[JonFish85]

"a kind of challenge they aren't built to solve: the political one."

And yet these are the battles that "technology" companies like Uber and Airbnb had to know were coming. At best, they live in a legal gray area. You can't start a company skirting existing laws and expect politicians to look the other way.

And it's not just politicians that are responsible for this. As a condo owner, I specifically don't want Airbnb to be available in my association. There are reasons that there are laws against leasing and subleasing apartments, and it's not just to screw over startups.

Uber and Airbnb grew to huge valuations on the back of pushing externalities onto others. Airbnb is taking their cut and looking the other way on things like taxes, zoning regulations and such until they are forced to deal with it. Uber pushes similar things off onto their "contractors".

Now the political environment is catching up to them, and it's time to deal with the same legal environment that every other company has to deal with.

[meatysnapper]

Strongly agreed. If you are running an 1) illegal cab company or 2) illegal hotel company, you have to expect this. At a certain scale you are tolerated, but when you are a major player you will get some scrutiny that cannot just be "disrupted" away.