Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues
This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the properties offered on the platform can afford to keep them without renting then out full time, since it's supposed to be their primary home.<p>In reality, Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with added facilitation of discrimination, normalisation of the charging of extra fees such as for "cleaning" (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?), rating obfuscation and a huge negative impact on local rental prices with landlords assembling empires of dozens of Airbnb properties. The fact Airbnb were so tone deaf to all this, asking the public to offset the losses made by landlords in times like these is really incredible.