Airbnb is under investigation almost everywhere. But it seems people are finally starting to look into how it works.
Specifically, the discrimination. Black Airbnb users have been complaining for years that the site is not as friendly to them as the soft ad campaign might acknowledge: Cancelled bookings, hateful messages, false accusations, and sites that magically unbook themselves when a white avatar is presented. Whether it was the upheaval of July or just a growing sense that some press is bad press, Airbnb has finally opted to make a change—starting this week with the hiring of former Attorney General Eric Holder to help craft a policy. There’s some doubt that the law can paint with a fine enough line on this issue. But if Airbnb delivers on what they’re promising, they may further their reputation as a disruptor. Only this time, they’re disrupting racism in a way the law can’t touch.
The move was announced on the company’s blog by CEO Brian Chesky on Wednesday, but according to the post, Holder and Chesky are already working hard to remedy the problem.
“In early June we announced that we would review every aspect of the Airbnb platform to help ensure we are doing everything we can to fight bias and discrimination. We are halfway through our review and want you to know more about some of the steps we’ve already started taking,” said Chesky. “We are honored that former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to join our team to help craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy. Holder will be working with John Relman, a leading civil rights attorney and national expert on fair housing and public accommodation issues. While we have a policy that prohibits discrimination, we want this policy to be stronger. And we will require everyone who uses our platform to read and certify that they will follow this policy.”
Photo Credit: ViaggioRoutard cc
That’s already something of a major change; currentlyhosts are not required to read the anti-discrimination policy of Airbnb. In fact, the company doesn’t even forcibly put it in front of their eyeballs, like an iTunes terms of service. And Holder and Relman will be forming this policy with the help of former head of the ACLU’s D.C. office Laura Murphy’s guidance leading the review process. The team will aim to combat racism, both conscious and unconscious, and promise to go beyond simply addressing the issue through more comprehensive and lasting changes to the platform. Which is great because, really, it couldn’t come soon enough.
After all, it’s a month after the Congressional Black Caucus urged Chesky to address the issue. #Airbnbwhileblack continues to make its way across Twitter. And a study out of Harvard last year offered empirical proof that renters with “distinctively African American names are roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names.”
“Online marketplaces increasingly choose to reduce the anonymity of buyers and sellers in order to facilitate trust,” the researchers wrote. “We demonstrate that this common market design choice results in an important unintended consequence: racial discrimination.”
And they’re not alone: LGBT travelers have long asked that Airbnb offer up some sort of LGBT-friendly optionusers could search within so renters can feel safer. Disabled visitors are trying to find more accessible accommodations (and, like black users, turning to specific alternatives to do it).
Like other sharing economy companies, Airbnb’s whole schtick was that it “disrupted” the market—or, as others might put it, operated in a gray area (or even in flagrant disregard) of local laws and ordinances. It’s the sort of thing that made Airbnb and its ilk what it is today. But it’s also the sort of thing that can make it hard to control, and hard to control for discrimination.
For instance, Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in places of public accommodation. But as Minh Vu and Kimberly C. Gordy write for the ADA Title III blog, it’s not clear if that discrimination would be prohibited at an Airbnb lodging in the same way it would a hotel:
Airbnb, through its website and mobile app, connects renters with people who have overnight accommodations that they want to rent and processes the payment. Like Uber, Airbnb is a web-only business that does not own or operate the actual accommodations that are provided to the public.Title III of the ADA only applies to owners, operators, lessors, and lessees of “place[s] of public accommodations.” Businesses such as Uber and Airbnb do not fit neatly fit into this definition because, as web-only businesses, they are not actual “places” of public accommodation. Moreover, they don’t own, operate, or the goods or services – the vehicles or accommodations – used by the end customer.
As Vu and Gordy note, Uber is already facing a number of lawsuits in this area, but so far Airbnb has remained unscathed. In fact in the area of discrimination, Airbnb’s legally fell in the clear; as one black user noted, Fair Housing laws may apply under certain circumstances that give people “right to refuse rentals in their homes.” And given how much “disruption” Airbnb has caused in the legal rental space, it’d be a tough pill to swallow for them to pick and choose which laws do and don’t apply to their business model.
But for a company whose slogan is all about making people feel like they “belong anywhere,” it’s not a good look to have users turning back to hotels where they can actually be treated well, let alone actually patronize. And in this case, Airbnb has the ability to dig deeper than a law actually could and fight mistreatment of its users. It’s a big undertaking, to be sure. But if they pull it off it’ll be even bigger.
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