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Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

Amusing Hacker News cognitive dissonance:

- "AirBNB is great! Will revolutionize the world! Stupid hotels just take your money for no reason! Regulations are only there because governments hate you and want to oppress you! By next week, 7 billion people will be using AirBNB to rent their homes to each other! And it's totally safe, because AirBNB stands behind each and every transaction!"

-- "Stupid poster, she should know that AirBNB is absolutely unsafe. She bore 100% of the risk and of course she should never have used this service. She was violating her lease and deserves everything that happened to her. Shooting is too good for her; hanging is too good for her. None of this is AirBNB's fault; they had literally nothing to do with the transaction and it's impossible to understand why the poster would ever have thought they did."

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I am shocked to see everyone rallying against the victim because he may have violated his lease terms. If that is the excuse AirBNB have, they should not be doing business in the cities where their business model is not 100% compliant local laws.

How does the lease terms even matter in this incident? It's not like David vandalized her apartment because he figured the host is violating lease terms and he deserve this? Do you really think that David would have cancelled his XXX fest if the host's lease terms allowed subletting? This would have happened to him even if he was 100% compliant with lease terms and local law.

AirBNB should take responsibility for it and do the right thing. AirBNB should caution their hosts and customers about risks like these instead of lying them about 100% guarantee.

Moreover, it should be AirBNB's responsibility to ensure that every single listing and transaction is 100% compliant with the local laws. Ebay doesn't let me sell drugs or other illegal items. AirBNB should do business

I think that's a developer unconscious talking. "We have a bug here in AirBnB, here's a reproduction scenario". - "Oh, you see this small print in this manual? It says you couldn't do that. Therefore, not a developer's problem, ticket closed, PBKAC".

The other part of "blame the victim" is "the victim did X, and bad thing happened. I would never do X, therefore bad thing would never happen to me". Of course, nobody thinks it explicitly, but it's how the mind works - bad thing happens, the mind automatically thinks "omg, this is terrible, it could happen to me, I should worry" and then another part of the mind thinks "no, the bad thing happened because lease said don't do it, and she did it, so if I never do what lease says to not do, it won't happen to me, so I should not worry". And the mind is happy again.

>>> Ebay doesn't let me sell drugs or other illegal items.

Drugs yes, but you probably can sell tons of illegal (in some places) items on Ebay. Ebay has no possibility of tracking the local law in every locality, and a lot of things can be made illegal. For example, selling medals and order signs are illegal in many countries, still ebay has a lot of them for sale.

You've got it all wrong, hacker news is very consistent. Whatever the topic, everyone must argue against the OP.

Your comment reminds me of the sentiment of the whole Mt.Gox debacle. It is alarming that people tend to blame the victim of the situation, rather than the culprit. Instead of people blaming the victim/s, put forth a solution. I'm curious to what is going to come of this inquiry.

I upvoted because I found it interesting, not because I agree that it's AirBnB's fault nor because I think AirBnB's service is flawless.

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