There's a huge difference between me building a swing for my own use, and me building a swing that paying guests could use. They are held to vastly different levels of accountability, despite both of them being built by a homeowner.

This is exactly the point. People on AirBNB rent out their houses that they built and maintain for their own use to you the guest. That means that you get the level of construction and associated accountabilty related to private individuals, not to professional operators. It is also one of the reasons you are probably better of in a hotel if safety is a prime consideration when you're traveling. The upsides of AirBNB stays are related to interaction, living like the locals do and a less thirteen-in-a-dozen experience, the upside is definitely not that the place you will be staying in is safer or better grade when it comes to reliability than your average old home, especially not when it is a quaint old cottage in some backwater.

Then there needs to be a huge disclaimer about safety liability and people need to be given a checklist of safety items to inspect upon their arrival. There should also be a guarantee of a full refund and/or alternative accommodations if the host fails the checklist. If you really want to blame the customer and put the burden on them for their own safety, make them aware of it. The problem is that informing the consumer of all the risks is going to be less profitable because people may second guess if it's right for them, and the checklist makes AirBnB look like a lot more work.

Either the homeowner needs to see a huge disclaimer and accept liability when they place a property, or the consumer needs to see a huge disclaimer and accept liability when they rent a place, or AirBnB needs to assume responsibility and liability for both. You can't just leave it a grey area where it automatically defaults to the consumer being liable for everything, so that the homeowner and AirBnB can maximize profit while assuming zero risk.

I'm all for the consumers seeing a huge disclaimer. That seems entirely fair and something that AirBNB should probably really do.

I think a lot of your posts make you out to be an AirBnB apologist, but looking over all of them, I don't think that is the impression you're trying to make.

Funny, I positively detest AirBNB.

"Swings installed by homeowners are usually held to a different standard and tree swings should be considered dangerous until personally inspected before use."

Held to a different standard by whom? Definitely not by courts.

How are the tenants supposed to know that?

Common sense?

Common sense tells me that people should take some extra care with their homemade constructions before turning it into part of a business venture.

Maybe common sense isn't such a good guide, though.

People renting out their homes on AirBNB do not normally see it as a business venture. They usually do not register as a business and they usually do not follow the regulations set for the hospitality business (in fact, they try what they can to avoid those regulations, associated costs and taxes).

Which is the point: the "sharing economy" encourages service provision by amateurs without regulation, oversight, formal accountability, or adequate backup.

It looks like a win because it's cheaper, but that's only true until something goes badly wrong.

Oversight and regulation aren't always a bad thing. Sometimes they prevent avoidable accidents.

> Which is the point: the "sharing economy" encourages service provision by amateurs without regulation, oversight, formal accountability, or adequate backup.

Yes.

> It looks like a win because it's cheaper, but that's only true until something goes badly wrong.

It isn't a win in my opinion, for many reasons. It violates all kinds of social contracts.

> Oversight and regulation aren't always a bad thing.

Agreed.

> Sometimes they prevent avoidable accidents.

That's a tricky one. I suspect this particular tree-swing would have killed someone, it's a coincidence that it had to be an AirBNB guest so even if this particular person may not have died the accident itself would have probably happened anyway sooner or later. Which is sort of the root of my whole argument about this being a tragedy rather than an issue of liability.

It's common sense that if you're providing a service for money, that's a business.

Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong about what people usually think. It's just an argument that people are not being sensible about it.