This is the creepiest thing I've ever heard. She's had her personal space and privacy violated in a terrible way, and you're passing around her contact details? Did you ask her permission?

I passed her contact information to the one guy that I think can keep his head cool enough to solve this in a way that is beneficial to her. You may disagree with that but that's fine with me.

> She mentioned in both blog posts that she is trying to keep her personal details private.

Yes, and I helped her doing just that by pointing out which parts of her blog allow people to figure out who she is.

Maybe you think you are doing the right thing - but think about this from EJ's perspective: A stranger contacts her and points out all the ways she can be identified from her blog... he then passes her contact details on to an investor in Airbnb. He goes on hacker news and comments about how easy it was to identify her.

If I was in her position, feeling vulnerable and suspicious, I'd start to wonder whether your "helpful advice" was in fact a veiled suggestion that she should take down her blog post, or face the risk of being publicly identified and humiliated.

Considering that EJ was already in communication with AirBnB customer service and CEO, and has been publicly asking for more attention from AirBnB, she wouldn't be too surprised that another one of the founding leaders would get involved.

PG has a vested interest here -- he's an investor, not a neutral party.

Hearing both sides of the story is crucial in that, as long as he's hearing just one side he probably should not be commenting on this.

The alternative is that he will let AirBNB solve this by themselves, based on the data available so far I think that will not work out well.

Based on the data so far, many people would agree that EJ seem spooked by he fast moving world of innovative startups, social networking, and venture capitalism. Based on the fact that she has been saying how terrified she's been to release even the basic info about the situation yet didn't have the foresight to remove past entries from her blog, I'd say it is also safe to say that she is naive about the state of privacy in the online world.

So you take it upon yourself to not only track her down, but give her personal details to someone with a financial stake in what has been described as a billion dollar hyperstartup.

Think about that, from her perspective and from the perspective of her sympathizers.

We saw yesterday how she interpreted what may have been the sincerest of emails by a cofounder to get coffee as a calculated uncaring attempt to quiet her.

And now she receives correspondence from someone with no apparent connection to airbnb who, btw, sent her info to a well known backer of a billion dollar company.

What the hell do you think she'll do? Spend an hour siting on whatever couch she has managed to find for temp residence and read yours and pg's HN profiles and threads and see that you and pg are indeed standup guys??

Look at her past behavior She has already insinuated that airbnb has tried to overtly intimidate her, a tactic, that until yesterday, very few of HN readers would have thought possible of the savvy founders of airbnb.

And now you have faith that this reluctant participant in the ycombinator world will give you the full benefit of the doubt and take the time to learn from secon hand sources that you're not some creep?

When journalists new to this whole debacle come across this thread, how much benefit of the doubt do you think you'll receive?

Do you think that there's a way to fit in "Some hackernews user tracks down fearful airbnb victim and gives her contact info to airbnb backer" AND "airbnb backer had proven track recor of bring unbiased and kindly" into 140 characters.

People thought EJ was naive. I think you've set a new bar.

A better way would have been to pass PG's details to her.

The victim shouldn't have to go around knocking on doors to get help. Sometimes it's nice if the help comes to victim on its own volition.

Did you do it with her permission?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822877

I figured PG needs to hear both sides of this story and needs to be able to ask questions to get to the bottom of this.

If he doesn't want to get involved at that level I understand, but then it probably would be better if he didn't comment on the matter at all, lest this somehow ends up reflecting bad on YC.

Oh, wow. I don't think you could be more wrong. From her point of view, PG is a going to come accross as a concerned airbnb investor. She is already upset about brian chesky complaining that this incident will affect his ability to raise money for the company which she mentioned in the blog post. A phone call from PG could be like adding petrol to fire, even if he is genuine and wants to help.

What this lady needs is to have one point of interaction with a single person at Airbnb. That person needs the ability to make decisions about financial assistance etc, so preferably one of the founders.

Wow, that is some crazy talk. Given that PG sees her as the enemy and his friends at Airbnb the good guys beyond reproach he should not be contacting her. He has absolutely no business doing so. Also, unless she asked for it, it was a massive privacy violation to release that information to a third party. Outrageous. What is he going to do now? Hire thugs to intimidate her? His only connection here is he is a freaking major investor/sponsor of the company that has displayed massive negligence, cover up, and intimidation of the victim. Nothing whatsoever good or proper can come from you, whoever you are, violating her privacy in this way.

