Ok, I am going to bite. AirBnb is stupid. Every child that has heard about the Little Red Riding Hood should be able to figure that out.
The fact that we do not hear about even more horrible incidents regarding this service is for the most part due to society being overwhelmingly composed of more or less moral individuals (with an active remediation and PR campaign from the incumbents as a distant second reason). But I find hard to believe that anyone who can do any half decent risk assessment would sign in for that kind of liability.
Agreed! So was Facebook--it was just another MySpace clone. Or Google--another search engine. Sometimes the best ideas are seemingly stupid and pointless. I think the name is tongue-in-cheek because "stupid things" tend to become great ideas. I think it's a great idea this is going on.
If you accept that then you've missed the broader point. Not a single founder would want their idea to appear on next years board of stupid ideas to satirise.
In that we live in a society that, alas, DOES produce "stupid shit no one needs" by the ton?