[curun1r]

That won't work. The ability to discriminate is a big selling point to hosts. And there's nothing wrong with certain forms of discrimination. Hosts have limited recourse to deal with bad guests. My parents rent out a spare building on their property and they're very conscientious about reviewing each guest. When a guest leaves too large of a mess, they get lower than 5 stars. And since their property is rented most nights, they refuse to rent to guests that have more than a few negative reviews. Since people are renting out their homes, this type of discrimination is necessary to make them feel comfortable.

Where discrimination becomes wrong is when it's based off race or some other protected class. I've said it before, but the way to fix this isn't to deny hosts the ability to discriminate at all, but to withhold the information that hosts need to discriminate unfairly until after the booking has been made. If a host is forced to choose to accept or deny a booking without seeing a picture or knowing the name of the guest and only being able to look at reviews, time on AirBnb and such, then you retain the ability to discriminate against people who have a history of being bad guests without giving hosts the ability to use race or some other unfair characteristic of the guest to determine whether to accept the booking.

But, as others have mentioned in response, AirBnB wants to give the appearance that it cares about unfair discrimination without actually dealing with it. Too many of its hosts want to discriminate in that fashion. AirBnB will do the minimum necessary to address the bad PR and do whatever it can to make it seem like they care about those guests affected, but really doesn't want to do anything about the issue.

[wfunction]

> Where discrimination becomes wrong is when it's based off race or some other protected class.

Really now?

If a 50-year-old doesn't want to live with a 20-year-old, that's wrong to you?

If a theist doesn't want to live with an atheist, that's wrong to you?

If a woman doesn't want to live with a man (or woman for that matter), that's wrong to you?

If an Israeli doesn't want to live with a Palestinian, that's wrong to you?

If a pacifist doesn't want to live with a veteran, that's wrong to you?

If an American Indian doesn't want to live with a British, that's wrong to you?

You think people who want to rent out a mere room or two of their home should be forced to disregard the "protected class" of the tenant? That genuinely makes sense to you?

Like seriously... discrimination is not black and white. It shows complete ignorance when you say discrimination based on a protected class is somehow automatically wrong. The context (in this case, whether you're living with them) matters -- a lot.

[curun1r]

> You think people who want to rent out a mere room or two of their home

No, I don't. I think the majority of AirBnB rentals are the whole apartment/home, and it would be very simple to apply the rules I mentioned to just that type of listing. In NYC, where I'd imagine the percentage of shared/private rooms would be higher than other areas, 2/3 of rentals [1] are of the entire home variety. Discrimination based on protected classes is wrong in these instances. It's illegal for a landlord and it's illegal for a hotelier. Why shouldn't it be illegal for a short-term rental just because it uses the same platform that others use to rent out a room in their home?

So, does your diatribe still apply in the majority case or were you just talking about those less frequent rentals?

> It shows complete ignorance when you say discrimination based on a protected class is somehow automatically wrong.

And it shows complete ignorance on your part that you ignore the circumstances that constitute the majority of AirBnB rentals.

[1] https://skift.com/2014/02/13/airbnb-in-nyc-the-real-numbers-...

[ferentchak]

You can discriminate against people for being young. :)

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

[amluto]

I think that, if you "don't want" to associate with people in whatever group for whatever reason, that's okay -- what you want to do is your private business.

But none of this is about what you don't want to do. It's about how you treat other people, commercially and otherwise. Society should not permit a man to refuse to do business with a woman and vice versa.