As far as the rest of your screed where you suggest she needs to be on trial and provide proof of damage with photos etc, wow, what a psycho douchbag move. Yes, you are a psycho. Please sue me for libel, I would love to go over this claim in court and call attention to your post above in the months leading up to the case. So Jacques, are you the lawyer or PR rep for bnb, or are you an investor? Why do you have her private contact information? Your position that you have explained here is utterly deplorable and insane and you are revealing yourself to be a dangerous person and menace to society.

Wow, that is some crazy talk.

That you don't see a problem with passing on her personal details onto an investor is somewhat disturbing. It's obvious you have an affection for PG, I've read many of his essays, he's a smart guy who has what I'd classify as a mini god complex. But that's irrelevant and so is his intellectual abilities. What is relevant is his very close association with AirBnB.

Honestly, if he HAD to choose between her well being OR AirBnB's, who do you think he would choose?

Visual proof has already been obtained by the police. Why does the victim have to provide photos to the general public?

For that matter, why does she have to "dump her email cache"?

Are we putting her on trial on HN?

Obviously not, maybe you should re-read that sentence in context.

Pictures of the extent of the damage would go a long way towards explaining why she feels the way she does in a way that words will never be able to.

For that matter, I think you've got some nerve tracking her down, handing her contact details over to an Airbnb investor and claiming to be helping her to find an objective independent mediator.

AirBNB has - in my opinion - been doing the very wrong thing here for much too long and this will blow up at some point if something isn't done pronto.

Tracking her down sounds like it was real work, believe me it wasn't, and as I explained below I gave her some hints on how to make that a lot harder than it was last night.

I figure that if by Monday this hasn't been resolved to everybody's satisfaction that it could get really ugly with losers all around, and EJ who has already lost more than anybody should go through still stands to lose the most. Once lawyers get involved all bets are off.

If you don't trust Paul to be objective when given the opportunity then that's your call.

EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch.

It's one thing for AirBnB to say "hey, buyer beware – you know the risks". (In fact, that's a perfectly valid response, albeit not a great business move.) But it's an entirely different thing to dispute the victim's story.

Now we're in a situation where someone is not telling the truth. On one side, you have a group of people with a lot of money and time invested into a business. On the other side, you have an extremely sympathetic victim of a crime. And somewhere in the middle is the fact that these kinds of unfortunate eventualities should have been obvious to both AirBnB and to their users.

I don't think that's factually correct. I believe she says communication stopped after the 30th of June.

pg says this, "I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff, and do whatever else she wanted."

I suspect they may have said that on June 30th. And then they went dark. It seems no one at AirBnB has actually said they made contact with EJ during the month of July at all, until the night before her second blog post on this incident.

To me it sounds like it may not have been malicious on AirBnBs part, but rather a dropped ball. Someone probably had tons of other work on their plate and didn't follow-up with her. After a week forget about it. Until her first blog entry went up...

Lots of people (including the parent and grandparent post here) have been treating this as a 'cutoff'. That's how EJ felt. That feeling comes across in how she chose to describe everything, but the real message she's sending is that she stopped liking the communication after June 30th, not that it ended.

My theory is that's because some initially empathetic support people were replaced with a 'just-the-facts' cofounder. Let's say he's trying to help by concentrating on the tangibles – do you have a place to stay? ok. is the perp caught? ok. will you call if you need anything? ok. is there any way we can twist this ending for you so you wrap things up on your blog more positively so people know AirBnb helped? er...

That style of communication could rub a still-stressed victim the wrong way. And a request like the last one could have been intended as a way of asking, "how do we help you so much that you can balance the fear and anger of your June 29th post with something better in an update?"... but instead be misinterpreted as untoward pressure.

That's just a theory, but it's a better theory than the one that AirBnb are jerks, or the false idea (based on various misreadings of EJ) that no offer of financial support was made and no communication happened for weeks. EJ's own posts refute those ideas.

When dealing with contentious, emotionally-charged situations, give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt.

Now, if they tried to wash their hands by handing it over to their lawyer to "solve", that might be different, but still reprehensible.

If it turns out they attached a bunch of conditions to their offer (for instance: you have to remove your blog posts or you have to write something positive) then they might as well not have made these 'offers'.

