The facts reveal that AirBNB is actively covering up that they are permitting hosts to violate New York Law by listing multiple dwellings on the platform.
Hmm. Is that their responsibility to enforce? Not really familiar with the details here, but it seems akin to holding Craigslist responsible for someone selling a stolen bike.
More akin to Craigslist deleting a bunch of stolen bike posts right before snapshotting the DB, during an investigation of illegal sales on Craigslist.
~~~(And only deleting them in the city where the investigation is happening)~~~
They collect the SSN of hosts for the federally-mandated 1099K disclosures, so they can use that or a hash of that as a unique identifier and prevent listing multiple dwellings in localities that have such laws.
Housing in NYC is expensive. Zoning laws exist in part to control housing costs. Airbnb is seen as a way to circumvent these laws by facilitating short-term listings in otherwise long-term residential areas.
Airbnb released a detailed snapshot of its NYC listings in order to minimize such concerns and prevent restrictions on its business. However, individuals who had been consistently collecting similar data from Airbnb's website noticed that the snapshot was misleading. Airbnb had instituted a crackdown on "bad" listings immediately prior to the snapshot, but allowed them to return right after.
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It's definitely seedy, but it doesn't sound like it's illegal. Misrepresenting data is one thing, but circulating misleading data is hard to define and punish.
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[ 1529 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] thread~~~(And only deleting them in the city where the investigation is happening)~~~
AirBNB on the other hand is covering evidence of their customers breaking the law, on purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting
(Probably yes. If that's what the laws say. I have no idea.)
Airbnb released a detailed snapshot of its NYC listings in order to minimize such concerns and prevent restrictions on its business. However, individuals who had been consistently collecting similar data from Airbnb's website noticed that the snapshot was misleading. Airbnb had instituted a crackdown on "bad" listings immediately prior to the snapshot, but allowed them to return right after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting