I am great supporter of knowing who will be entering my little Rusty Cottage in Vermont, and as a host I would love to have a face to the name of the person who is inquiring on booking. I have been hosting on airbnb for several years now and have found out that even with a profile photo the person on the picture may look totally different when they arrive, for example many profile pictures that guests use are when they were in a social function weddings or other events or they used a younger picture of themselves, so my point is that even with a profile picture what you see is not always what you are going to get.
Fortunatly all of my guests have been great eventhough the profile photo they used was of an earlier or different version of themselves.
So that being said I do understand why airbnb has changed the guest profile photo policy, just about all companys make decisions based on the feedback they receive from customers (in this case guests), I am sure that airbnb put this policy in place because of the enourmous amount of discrimination calls and complaints from guests, either real or imagined the numbers of complaints were there for airbnb to make this decision, which they new was going to be overwhelmingly unpopular with hosts.
I am spanish living in the U.S.A. for over 53 years, and have had to deal with discrimination all my life, no matter how subtle it is or was, So I do understand and applaud companys when they make decisions to say NO to discrimination no matter how unpopular the decision is going to be.
I do know that airbnb hears you through this community forum and the company in the past has had implemented change based on your comments and suggestions, I just ask that with this change in guest profile picture, we all understand the big picture of discrimination commend airbnb on their decision and give a chance with this change.
For I am sure this no guest profile picture will frustrate and eventually weed out the hosts from airbnb who practice bigotry and discrimination.
I do know my stance on this subject is going to be unpopular, and there are going to be few thumbs up, however if you have read this hopefully you will have a new understanding of why this change was made to airbnb guest profile photo.
Rubén