An offer of help should be unconditional. And from EJs point of view being muzzled would obviously be unacceptable.

That's pure speculation on my part, but it is one interpretation that would be consistent with what everybody has said so far with nobody having told a falsehood.

I know we're posting on the HN temple of the YC church, so I always expect a little bit of fanboyism in attitudes towards PG, but you've really gone off the deep end if you think that in this situation Graham is anything but just another investor.

Yes, PG is an investor (or, more accurately, YC is an investor), but I've seen enough of Paul to know that he's more than 'just another investor' and if it turns out I'm wrong about that I'll be most surprised, I have not seen any evidence to date that PG does wrong by anybody when he has all the facts.

And that last bit is where I think the problem lies.

Calling YC a church and HN a temple is really ridiculous.

It's okay to connect her to Paul because...

- he's smarter than a typical investor? - he's more involved than a typical investor? - he's more wise than a typical investor?

If anything, PG and YC are much less involved than a typical investor (VC) when the company is at this stage. No board seat (for starters. But also he's invested in 100+ companies over the last few years. The other VCs involved here focus all their time on the 3-5 investments they have made over this period.

So I guess I just don't see the point. As far as I can think, either you're saying he's different because he's way better, which may be true but not fair to assume all would know or agree (see the church/temple posts above), or because YC's investment model is different, which to me would be true but with the opposite implication.

Both EJ and Paul stand to gain from resolving this situation quickly and orderly.

And both could lose considerably if this is allowed to drag on much longer and/or hits the mainstream press.

This honestly sounds borderline threatening. But judging from your recent actions, I don't expect you to take care with how things are said.

So, in this situation, Paul Graham is definitely not "just another investor" - he's a mentor too.

We believe you when you say your intentions were good, but that doesn't really excuse the actions.

What made you decide to do so and did you ask her for permission to pass on her details to a third party?

Maybe.

> What made you decide to do so and did you ask her for permission to pass on her details to a third party?

I think that PG is a very smart guy and I have some personal reasons to believe that PG has his heart very much in the right place when it comes to things that are this personal. I can not go in to details there, you'll have to trust me on that one.

I did not ask for her permission, but I think that her information is in very trusted hands with Paul and I am 100% sure that he would never ever abuse it.

> I did not ask for her permission

Jacques, that is not cool. Extremely, extremely not cool. Did you at least tell her you'd done it? Ask for forgiveness? What did she say? (Edit: downthread, jacquesm reports, "I have apologized to her that I did not seek her consent first, based on the note I received afterwards it seems that she is ok with it, but that does not diminish my mistake and I should be more careful with stuff like that.")

Look at it from her perspective. You passed the contact information of a homeless victim of a serious crime to a powerful, world-famous venture capitalist who has a billion-dollar incentive to shut her up. Against her will. If this was a movie plot, we wouldn't see any more blog posts from her, ever again.

Wow, how exactly is that your decision to make?

With what I know about PG and the situation as it has been presented to date if he gets involved he will resolve it, if he does not then it will quite probably blow up with as the only winners the lawyers.

Note that technically EJ is not entitled to any compensation, but morally she definitely is.

Someone that can influence AirBNB to do the right thing here and that has a very good idea on what the public opinion on this thing will do to AirBNB when - not if - it will hit the mainstream is what's called for.

Judging by the speed with which HN has turned from 'gung ho pro AirBNB' to ripping it to shreds I think that there is evidence enough that the public opinion will not be favorable to AirBNB and that PG is well aware of this.

Jesus I wish these self-important fucks would stop bragging about how fucking great they are. Actually, just stop talking, all of you. Shut up, and do some fucking work.

Also, take your language back to 4chan whence you came.

[1] Other than offering pitty.

This is not a movie. This is not a case of a burning house and you're the only one in the vicinity to rush into and rescue a child stuck in his room. In fact, if there is a burning house and the firefighters have already arrived, your well intentioned actions may put their lives at risk

Not all "good" actions remain "good" in every context.

1. The expectations of everyone involved. Does EJ have an expectation of privacy? Could she be expecting to keep her personal life, as much as possible, separate from the whole flap on the internet? Does AirBnB have an expectation of handling this without PG's assistance? Does PG have an expectation of not being dragged into a situation in which he could have involved himself if he so wished? (I think it's pretty clear at this point what my opinion of jacques' actions here is.)

