See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history.
Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.
You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?
OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.
> Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews?
It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.
Edit: furthermore spam prevention takes all sorts of random signals in to account. Having no online presence other than a single stay in Airbnb certainly looks suspicious.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy, but there is also no evidence whatsoever that social media presence was in any way shape or form used to make the decision here. Airbnb at no point mentioned it, nor would it have been something that crossed your mind if original commenter didn't mention it as a fact about themselves.
I'm not arguing that Airbnb does use presence/lack of social to make a decision here. I just objected to you saying
> Since when is a social media account required to do online business?
I interpreted that as you being outraged that Airbnb requires some form of social presence to do business. I felt you were exaggerating and responded by saying its just about the review. I meant that even _if_ Airbnb is checking this, it's not a big deal cause this is just one of many signals that could feed into spam detection and we're only talking about the _review_ not the ability to use Airbnb at all.
You raised a valid point earlier, I doubt they're actually checking this, my point is just that even if they are, who cares. OP looks suspicious by having no online presence at all and only one stay on Airbnb. That combined with the language in their review probably tipped the spam filters to say "hey it's probably safer if we don't let this review through, doesn't seem legit"
Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time.
Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd.
My theory on this is the same as usual – Airbnb outsources or understaffs their customer service department as usual; some stressed out agent closed the case without even looking at it. Making some noise and opening a separate case will probably work if you're bothered enough.
It's possible there's something more mundane, like not having a browser cookie when the review was left or something like that.
After that, they’ve already made the fees on the stay. Most people won’t be losing 20% or whatever to farm good reviews.
Why would the final and optional review step be the part where they decide to verify if the stranger staying in someone else’s house is a real person.
Implying that a "bot" or "puppet" is paying to stay at AirBnB's just so they can write salty reviews?
It is not really a big cost because you only really need to pay the platform fee (you control both sides of the transaction do the only real cost is the middleman).
Reviews are super important and it is hard to get booking when you have 0 reviews so it is not surprising that some hosts would spend some dollars for 3-4 fake positive reviews to kickstart their property (many people will bounce off the ad without at least a couple positive reviews, so it changes your business radically)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34219765
> Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.
Effectively, you can't.
Many of them collect their data via third-party scripts so you should ensure those are blocked.
Reviews are an auxiliary cost to Airbnb. They need moderating and their Hosts complain and use up support time if bad reviews are let through. I suggest profiling users is a quick and cheap way they've done the sums on to weed out the easiest level of abuse (on both sides).
They're not going to lose any business until it affects you.
"We have a suspicion based on this data we don't have that you might not be a real customer so we're blocking your reviews" invites a whole lot more customer support time than "We're not accepting your reviews."
It is simply cheaper to be firm, however unfair it is when they get it wrong.