It's Awkward When Airbnb Hosts Tell Guests "Don't Mention Airbnb"

Leslie Root usually stays with friends when she visits Washington D.C., but for her most recent trip, she wanted something more adult. So two weeks before she was scheduled to attend a conference, the UC Berkeley grad student rented an Airbnb in a highrise building on Connecticut Avenue.

But as soon as the place was booked, Root got a message from her host that’s probably familiar to regular users of Airbnb: The host said she wouldn’t be there for the duration of the trip, and that Root should ask at the front desk for the key when she arrived. “I’ll leave an envelope,” Root remembered her host saying in the message, “but don’t mention Airbnb.”

“It was like, ‘Ugh, god, am I really paying to do this?”

Right away, Root started to worry — why would a security guard give her keys to an apartment when the owner wasn’t home? And how could she pass herself off as an old friend of her host’s when the two had never met? Said Root, “It was like, ‘Ugh, god, am I really paying to do this?”

Hosts ask guests to hide the fact that they’re using Airbnb all the time. It happened to a woman named Lisa Reilly on a vacation to Spain, a travel blogger named Alex Garcia during a trip to Europe, and a New York entrepreneur named Siddharth Saxena whose San Francisco host explained the request for secrecy by saying, “Airbnb is controversial.” A web search turns up around a dozen listings in cities including Kobe, Hong Kong, San Diego and LA that say “don’t mention Airbnb” right in the public posting.

“These experiences are rare,” Airbnb spokesperson Nick Papas told BuzzFeed News. “And as the number of Airbnb hosts and guests continues to rise, we are working hard to help educate everyone about the benefits of home sharing.”

After almost nine years, regulators have had time to catch up with Airbnb. Strict rules around short-term renting are enforced in a handful of cities worldwide, including New York, Santa Monica and Berlin. Countless landlords and homeowners’ associations have, at this point, written rules against it into lease agreements and contracts. Clearly, for some hosts, the risk is worth it. But for their guests — who booked their stays on a slick website built by a $30 billion company whose selling point ease of use — the experience can be downright awkward.

And that’s a problem for the company. Like any startup, Airbnb is successful when it's seamless — and tenants who rent their apartments without permission are, to use a Silicon Valley term of art, adding friction. With listings in 190 countries and a recent influx of half a billion dollars in capital (and hundreds of millions more potentially on the way, per Reuters), Airbnb isn’t exactly hurting — but there are few other companies that, at nearly a decade old, sell a consumer experience that sometimes requires those consumers to act like it isn’t happening.

Root’s trip to D.C. ultimately went smoothly, but not all covert Airbnb guests have the same luck. A California couple’s Thanksgiving trip to the East Coast “turned into the nightmare before Christmas,” according to The New York Post, when they were booted from a building that didn’t permit the Airbnb rental they were supposed to stay in. (In the end, Airbnb paid for their hotel.)

Sherwin Belkin is a lawyer in New York City whose firm represents thousands of landlords, many of whom have played the cat-and-mouse game with tenants they suspect of secretly renting their homes to tourists. He said guests who fail to follow their host’s instructions to keep mum about Airbnb often end up “caught in this limboland” of Airbnb, with money spent but nowhere to sleep. “They come to be building and don&039;t quite adhere to the rules of &039;Let&039;s keep this on the down low.&039; They tell management, &039;Oh, I rented this apartment on Airbnb can I have the keys to go in?&039;,” Belkin told BuzzFeed News. “And then they&039;re told, &039;Well, actually, no. This is illegal.&039;”

Of course, most guests don’t get caught and most hosts don’t get evicted, but the experience of sneaking around can be uncomfortable. A programmer named Josh told BuzzFeed News that, after a new roommate skipped town and rented his room on Airbnb against building policy, Josh was forced to pretend the guest was an old friend of his from college to avoid eviction. Another tech worker, this one named Adam, was asked not to mention Airbnb to neighbors during a business trip his employer paid for, only to have his cover blown when he ran into a coworker in the hallway. In another instance, a traveling tech CEO booked a room in San Francisco, and then received this threatening note from his host: “The important thing is that my apartment does NOT allow airbnb, so if they notice, I cannot host you anymore and I will be evicted as well.” And a retirement-age couple recently booked an apartment while visiting their daughter in L.A., only to receive a video tutorial and slideshow from their host that included instructions on avoiding detection.

The name of the building has been redacted to protect the identity of the guests.