2. All of the possible outcomes, and the likelihood of each one. Is it possible that tracking down someone's contact information -- using information gleaned from their blog -- will emotionally harm them in a situation that has already made them feel extremely vulnerable? Is it possible that there are currently unknown legal complications now, and that PG cannot become involved? Is it possible that attempting to involve him could make the situation even more complicated?

3. Whether or not the interference is even needed. Look, EJ has managed to get her story into the print edition of the Financial Times. It's spreading like wildfire online. I think it's very clear that she can handle herself. And, if AirBnB can't handle themselves, with all the money they recently raised and all of the resources they have at their disposal (monetary and advisory and otherwise), then they have no business being in business.

I've interfered in others' lives and situations on numerous occasions. I've seen the results of my actions go sideways. I've put more and more effort into understanding and considering a situation before leaping in. I've, finally, more recently, resolved to quit screwing around in other people's situations as much as possible.

Perhaps putting his internet detective skills to work only to let the woman know that her identity was at risk would have been a smart thing to do. Passing her contact information on to a third party -- regardless of who that party is or why -- without either her permission or that third party's permission, was a rookie mistake. It might have been well-meaning, but it was still a mistake.

The guy getting unfairly downvoted up above is exactly right: we should all be shutting the hell up and getting some fucking work done. (Myself included.)

PG dragged himself in to it by standing up for AirBNB's actions in a public forum.

He probably should not have done that.

> Passing her contact information on to a third party -- regardless of who that party is or why -- without either her permission or that third party's permission, was a rookie mistake. It might have been well-meaning, but it was still a mistake.

Agreed, and I have apologized to her that I did not seek her consent first, based on the note I received afterwards it seems that she is ok with it, but that does not diminish my mistake and I should be more careful with stuff like that.

First, PG has a financial interest in keeping the company growing strong.

Second and most importantly, if PG intervenes here against the will of other investors, they may not want to invest in future companies where PG is a shareholder. So it is vastly in PG's interest to not act on the contact info you gave him.

Overall, all you did was seriously creep out a vulnerable lady.

I figure PG not talking to all parties is what caused the bigger mess.

> You're telling us to calm down, to not be so brash, but you should have asked for her permission.

I don't like witch hunts.

AirBNB has obviously done a lot of things wrong here but I think they can still recover from this if it gets handled 100% good from now on forward.

I agree, I should have asked for her permission, it never crossed my mind because I feel that it was the right thing to do, and because since PG is an investor he might as well have that information, it's not like he is an outsider to this whole affair, but he is uniquely positioned to see both sides of the story.

But I hope you see how you have potentially mucked things up, and that if this doesn't add more fuel to the fire it's only because all the interested parties are enjoying their weekend. I admire your idealism but there are way too many moving parts and potential for miscommunication for someone to make an act of intervention based on his personal faith in one of the investors involved

I would be surprised if these companies have not offered the support of their PR teams to help Airbnb dig themselves out of this hole.

PG to me is the 'father' of all these start-ups, and as I wrote I have personal reasons to believe that he is exactly the right guy for this.

What is needed most at this moment in time is someone with a capacity for empathy and some adult supervision.

PR can come afterwards, my own view of PR is that is mostly about putting something bad in as favorable light as possible, right now there are two parties that simply need some help and some mediation.

Yes, PR people are professionals whose jobs are to make something look good; companies don't hire PR pros to rip the company.

So yes, the cynical take is that PR will spin bad things into a positive light...but which major stakeholder of a company --including its founders -- wouldn't? Even when a founder or lead developer of a large company issues a mea culpa that starts with "We screwed up...", there has still been a calculation made that such an admittance is good public relations and relatively free of legal liability.

Your implication may be that PR pros are more likely to have less of a conscience, and since they aren't hard-working developers and builders like the rest of us, they are more likely to lie with a smile...

I can't point to any empirical evidence that they do or don't, and I predict neither can you. But what you did, and what the coffee-drinking co-founder reportedly did (from EJ's perspective), make a very strong case for the importance of a competent PR person.

Quite simply, that competent PR person is the overseer of what has been said so far by the company, by the plaintiff, by the lawyers, and by the media. He or she, ideally, when queried by any of these parties, will answer such queries honestly with what he knows has been previously stated and/or promised by the other party, or will say "I don't know that, let me ask [x,y,z] and I will get back to you."

