Uber brought ride sharing and cracked the taxi market wide open - perhaps to the benefit of riders.

Airbnb is also a boon for travellers looking to stay cheap, and a boon for property owners to cash in on underutilized real estate.

The "harm" that has been cited to have been caused by them are only the incumbents that do not move with the market or times.

It's like a necker cube.

Glance at it and she looks like a renter or typical youth of a city with tourism but poor purchasing power/ social mobility, but stare a bit longer and relax your focus and she becomes an incumbent who doesn't move with the market or times

You don't live in a European city near the sea. Airbnb is a plague. We used to use a house sharing in summer, we did it for years, until Airbnb killed it. It was an exchange 1 to 1 in term of population, we now do x5 to x10 in summer.

Now that the harm is done (speculation on housing priced out teachers and low income workers, old, niche stores turned into tourist traps), we finally have regulation. A bit too late. But at least the mayor is adding 20k housing units (+20%), driving the price down and making speculators eat a fat loss.

Uber was regulated much faster so it's impact have mostly been positive, unless you've been raped by a predator as they used to not check their drivers.

You have to regulate ahead of time, even if it's soft and toothless in the beginning. Check the EU proposal to regulate AI, it seems really, really soft.