New York recently passed the strictest anti-Airbnb laws in the US — if the host isn’t present during the guest’s stay, the likelihood is very high that the listing is illegal, and the host could be fined up to $7,500. A judge in Toronto recently ruled that building management companies have the right to ban condo owners from renting their properties on Airbnb, while in Chicago, 900 apartment buildings already have bans in place.

In San Francisco, where Airbnb is sometimes legal, doormen are also on the lookout for secret Airbnb guests, according to `David Wasserman, a California-based landlord attorney. “If someone comes in and they say, &039;We&039;re guests of this unit&039; and through some questioning it becomes apparent that these are Airbnb guests, they turn them away,” Wasserman said.

Other property managers hire interns who spend their days scanning Airbnb for illicit listings, or use one of a number of web-scraping sites with names like Sublet Spy and Sublet Alert. Some take a more direct approach. “We increasingly have our buildings under camera surveillance,” said Wasserman.

Rafat Ali, CEO of travel site Skift, is personally familiar with the “don’t mention Airbnb” phenomenon — during his two-month honeymoon, Ali rented his apartment in a Manhattan doorman building to an Airbnb guest. “I told her, say you are Rafat&039;s friend,” he said. “I think it happens often.”

“They&039;re going to have to clean up the system.”

Though common, Ali doesn&039;t think surreptitious listings are a threat to Airbnb&039;s business model, because the brand is somewhat insulated from the impact of a guest&039;s negative experience with a given host. “What percent of people who book through Airbnb hold Airbnb responsible for the experience?” Ali asked. “If I had a bad experience with Airbnb once, am I going to just stop using it because I&039;m going to blame Airbnb completely? Or am I just going to blame the one place for misrepresenting what they were?”

But, Ali said Airbnb will have to demonstrate a willingness to play by the rules if it wants to mature from a dazzlingly successful San Francisco startup into a publicly traded behemoth of the travel industry. “Professionalizing more of their services at the sacrifice of some of their inventory is the way to go,” Ali said. “They&039;re going to have to clean up the system.”

To that end, the company encourages hosts to talk to their landlords about Airbnb. It’s currently offering a pilot program through which it negotiates Airbnb-friendly lease agreements between tenants and landlords that include compromises over issues like the frequency of booking and how much of the host’s profit should go to the building’s owner. A survey by the National Multifamily Housing Council recently found that around a third of apartment firms in the U.S. would be open to working out such deals with tenants.

Airbnb has also removed thousands of illegal listings in New York and San Francisco, and built a feature that allows people who don’t even use the platform to submit complaints about neighbors they suspect are hosts.

“More and more landlords and tenants understand that home sharing can work for everyone and we&039;re eager to build on this momentum,” said Papas.

But in the meantime, one weird experience can change a customer’s feelings about traveling via Airbnb.

Heath was on a trip to San Francisco when his Airbnb hosts asked him to pretend they were away house sitting in Sonoma and to tell the neighbors, if they asked, that he was their nephew.

“They showed me the place while walking me through all of these details several times,” Heath said. “‘Okay, remember, you’re our nephew. You’re just passing through. We are in Sonoma,’ and instructed me to be quiet when I opened the front door so I didn’t rouse any suspicion.”

Heath is a self-proclaimed bad liar, and the request made him nervous, but it was too late into a short trip to cancel the booking. “It’s a terrible user experience to be told to lie,” he said. Eventually, after a yearlong break, Heath went back to using Airbnb, and he says it’s been fine so far, but “it kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about Airbnb for a while. I didn&039;t want to travel and feel like I had to abide by some weird, dark code.”

Quelle: <a href="It&039;s Awkward When Airbnb Hosts Tell Guests "Don&039;t Mention Airbnb"“>BuzzFeed

Uber Halts Self-Driving Car Program In California After Registrations Revoked

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Uber has suspended its nascent self-driving vehicle program in California after the state&#039;s regulators revoked the company&039;s car registrations.

The ride hailing company said the move came Wednesday after California&039;s Department of Motor Vehicles “revoked the registrations for our self-driving cars.”

“We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules,” the statement added.

A statement from the DMV said that the agency revoked registrations for 16 vehicles that “were improperly issued for these vehicles because they were not properly marked as test vehicles.”

California adopted testing regulations for self-driving vehicles two years ago, and the DMV&039;s statement added that “Uber is welcome to test its autonomous technology in California like everybody else, through the issuance of a testing permit that can take less than 72 hours to issue after a completed application is submitted.”

Earlier this month, the company began testing self-driving vehicles in San Francisco. The same day the program launched, the California DMV ordered the company to stop the program until it obtained a permit from the agency. The DMV also threatened Uber with legal action if it didn&039;t pull the vehicles.

