[rayiner]

> Still, logic and decency would suggest that when you’re in danger, as Mr. Lopez claimed to be, Airbnb would come to your rescue.

Does it? AirBnB doesn't have duties to guests because they're just a transaction middelman. Hotels are liable for the safety of their guests, but they also have control over the premises they rent, which AirBnB does not.

Of the various criticisms against AirBnB, this is the least sympathetic one in my opinion (the tragedy of Mr. Lopez's individual situation aside). When you rent off AirBnB, you're renting from some random stranger, with all the attendant risks. You're not renting from a company that bears liability for your well being. That's just the nature of the transaction.

[dferlemann]

By "coming to your rescue," it doesn't mean actually coming... It means just call the cops at least. Instead, they asked her to call cops then let cops call them to get address. It seriously increase the response time, and potentially cost lives. It seems to be common sense to me. So, it does!

[rayiner]

It'd be very dangerous for AirBnB to give out the address of where someone is staying in response to random phone calls.

[pen2l]

Perhaps the case here is that AirBnB is misleading guests into thinking that it'll assume responsibility equal to the responsibility a hotel would take, when it really doesn't.

Anyway, sadly (and obviously) this submission has been flagged, would be better to carry discussion to a lessly-YC controlled platform: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/3h7ivz/airbnb_h...

[dang]

I'm beginning to become annoyed with you for insinuating the same falsehood every time one of these stories comes up. You've done it countless times, and it puts us in the position of either saying nothing and letting the falsehood stand—which isn't right—or having to answer it, a dreary chore that steals cycles away from things that actually help the community.

It's time you supplied some evidence (which you won't, because we don't do the things you say), or dropped this. Repeating the same falsehood ad nauseum is not legit.

The only thing that happened to the present post is that users flagged it, presumably because it was an obvious duplicate. We didn't see the post until a few minutes ago, and the only moderation we did was unkill it so discussion can continue. That's standard practice.

[pen2l]

> I'm beginning to become annoyed with you for insinuating the same cheap falsehood every time one of these stories comes up.

Every time? That's very much an exaggeration! Secondly, if you read my comment you'll see I did not accuse YC of flagging the story, I was myself thinking it was user flags (though, when one considers that flagging privileges are sometimes revoked... and only "good" users are left to flag, userflag starts to seem very much like a YC-flag - but that's a story for another day). Anyway, I do think I didn't choose my words very carefully, there's arguably some connotation of YC being `directly` involved in flagging in my comment, that was unintended.

[dang]

Many more times than I have energy for.

Your oft-repeated claim/insinuation/smear that we censor anti-YC stories isn't true, nor fair, nor even reasonable, since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

It's also mean—you have no idea how hard we work to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen.

And in this case it was lazy as well: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb%20horror%20story&sort=b....

[pen2l]

> since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

That's just not true though. Huge governments have survived through propaganda, brainwashing, etc. (not necessarily accusing YC of doing that, just making a point). Forums can persist in any direction you want if they're carefully and meticulously managed, one can partake in rampant banning, censoring, etc. and it'll all still be fine, it happens everywhere all the time.

[dang]

You're arguing technicalities, but the important points are: (1) we don't censor stories for being negative about YC because doing so would be wrong and bad for the community, and (2), it would be a stupid risk to take with HN if we did. "Whatever you do, don't do that" is literally the first thing pg said to me about how to moderate HN.

[DanBC]

It probably got flagged as a dupe. YC and HN keep sayi g that they don't penalise negative stories about YC companies.

[pen2l]

This story hasn't been submitted before. It was ranked #1 for a little while, and promptly was demoted to non-front page. This happens a lot, most people just miss it/forget about it.

[DanBC]

> This story hasn't been submitted before

Yes it fucking has.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064782

This version uses a mobile link. The previous version includes a bunch of URLcruft.

In fact:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064782

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10063756

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10063612

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10063555

It has had repeated submissions, and one previous submission has over 60 comments. It's probably being flagged as a dupe.

EDIT: Also, NYT has a paywall and some people auto-flag any NYT submission.

[pen2l]

Okay, thanks for the proof! I should mention that in most cases the story seems to not have persisted in the top, even though it's a story that likely many HN users would want to discuss.

I wish you hadn't escalated this to usage of profanities, but it's all good.