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A comment on Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts. Parent comment

Re:Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by ... by tzs on Thursday September 08, 2016 @02:19PM (#12455644)
> If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk.

It's worse than that for Airbnb, I think. If they take too active a role in deciding who gets to stay it gets much harder for them to plausibly argue that they are not the entity that should be responsible for complying with zoning regulations and tax regulations and any other regulations that apply to hotels located where the Airbnb hosts are located.

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Re:Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by ... by caseysoftware on Thursday September 08, 2016 @03:56PM (#12456711)
That was my line of thinking. Just like being an independent contractor... as AirBnb adds more rules and processes (aka control), there is going to be a threshold where their liability explodes and then could implode the business.

The question comes... is that an established line that they can stop just short of OR is that a great big grey zone that will require a lawsuit to better define?

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Re:Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by ... by jonlucc on Thursday September 08, 2016 @02:38PM (#12455907)
One option would be to somewhat anonymize the process, not giving the host all information about potential renters. That still places the decision to rent to a particular person up to the host, but might not provide enough information to discriminate.
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