Comment by bugsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bugsy | Hacker News Reader

That's extremely interesting. When the victim EJ posted (was it Thursday?) about being intimidated and lied to by Airbnb, it was obviously very different from what they were saying publicly. I figured though she is very very upset about everything and overreacting. However, this new report is a second witness that Airbnb is playing dirty behind the scenes while acting all nice guy in public, and PG defending it. Probably he believes what they say, but the fact is that it's Arrington that ends up being right on these articles, but even if it wasn't, we already know the story came from EJ the victim and not Arrington anyway, so PG either didn't do proper diligence in checking before posting or is outright lying to protect his investment. I think PG is honest and just didn't check up on things, but believed what he was told by his unnamed contact at Airbnb, who is clearly angry at the victim. The unnamed Airbnb contact's attitude of anger corroborates EJ's story that she was intimidated by them. What a mess. It's obvious at this point both that PG should apologize to Arrington and Airbnb is basically done for. I am sure they have many people there trying to do the right thing but they have at least one person there in CYA mode who has basically both destroyed the company and lied to PG.

I can't imagine that AirBnb are "done for" after one such incident. I think the real issue here is that HN readers, the kind who root for startups to "stick it to the man", so to speak, are disheartened to see their champions acting like the old regime. That's why this topic, and the public bun fight in the aftermath have generated so much discussion.

I can easily imagine they are done for. Not because of the PR backlash, but because what they are doing is already quasi-illegal in a lot of places and one juicy story like this that the media, lawyers and politicians can jump on is just about all it will take to eventually remove the "quasi" part.

Before jumping to more conclusions, compare also the EJ quotes in her interview with SFChronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i...

They sound to me like she's slightly walking back her criticism of AirBnb, attributing it, at least in part, to the emotional stress she was feeling.

You know, I assumed that much of what she said was a misinterpretation of events based on emotional stress like you say since their public face was completely different from the aggressive stance they (at least one of them) were taking in private. However, that changed after reading the Arrington article because it is now corroborated that they do in fact have people there taking an aggressive stance, and who are lying to PG since what PG said is definitely not true.

Compare Arrington's original writeup:

I spoke to Airbnb about EJ’s situation. They won’t reimburse her for damages, they say, and they do not insure against losses. They are helping police track down the person who did this, but their help ends there.

...with how Arrington now casts the spokesman's statement...

Airbnb’s Christopher Lukezic told me on Wednesday that the company was not responsible for EJ’s losses, that they are just a service to match people and that they were helping the police find the people who did this.

There's a subtle but very important difference: 'not responsible' is not the same as 'their help ends there'.

Did Arrington choose to punish the 'no comment' by using words carefully chosen to make AirBnb look worse? His latest post does not disprove that hypothesis!

And when Arrington says, "What he said is what I wrote [above], and what was in the original post", well that's not true. The original post had a stronger implication AirBnb wasn't helping. Which is exactly what PG was objecting to.

Mmm, he's showing a bit of lack of journalistic integrity here. He should have quoted himself and maybe mention the possible mis understanding.

Right now it seems that the whole situation is full or misunderstanding due to massive lack of communication between the people who are actually involved. EJ, AirBnB and SFPD seem to not be exchanging what they know very well. That was echoed in EJ's 2nd post where she says that the police might be giving different info to AirBnB and what not.

This whole thing really shows the character of Airbnb in general. First there was the issue with spamming people on craigs list (PG also defended this action) and now this, next there will be something else and im sure that PG will come to their defense again. I understand he has to say whatever he needs to say to protect his investment but a little objectivity would nice.

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