  and  hence  does  not represent  patterns  that  affect  genuine Airbnb  guests. However,  we find  that discrimination  is  limited  to  hosts  who  have  never  had  an  African-American  guest, which suggests  that  our  results  are  consistent  with  any  broader  underlying  patterns  of discrimination"

So in other words, it's very easy to pinpoint the tiny subset of hosts who do engage in bigoted and prejudiced behaviour, and rather than tar all hosts with the same dirty brush, the solution to the issue is really very simple, and has been suggested numerous times, by numerous hosts - simply track the host's pattern of declines/rejections, investigate those with discrimination complaints against them, deal with them accordingly, and leave the rest of us to get on with hosting and welcoming all  our guests in our usual friendly, inclusive, tolerant, unbiased manner. 

[Daniel1598]

@Susan17 Thanks for providing a wealth of information. It's definitely a complex issue! While I can see the argument towards allowing guests quick and easy access to boost numbers, I'd say that's speculative. I have never been personally affected as a guest or host by discrimination, but I would hate for someone that I know to endure such a thing. As a large company that operates in over 190 countries, there needs to be evolving standards that benefit the rights of both guests and hosts. I think there is a better way to do this than to spend time and resources in seeking and disciplining a handful of bad actors. In my humble opinion I don't think that removing a profile picture, prior to the reservation being finalized, damages my rights as a host. My perspective is that it may help guests get their foot in the door and from there let proper communication, logistics, etc. determine the course.

[Susan17]

@Daniel,

You wrote, "I have never been personally affected as a guest or host by discrimination, but I would hate for someone that I know to endure such a thing"

Do you not think that having a booking request declined would be a hell of a lot easier for a person to endure - and a great deal safer - than ending up under the same roof as some racist/homophobe/bigot who has deep-seated biases and prejudices against them anyway? Once a zealot, always a zealot. Ticking a box to "agree" to abide by a non-discrimination policy on some website is not going to change anyone's dogma, in any way. Not in a million years. 

[Robert523]

Just my opinion, but Airbnb is a community, and nothing should be hidden. Community = communication. I have never declined anyone ever in two and a half years, but I like seeing who is trying to book, it helps me communicate more appropriately even right from the get-go, and I like to see who is knocking on my door before I open it, it just makes things more comfortable, open, and real. Hosts let people on to their property and in to their personal space and are really the ones who need as much information as possible right from the start of each relationship. It was much better the original way.

[Rebecca181]

@Robert523 Airbnb was a community. Seems to me that the last vestiges of community are hanging on for dear life here in the CC - and many people's listings are hanging on for dear life also, as bookings dwindle and commercial / hostless properties are promoted by Airbnb.  It seems that AIrbnb is now about many things, but it is no longer about strangers enjoying a stay with a live-in (shared home / traditional) host so that they can 'live like a local'. Those days seem long gone now for many hosts, based on reports that I read here.