September 12, 2016
Airbnb has a racism problem—and will have to make dramatic changes to shake it off. Researchers from Harvard Business School have found that people with names that sound African-American are 16 percent less likely to get a positive response to a room request than people with white-sounding names. When those results were first published last year, Airbnb’s head of diversity, David King, said that the company faced “significant challenges” to overcome the issue. Airbnb has now published a report outlining its plans to tackle discrimination. The plan was written by Laura Murphy, a civil rights lawyer who has worked at the American Civil Liberties Union. Its main message: that the company is establishing “a permanent, full-time team of engineers, data scientists, researchers and designers whose sole purpose is to advance belonging and inclusion and to root out bias.” In particular, the report suggests that the company will experiment with reducing the prominence of guest photos during the booking process, encourage adoption of its Instant Book service, and find accommodations for anyone who has been discriminated against. At the time of writing, Airbnb had not responded to questions about further measures the team might take. The question is: will its interventions be enough?…
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602355/airbnb-isnt-really-confronting-its-racism-problem/
Menu