Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Dyne Suh, a 25-year-old law student from Riverside, California, just wanted to enjoy a relaxing Presidents’ Day weekend with her fiancé and a couple of friends in nearby Big Bear Lake. What she was not expecting was for her Airbnb host to abruptly cancel on her because of her race. And yet! According to the…
At the startup where software developer Jen used to work, the presence of human resources was, to use her words, “a joke.” (“Jen,” it should be noted, is a pseudonym.) “One of my coworkers would say, ‘If you have an HR issue, go to [the lead developer] and sit on his lap,’” she told Motherboard….
Platform Companies Are Becoming More Powerful — but What Exactly Do They Want? close story-meta-footer close story-meta Photo Credit Illustration by Andrew Rae During a February ride in San Francisco, Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, was recorded arguing with and eventually berating an Uber driver from the back seat of his car. The…
A real-estate startup called Compass Inc. has hired hundreds of sales agents away from older rivals, collected $225 million from marquee investors and amassed a valuation of over $1 billion, all with the pitch that its software can make brokers more efficient. Real-estate veterans say they’re baffled by how the four-year-old firm, active in only…
A war of words between Airbnb and New York, its largest market, has escalated with the first fine issued by the city in what is expected to be a crackdown on “hosts”. Tatiana Cames, a host who advertised “shabby chic” apartments in Brooklyn to tourists and business travelers, was fined $5,000. Penalties will escalate if…
If you involve yourself with Airbnb in any way, you’re killing us all. Thanks. via Why Airbnb Is Terrible – Cracked Explains – YouTube.
Airbnb’s efforts to become an “open and transparent” company might not quite line up with traditional definitions of transparency. A report released Wednesday suggests that Airbnb manipulated listing data in New York City prior to publicly releasing that data to regulators in December, in an effort to quell concerns that the platform was enabling professional…
If you’re a black Airbnb user that’s had a sneaking suspicion hosts are giving you the run-around when you try to book a rental, you might be on to something. A working paper (pdf) from three Harvard Business School researchers suggests that users with black names have more trouble booking rentals. While the company doesn’t…
Along with the ability to hail a ride from our phones, the app era has pioneered a great cultural shift, a mass willingness to, say, let a stranger spend the night in our homes or meet up with a cute random guy after just a few texts. But our newfound propensity for trusting strangers from…
Begin: Right Rail Advertisement Container End: Right Rail Advertisement Container Begin: WordPress Article Content In California, a state built on the idealism and tacit cruelty of real estate capitalism, no one is innocent. That’s no different with Airbnb and Proposition F, merely the latest of San Francisco’s Brobdingnagian sagas over land-use politics that will go down in today’s election….