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by antonyt 15 days ago
Facebook, sure, but Uber and AirBNB? I don't see how Uber has displaced some community function. AirBNB is arguably destructive to communities, but again how was community fulfilling the need it attempts to address?
2 comments

Before Uber it was totally normal to ask someone, even an acquaintance, for a ride to the airport.
You can still ask friends or acquaintances for rides to the airport. The taxi service where I live is absolutely miserable and there's not really any viable public transport options. Pre-Uber and early smartphones, they'd require you to have the exact address of where you were and they'd be there "between 30 minutes and two hours" which is unreasonable and had folks judging if they were actually "good enough" to drive.

If they actually showed and picked you up, somehow the credit card machine wouldn't be working and then they'd aggressively insist they'd drive you to an ATM to get cash. It would magically start working if you told them that cash was not an option

The taxi service got what was coming to them, at least here they did. They had decades to make their service at least non-hostile to the consumer and instead it just got worse. I'll gladly pay for a rideshare where I can just put in my destination address vs have to deal with that nonsense

I see what you mean. I still ask friends for rides to the airport, but you're probably right that it's a shallower net than I might have cast without rideshare apps.
with classified ads? or calling the local tourist office? Like people didnt rent a house for their holiday before airbnb
Short-term home rentals were basically non-existent before Airbnb. A tiny, tiny market for them in some vacation hotspots.
Most people did not rent houses on trips before airbnb