Meet the Airbnb police....

Sure doesn't look to me like much is happening in the bedrooms of this group of Chubbies.

I believe I heard of Airbnb Secrets before....

I don't know much about that site or what is offered, but my advice all along to hosts has been that it's better,and standard, to put in the footwork yourself to build your business, and/or to make use of the plentiful resources in the host community to do so, rather than to pay consultants of various sorts.

The many host communities, of which this forum is but one part, offer a wealth of advice and information all for free. Hosts just need to put in the time to get their education from these communities.

I also believe that those who aren't able to use existing resources and their own work to learn how to be hosts, may not be meant to be hosts.

As well, I think it's clear to most of us who've been hosting for a while, that there are now too many hosts. Almost anywhere you go, there are too many hosts. Airbnb is profiting (whether intentionally or not) from this surplus of hosts, as it offers a better opportunity to threaten hosts to get better ratings, to remove freedoms from hosts, to increase host fees, to water down host's cancellation policies, and to partially expropriate hosts' own property for its own purposes by pushing instant book on hosts.

Parasitic industries are also arising to take advantage of the surplus in another way.

The surplus of hosts results in a competitive situation in many regions, where hosts are so desperate to get a leg up on the other guy, that perhaps they are willing to pay someone to teach them "secrets" in the hopes that they can do this. So these consultants are sometimes profiting on other's desperation. That's a unique form of parasitism, I'd say.



Parasites

And now there are private investigators in San Francisco, spying on Airbnb guests:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-27/prying-eyes-are-watching-airbnb-customers-as-tenants-fight-back

I may have clashed with Dany boy once on the old forum. At least with a similar guy. I believe he is fishing for clients on the community center sometimes- I wrote on one of the first threads about ranking problems and still get notifications on that. After a new complaint or two about not enough guests, one of these guys shows up and sells advice.
For the other type: I wonder if they have an investigation licence like a private detective? Otherwise it would be illegal to collect private data. Besides, will their "eviddnce" hold in court? I'd guess you still need a notary to take the screenshots.

It might be worthwhile now to start classing a variety of informal organizations as policing groups, if they actually start to do what amounts to policing and singling out individual hosts, as it was discovered this group is unethically doing

www.facebook.com/neighboursnotstrangers/?hc_location=ufi

Some believe that the woman responsible for this page is the woman interviewed for this article:

www.smh.com.au/nsw/irritation-index-will-sydney-pull-up-the-welcome-mat-to-tourists-20170720-gxexsl.html

Take a look at their FB page and see how they are singling out one Australian host there. It appears they are engaging in slander or defamation, referring to a hosts' listings as "breaking the law" when this isn't true. Accusing her of "lying" when that isn't true.

Who is the host they are attacking? Our own louise

Who ventured forth to be interviewed by a newspaper here:

www.smh.com.au/nsw/airbnb-to-get-green-light-in-nsw-report-says-20161015-gs31t1.html

These silly folks picked on the wrooooong host. Louise is the butt-kicker par excellence.





After Louise threatened to sue them for defamation, they deleted that post and put up a new one, where they blurred her face. Why bother to blur her face when making no secret whom they're talking about?