Call for Airbnb to tackle what Harvard study says is discrimination

HARVARD: The home-letting company Airbnb, facing increasing complaints of racial bias, said it is planning a “comprehensive review” of how discrimination may arise on a platform that gives private citizens the opportunity to rent their homes – and pick their guests – over the internet.

A widely cited Harvard Business School study last year found “widespread discrimination” by Airbnb hosts against people with names that sounded distinctly black. Minority users who say their travel plans have been denied or cancelled because of their race have rallied under the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack, appealing to the company to rein in a practice long outlawed in traditional hotels.

Just this week, Airbnb removed a host from the platform after he sent racial epithets to a 28-year-old Nigerian woman who was trying to reserve a home in North Car- olina. The episode – and its graphic language – renewed national attention on whether the company was doing enough to root out racist users.

In a memo that Airbnb planned to send to some concerned users and organisations, the company said it would spend the next months reviewing how hosts and guests interact on the site and what it could do to ensure users are treated more fairly. Laura Murphy, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, has been brought on as adviser to lead the review. Airbnb said it expects to announce findings in early September.

“We can’t control all the biases of all of our users but we want to make clear that discrimination is against everything we stand for,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post.

In both comments to The Post and the memo, Airbnb described discrimination and unconscious bias as problems that have “plagued societies for centuries”, suggesting one company can’t eradicate them.

But academics and advocates have insisted that Airbnb plays a powerful role in enabling discrimination. And, unlike corporate hotels, Airbnb places extensive power in the hands of individuals to decide who can stay where.

The Harvard study last year argued the design of Airbnb’s platform can make it easy for people to act on those biases. Users are required to identify themselves by their real names, and personal photos make race hard to conceal. By offering these two pieces of information – a name and image – at the moment of booking, the site also makes racial clues prominent when hosts are deciding who to rent to.

“The onus is on Airbnb to make changes,” said Michael Luca, one of the researchers involved in the Harvard study, who has also discussed potential solutions with the company. “The bottom line is that the design of platforms dictates the decisions that people make on them. Even if there’s implicit bias, they have an enormous amount of ability to change the extent of discrimination on the platform.”

Luca commended the company for taking steps to review the problem. – Washington Post