Hacker News Reader

Comment by zodPod | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand how this is Airbnb's problem. Why do people attack these kinds of services so often? It's not their fault people are paying through them and then having people send the money back. What are they supposed to do? Send someone to the home to check that the person is actually staying there?

I mean, the way this works you could literally use any service ever. Why is AirBnB, in this case, any different than like Paypal, eBay, or Amazon or literally any online fund transferring for goods service?

View on HN

I fail to see your point: Paypal, eBay and Amazon are also under the obligation to adequately monitor and prevent money-laundering.

My point is they call AirBnB out specifically when they're not the only ones that have this issue and that could be used to do this. They even state in the article that AirBnB is just being used as an example and many services could be seeing this kind of usage. If that's the case, why call out AirBnB specifically? That company gets so much flack for the way its users act. I'm not sure what it's expected to do in many of these cases.

> That company gets so much flack for the way its users act.

Gig economy companies blur the line between user and employee. If a hotel chain had a problem with its hotel managers laundering money, would you be saying this?

What you're saying here is tantamount to claiming that AirBnB isn't responsible for its employees' actions because they didn't bother to vet their employees. Companies aren't simply exempt from laws because their business model refers to their employees as "users".

The gig economy is individuals leveraging their time and personal assets to make money. They aren’t employees, just like a musician playing a pub isn’t an employee. purpose of a company to provide a product or service on a scale larger than one person could provide. A company’s primary goal isn’t to police employees the same way Facebook isn’t responsible for the content I write on their website. They have some duty to clean up afterwords but they do very little in the way of supervision. If someone does an investigation and finds criminal behavior the company has a responsibility to report that behavior to authorities. A company wants to avoid damaging its reputation over something like a laundering scheme.

The Uber and Airbnb model is more like a credit card gateway for a specific industry and their ideal user is, ‘I’m an individual who does whatever I want with my time and property and I would like to make some money on the side’ that is not an employee’s mindset.

Its a little upsetting that there are people who are more invested in their Airbnb and Uber status therefore claim employee status. If my YouTube channel takes off and I make a bunch of money on views can I claim employee status at yt? Clearly the answer is no

Eh, user and employee are just labels used to communicate a narrative; there's no objective truth in either one. The point is, the hotel industry is structured such that it solves this problem. If we're allowing AirBnB to disrupt the hotel industry, we need to address the same problems. The gig economy claims to be more efficient, but it's not more efficient in the context of society if it's merely offloading parts of the problem it solves onto other parts of society.

> user and employee are just labels used to communicate a narrative; there's no objective truth in either one.

I completely disagree. A company vets and makes a pledge to a employee, there is commitment in the form of promised work and potential advancement. Employees have a work future and maybe the potential grow. Consults, Ehem I mean, "Users" are here now and understand that once they finish this single task in accordance with any contract, or task list they are done. They are free to leave and there is no promise to stay. A company has no responsibility to a user or consultant other than all civil caselaw, don't slander, impersonate, discriminate, stalk, etc. 'For hire' work is compensated on in the agreed upon terms. Something to the extent of "There is no guaranty for future or ongoing work. You are compensated for the services and time you have rendered. Compensation changes must be agreed upon by both parties." 'For hire' contracts, TOS, consultant contracts are not employee contracts.

No one is confused about what the word "consultant" means; you don't need to explain it.

Your narrative (and Uber's) is that all Uber has to do to abdicate all the responsibilities that society previously demanded from a cab company is declare that they will make their drivers consultants. Obviously Uber drivers as they are now are consultants, but it's far from clear that this is beneficial for riders, drivers, society as a whole, or anyone other than Uber. I am unconvinced that we should accept Uber's narrative and allow them to make their drivers consultants.

Seeing as you're already upset, I hate to break it to you that special purpose credit card gateways have similar regulatory requirements.

That said, your characterization of Uber and such is egregiously inaccurate. Uber does not hire individuals who do whatever they want with their time and property. They hire individuals who are willing to use only very specific property, in very specific age and condition, to make money in specific places, in an exceedingly specific manner, while following very specific rules.

As such, you're not just peddling a false dichotomy, you're doing so using grossly distorted portrayals of reality.

'Upset' and 'not thrilled' are interchangeable in my lexicon. Didn't mean to convey hyperbole.

It's generally understood that employees have all the rules you mention. I have been a contractor for 20 years and I have all those rules as well. So when does a consultant become an employee? Is it when I'm a 1099 or a W2 in the eyes of the IRS?

The difference is in the initial negotiation; the benefits and a promise of future work for employees, but no such commitment for consultants. It's negotiated up front and must be renegotiated by both parties for any change. If I'm hired as a consultant, I don't get to claim I'm an employee later on because they worked me too hard. I have been worked too hard, but I know the rules, I made it through what ever the commitment I made, then either renegotiated or fired the client. That's what consultants have to do every day.

The use of the word 'Hire' in your comment is leading (as in a leading question). You are coloring your argument that the drivers on Uber's platform are their employees by using colored words like 'hire'.

There are several statutes that put the onus on financial institutions, arguably including any "credit card gateway" thanks to the Patriot Act, to detect and prevent money laundering. So by your own language, irrespective of what the purpose or the goal of the company is, anti-money laundering laws still apply.

It all comes down to whether or not you think the owners of property rented out via AirBnB are, in fact, "employees".

How about eBay or Etsy... are people who sell things via those platforms "employees" of the platform? If so, then you have an odd definition of "employee". If not, then where do you draw the distinction?

You could say the same thing about any company that skims an amount from the charges that happen on their platform. Paypal/eBay, Patreon, Amazon, etsy, etc. I'm more confused as to why AirBnB gets singled out so frequently.

The story is about a way that a specific company is potentially being used for money laundering. There's no calling them out. Calling them out would be "Online fraud costs $X billion a year" and then only giving examples of AirBnB.

To put it differently, the story is that this is happening to AirBnB, the fact that happens to others is not important. Not every story is about the fully zoomed out overarching issue.

Why do you think users complain vocally about Paypal's antifraud policy frequently freezing their accounts? (ex: Pycon)

Because Paypal actually gives a damn about it because they know that they could get seriously compromised through government intervention if they don't police it.

This would have to be stupid-easy to detect. Just look for repeat copy from guests to hosts regarding their stay, and high cost stays at places.

If AirBnB ever wants to be legal, they're going to have to be spotless. This may not be their problem, but it landed in their lap, and they can't be part of it.

The more weird validation you add to something the more ridiculous it is to use. If I want to charge $1000/night to stay in my house because it's inconvenient to me but some rich guy is ok with paying it for his convenience, why should AirBnB stop something like that? On top of that, they seem to be saying, in the article, that they are using a large number of hosts not just one over and over so you wouldn't have enough repeats to flag this.

It'd be easy if these scammers were total idiots but the problem is scammers will work within any system they're given. So you set the limit to 3 repeat interactions as well as a $250 limit they'll just do 3 transactions at $249 so they don't trip it. Then it'd just interfere with real users who just want to stay in some expensive place and liked where they stayed so they go monthly or something.

This happened to me. I checked my account, which I hadn't used in a couple months, and found that I had apparently been staying in Bangladesh. I promptly told AirBnB and cancelled my account, but they didn't respond to my complaint.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com