Again, Airbnb didn’t destroy her home. Are you under the impression that someone from Airbnb itself was the one staying at her house?

Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug!

You’re basically defining what you want the responsibilities of Airbnb’s service to be and then faulting them according to those responsibilities. But those are not Airbnb’s responsibilities. Again, Airbnb doesn’t claim to prevent things like this, therefore it’s not a bug.

If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security

No they don’t. There will be business consequences for not doing so, but they don’t have to. They can define their service to be whatever they want it to be. As it currently stands, their service is not meant to prevent this from happening.

They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together.

This came through loud and clear the first time you patronizingly said it.

"You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms."

No one thinks anyone from Airbnb blew up her home, dude. I'm not paid well enough to know if this meets the standard of tortious negligence. Yet it was negligence. Had she not used the service, she'd be fine now.

And, I mean, if you've got such a boner for the business side of this, in what universe can you trust a service like Airbnb now? You can't vet people until you're locked in, you have no recourse if you get screwed. This is a business problem, without the morality of hey, it's a good idea not to bring harm into people's lives.

You can tell them your name, and they can look you up on FB if need be to do a background check. It is false to say that AirBNB does not allow hosts to communicate with guests, and it is fully possible for hosts to check up on the background of their guests.

And you’ve just illustrated my point perfectly: if she hadn’t used the service, she would be fine now. But she used the service of her own volition; nobody forced her to; and she made the decision herself. Airbnb might have made the gun the guys used to trash her apartment with, but Airbnb isn’t the one that fired it: she pulled the trigger. Again, the people who trashed her apartment committed the crime here, though.

This is a business problem

I never said it wasn’t a business problem—that’s exactly what it is. But it’s not an issue of morality.

in what universe can you trust a service like Airbnb now?

I would never in a million years use Airbnb. Why would I leave a complete stranger alone in my house so that they could trash it and go through my things? You realize how insane that is, when evaluated outside the reality distortion field of the startup craze we’re in right now, right?

I think the genesis for your arguments is your desire to live in a world where you can trust a service like Airbnb. But if you just think about it for five seconds you realize anyone could do this and Airbnb in no way prevents it from happening. Just because Y Combinator funded it doesn’t mean it’s magical.

It doesn't? jk. But seriously, if you mention airbnb to an average person, say anyone in my family on the east coast they haven't heard of it. So, airbnb isn't even big enough to have the problems craigslist has had with scams...but, this is just the start.

Once airbnb gets bigger there will be more of these stories. Someone will build up a rating by renting a few low priced places and then just completely rob a more expensive place.

I guess they should have seen this coming but now it's time to accept they are getting big enough where the common criminal will look to exploit the service. "You mean I just rent a few places and then some rich person will give me the keys to their place and I can take whatever I want? Awesome!"

I mean it's terrible, but I think we can all imagine it's possible someone using airbnb to rent a room in their home getting killed by the renter.

The first "bug" arises from the fact that AirBnB is much like a pay-for-play dating service, with all of the flaws of that business model. They have to control communication between the parties to keep from being cut out of the revenue loop... which means that they indisputably need to accept some responsibility for conducting the due diligence that they forbid their users to conduct. That's expensive and risky at best, but if they don't step up to the responsibility -- which they don't -- then they don't deserve to succeed. A stolen credit card should not be enough to gain access to someone's home for a week. Cases like this provide the necessary publicity to call attention to the unfair bargain they offer hosts.

The second 'bug' was the almost unbelievable naivete on the part of the host. She was, or should have been, aware of the terms of AirBnB's service and the limitations of their liability, because she would have had to agree to those terms and limitations when she signed up. It shouldn't take a law degree to understand that AirBnB's terms are ridiculously inadequate when situations like this arise. The idea of turning over the keys to your home to someone you've never met, based on the inadequate assurances and warranties offered by AirBnB, sinks to the level of incompetence IMHO. Not everyone will agree, but come on... if what she did isn't "asking for it," then there's no such thing as "asking for it."

To me, it seems clear that the responsibility for allowing this incident to happen falls on the host's shoulders... but at the same time, AirBnB should not be lauded for trying to play it both ways. If they're going to do everything they can to prevent hosts and renters from doing ordinary due diligence on each other, then they also need to stand behind their decisionmaking process when they approve a renter. I think a mandatory insurance policy has got to be part of the answer, just as common sense on the host's part is also a requirement.

I don’t dispute any of these things—my only real point was that it’s completely off-base to call Airbnb immoral for not compensating the woman.