One of Uber&039;s self-driving vehicles was also caught running a red light on the first day of the program.

The company is also testing autonomous vehicles — which still have a human driver onboard — in Pittsburgh.

Other companies, including Tesla and Google, have already obtained DMV permits to test self-driving vehicles in California.

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LINK: DMV Threatens Legal Action After Uber Rolls Out Self-Driving Cars In SF

LINK: Here’s A Video Of A Self-Driving Uber Running A Red Light

Quelle: <a href="Uber Halts Self-Driving Car Program In California After Registrations Revoked“>BuzzFeed

Ride-Hailing Services Like Uber And Ola Are Finally Legal In India

Indian Minister of Law and Justice and Ministry of Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad (L) shares a light moment with co-founder and CEO of Uber Travis Kalanick ahead of a meeting in New Delhi on December 15, 2016.

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India’s federal government has released guidelines to regulate the country’s taxi industry, which means that ride-hailing apps like Uber and its homegrown Indian rival Ola, are finally legal in the country.

The new guidelines were framed by the country&#039;s Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways, and are available online as a 37-page document. Although the guidelines are nationwide, it is up to each state to implement them, which means that the companies could still push back and lobby against certain guidelines in the document.

Among other things, the new guidelines say that ride-hailing services which use apps will need to have their algorithms which calculate distance and fare audited for accuracy by the country&039;s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

They also recommend capping surge pricing at three times the minimum fare during “peak hours”, and four times between midnight and 5 am — although they leave it to individual states to decide what the final multiplier to cap the maximum fare should be.

The guidelines also touch upon protecting consumers&039; personal data by mandating ride-hail services to include a “firewall” for data security, and explicitly giving riders the option of sharing their data with the app or not. Uber recently introduced a controversial update on iOS that tracks users&039; locations even when they aren&039;t using the app, something that privacy advocates have slammed as “a fairly aggressive use of a customer’s data.”

“This is an important milestone in the development of ride-sharing in India, and one that will help the industry better serve riders, drivers and cities in the years ahead,” said Uber India&039;s President Amit Jain in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “While there are concerns on price caps and price floors, the framework will allow the industry to continue to flourish. We look forward to working closely with our existing partners at the state level as these guidelines are put into practice.”

Uber declined to respond to BuzzFeed News&039; specific questions about getting its algorithm audited and the company&039;s concerns about price caps. Ola did not immediately return BuzzFeed News&039; requests for comment.

India&039;s lack of taxi industry regulations so far has led to ride-hailing services operating in a legal gray zone, battling it out with federal and state authorities, and facing stiff resistance from local taxi and auto-rickshaw unions. In August, the Delhi High Court issued a notice to Uber and Ola to stop surge pricing in Delhi.

“These guidelines are quite liberal and give ride-hailing companies a lot of freedom,” said Jaspal Singh, a partner at Valoriser Consultants, an urban transportation and market research agency that provides consulting services to taxi companies in India. “I think that the government is finally looking at ride-hailing services as an alternative to India&039;s dismal public transport systems, especially in bigger cities.”

The guidelines, however, do not address predatory pricing, something that Singh says could be a concern for companies that don&039;t have enough capital to subsidise rides like Uber and Ola do. They also don&039;t define what “peak hours” are, which means that companies are free to raise prices during any time of the day they see fit.

India is the largest battleground for Uber outside the US, after it merged its operations in China with rival Didi earlier this year. Both Uber and Ola have ramped up their policy presence in the country and lobby aggressively to influence public policy around transportation.

Last week, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick visited the country to meet key government officials, including President Pranab Mukherjee.

Quelle: <a href="Ride-Hailing Services Like Uber And Ola Are Finally Legal In India“>BuzzFeed

Big Pharma Is Coming For Your Facebook And Twitter Feeds

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Ads for clothes, concerts, and flights to exotic destinations litter Facebook and Twitter. Soon, though, you may see a lot more ads for something more serious — prescription pills.

That is, if drug makers can avoid antagonizing the FDA.

From now until early January, the drug-regulating agency is collecting public feedback on how tweets promoting therapies should disclose their side effects, one step in the agency’s long-running attempt to regulate advertising on social media. The move follows Facebook beginning discussions with the FDA about ramping up efforts to populate the News Feed with drug ads.

Social media could help Big Pharma pinpoint more customers than traditional advertising. At the same time, the highly regulated drug industry faces unique challenges in trying to get their messages out in tweets and Facebook posts.

