The Vice article also talked about retaliation, but I'm not clear how that worked: At least in the last few years, you can't see the owner's review until you've posted your own (or until a timeout happens and you lose your opportunity to make a review). And you can comment on reviews to tell your side of the story.
It would make sense for AirBNB to wait until the owner had left their initial review (or the review window timed out) before alerting them to the fact that they were going to get a bad one.
guest => support: "the place was filthy, I want a refund"
support => host: "guest says it was filthy is that true"
host => support: "lol no"
host reviews guest: "terrible, all they did was complain, beware"