Pharmaceutical firms, which spent $6 billion on ads in 2015, are drawn to platforms like Twitter and Facebook for the same reasons as everyone else with something to sell: their data allows businesses to reach highly specific audiences. Think, for example, of Viagra ads aimed only at men over 50.

“To be able to target to very precisely who’s going to see those ads means that the industry would waste a lot less money, I suppose, and be able to see a better return on investment,” John Mack, who publishes the newsletter Pharma Marketing News, told BuzzFeed News.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only online networks that pharmaceutical companies are eyeing. Ad agency AbelsonTaylor recently praised Pinterest’s potential to reach patients, noting that, for example, its users are mostly women, and women make most health care decisions in their households. At least eight major pharma firms have Pinterest accounts, by Mack’s tally.

Still, traditional ads remain appealing because they have time-honored — and regulator-approved — ways to disclose drugs’ risks. Voiceovers on TV commercials breathlessly read side effects, and magazine ads print them in small fonts. But Facebook posts and tweets have much less room, and can be hard to distinguish from personal endorsements.

Kim Kardashian&#039;s now-deleted Instagram to promote a morning sickness drug, without the required safety information.

Instagram

Their casual nature can breed bizarre situations like the FDA coming down on a Kim Kardashian selfie. In August, she Instagrammed a picture of herself with Duchesnay’s morning-sickness drug, which she was paid to promote, without mentioning its potential side effects, although she did link to a site with that information.

Kardashian deleted the photo after the FDA sent a warning letter to Duchesnay, and then reposted it with the side effects, from drowsiness to allergies.

“From a regulatory perspective, it’s a lot of pressure to think about fitting all that information into a four-inch mobile screen,” Danielle Salowski, industry manager for Facebook’s health team, told BuzzFeed News.

The social network has been beefing up that team, which has been around for about a year and a half, in an effort to bring in more pharmaceutical dollars. Salowski, who joined Facebook in May after working in ad sales at Twitter, said her team is a mix of pharma experts, digital industry veterans, and longtime employees.

They’ve been trying out creative ad formats. This fall, Bayer bought its first Facebook ad for a multiple sclerosis drug, which presented safety information in an auto-scrolling line of text, rather than a long paragraph. The scrolling feature had appeared in other Facebook ads, but not previously for pharmaceutical ads, according to Facebook. “Bayer chose Facebook because the multiple sclerosis community is actively involved in Facebook,” Bayer spokesperson Rose Talarico told BuzzFeed News by email. “We recognized an opportunity to reach them where they already were with information that was potentially relevant to them.”

Facebook keeps the FDA updated on the types of ads that pharmaceutical companies can buy, according to a Facebook spokesperson. But clients, not Facebook employees, are in charge of ensuring that their ads obey regulations, Salowski said.

Beyond Bayer, some companies promote their products on Facebook pages — some obviously branded, others less so. Allergan does this for dry-eye disease medication and birth control, and AstraZeneca has a page for cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Allergan&039;s sponsored Facebook page for its dry-eye disease drug.

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One unique feature of Facebook — and social media at large — is the ability to leave comments. Commenting can help people feel more attached to a brand and bring their friends into the conversation. But, as Mack pointed out, horror stories about bad side effects or endorsements of drugs for unapproved conditions could be nightmares for pharmaceutical companies. Salowski said that Facebook lets brands turn off comments on posts and pages.

Liking a brand&039;s Facebook page also potentially increases the chances that your friends will see it or related ads in their feeds. That feature could lead to inadvertent privacy violations if, say, you don’t want people to know you’re “liking” antidepressants. At the same time, Facebook allows people to adjust their settings so that friends won’t see ads based on their page likes.

Tweets, which are even shorter than Facebook posts, pose their own challenges. Last month, the FDA said it intends to study if it’s appropriate for a promotional tweet for a prescription drug to include a link to side effect information. It’s the latest chapter in the agency’s slow adjustment to advertising in a 140-character world. In 2014, it put out draft guidance for how pharmaceutical companies could use social media, but didn’t explicitly address whether links to information about risks were allowed.

Viral, targeted ads aren’t inherently dangerous, said Ameet Sarpatwari, an instructor at Harvard Medical School who studies pharmaceutical marketing. But he’d like to see social media companies make clear the potential dangers of medical products.

For example, he suggested, Twitter could label drug advertisements as such, instead of just “Promoted Tweets.” He also endorses links to side effect information, accompanied by language that underlines their importance, like “read about the risks here” (rather than a neutral phrase like “click here to learn more”). And he wants the platforms to allow researchers to study whether these steps are effective.

Sarapatwari’s concerns about social media ads reflect broader concerns about direct-to-consumer drug ads, which are only allowed in the United States and New Zealand. They can be incorrect or one-sided, so “what you get is a continual influx of information about how these products are going to be better and you should take them,” he said.

And on social media, he said, hype can go viral.

“We want to facilitate the flow of information,” he said. “But we don’t want to also allow something that is true, but misleading, to be able to influence decision-making on something of such a magnitude that it can impact health.”

LINK: Big Pharma Is Sponsoring A Flu Map On The Weather Channel

LINK: What Our Tweets And Google Searches Say About Our Health

Quelle: <a href="Big Pharma Is Coming For Your Facebook And Twitter Feeds“>BuzzFeed

Uber Can Now Find Your Friends Without Needing An Address From You

Uber is announcing two new features today: Now, instead of entering an address, you can select a friend&#039;s name from your contact list, and your driver will take you wherever your friend is. And along the way, you can Snapchat your friend information about your ride.

How it works: First, you have to give Uber access to your contacts; then you&039;d enter a friend&039;s name as the destination. Uber will ping that friend, asking to access the GPS on their phone to confirm the destination, and once they accept, you&039;ll be on your way.

Important note: Uber won&039;t follow the friend as they move around. One they confirm their location, it&039;s a static destination. The friend you set as your destination also has to answer Uber within 30 minutes.

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The company told BuzzFeed News that it hopes to help passengers eliminate the back-and-forth texting about the exact address of a meeting place.

And the Snapchat collaboration is meant to make the journey more fun for riders, according to Uber.

While you&039;re riding, you&039;ll be able to send your friends snaps right from the Uber app. You can choose from one of three filters: your estimated time of arrival, ride type (Uber Pool, UberX, Uber Black, UberXL), or a “mystery filter,” which will surprise riders with either a trophy cup saying “Five Star Rider,” a daytime/nighttime filter, or a steering wheel. If you&039;re feeling ambitious, you can use these filters alongside other Snapchat filters like the dog face.

When asked about sharing sensitive information like location on Snapchat, Uber said it&039;s disclosing no personal data beyond what&039;s required for the filter — ETA, vehicle type, and destination.

The ride-hail company has collaborations with Yelp, the public transportation app Transit, and FourSquare in the works.

These additions will augment the Uber Feed, a feature introduced in Uber&039;s latest app update.

Quelle: <a href="Uber Can Now Find Your Friends Without Needing An Address From You“>BuzzFeed

Here's What The White House Thinks We Should Do About Automation

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The Obama administration today released a report on the role automation and artificial intelligence will play in the future of the US economy — namely, what will happen to workers as more and more jobs are automated out of existence. It&#039;s a follow-up to a previous report, &039;Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence&039;, that was released by the administration in October.

This new report advocates for two policies the administration has pushed for consistently throughout Obama&039;s presidency: More investment in STEM education, and a stronger social safety net. The former means making sure training for high-skill jobs starts in early childhood and continues throughout college and beyond; the latter means strengthening unemployment insurance, introducing wage insurance, and modernizing tax policy in order to protect the low-skilled workers who are most likely to lose their source of income as a result of automation.

But what&039;s new in this report, according to Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman, is the focus on the benefits artificial intelligence could bring to high-skilled workers. Per the report:

AI technology itself has opened up new markets and new opportunities for progress in critical areas such as health, education, energy, economic inclusion, social welfare, transportation, and the environment. Substantial innovation in AI, robotics, and related technology areas has taken place over the last decade, but the United States will need a much faster pace of innovation in these areas to significantly advance productivity growth going forward.

The report offers as examples of areas where investment in AI could be particularly useful is in building a defense system against cyberattacks, as well as in detecting fraud in the financial industry.

But, the report goes on to say, any investment in technology or growth in the AI industry will have to be accompanied by an increase in diversity of the workforce that&039;s building it. Currently, “the lack of gender and racial diversity in the AI-specific workforce mirrors the significant and problematic lack of diversity in the technology industry and the field of computer science more generally.” That&039;s a problem for a number of reasons, including that more diversity generally means better problem-solving and faster rates of innovation, the report says.

Another problem in AI that has to be solved is algorithmic bias, which, according to this report, is already a risk in the credit and insurance industries, as well as in recruiting. The report warns that the use of algorithms in the hiring process, for example, could “unfairly exclude new potential talent.”

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What The White House Thinks We Should Do About Automation“>BuzzFeed