I understand how that's not a good enough decisive answer for anyone here, but that's the limits of human communication when dozens of stakeholders are involved. Some things are delayed because due diligence requires it...such is the complexity of life.

So who knows what really went on in the mind of the co-founder when he asked EJ to coffee. But according to her, we might assume that he himself assumed that EJ was properly comforted enough to send her a get-down-to-business email. She apparently was not. How could such a drastic misunderstanding happen when a co-founder, in your perfect world, is ostensibly the end-all point of proper decision and action?

To compound the problem, Brian Chesky writes the prototypical PR statement that looks downright shady in retrospect after EJ swiftly responds with a dramatic blog post that also accuses someone at airbnb of attempting to silence her blog.

Let's give Chesky the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know or condone such a request. Well, some well-intended white (from the investors' perspective) or black (from many other people's perspective) knight from airbnb apparently did so.

On top of all of that, EJ accuses airbnb of cold shouldering her until the blog blowup at HN. Hell, I don't remember the exact timeline, but I doubt even most of the avid participants in this thread do...certainly none of the newcomers won't bother sketching out a flowchart for themselves.

Boy, having one competent person be the sole point of contact -- even just a smooth-talking PR underling -- sure sounds good right now. Even if we give the co-founders the benefit of the doubt of being as upfront and willing to help as possible, the apparent innocent miscommunications have made many people, including MA, very jaded.

And now you've thrown yourself into the mix, in the belief that this is all caused by the immature incompetent behavior of the airbnb executive team (boy, that's a great message to future airbnb investors) and failed PR...don't you think it's a wee bit ironic to make your "I-tracked-her-down-and-gave-her-info-to-PG-because-I-can't-see-PG-screwing-this-up" comment in a HN thread based on a TechCrunch post in which a self-professed fan of airbnb accuses PG of outright lying?

If providing fodder for another top-voted HN thread that accuses airbnb of a coverup isn't a screw-up, then, well...

In any case, you might be a well-intentioned, smart developer and entrepreneur. But you've made mistakes that I hope even an undergrad in communications wouldn't have. I hate to be the one speaking out for PR professionals, but for godssake, hire one in your next large-scale venture.

Consider that:

- the basis of your very questionable action [1] is precisely the type of taking-shortcuts-due-to-x-factor reasoning that this event is all about.

- the 'perceived cost' of your asking EJ "May I forward your contact info to a man who I fully trust and believe well positioned to address this to all parties' satisfaction?" was apparently deemed [2] to be excessive in the same way the simple prominent and bold statement "AirBnB takes NO responsibilities for actions of either providers or renters".

[1]: forwarding identity to PG.

[2]: you seem like a very smart guy. this can not have been an omission.

[edit: fix notes]

> : forwarding identity to PG. : you seem like a very smart guy. this can not have been an omission.

All I passed was her email address and her first name, both of which were very easily found*, and I told her exactly how those were obtained.

If you think that I did that purposefully bypassing her permission then I can simply respond with saying that that is not the case, you can believe whatever you wish.

> the thought that she would object never crossed my mind, my bad.

I believe you!

And here then is the point for all geeks present: Clearly even smart, informed, people make mistakes. The notion of 'buyer beware' is the ethics of hucksters, not Hackers.

She's already lost her home and her possessions, I think that to ask her to wipe out her online life as well would be a bit much.

I've given her some hints about the ways in which she could tune her postings and some other little details that will make it much harder to track her.

The companies exist because they have customers. Therefore, your statement is self-contradictory.

AirBnB gives tools to pick your guest, the first one being the track record and ratings. Was the rating of Dj Pattrson Good/Bad/Virgin?

They also have a pretty straightforward safety tips page ( http://www.airbnb.com/safety ), but not a single precaution was taken. It appears she didn't even try to call her future guest. No neighborhoods or friends warned, nothing.

AirBnB is taking all the shit for an objectively irresponsible behavior. Nobody deserve what has happened to her, it's just horrible. On the other hand, AirBnB taking all the shit for this doesn't seem fair as well. They handled the crisis in a poor manner, but the perpetrators should be the ones paying for the damages.

AirBnB aside, she doesn't seem to take some responsibility for it (the rape victim analogy), and it's just not fair or reflective of the whole picture, if you're being objective for a minute this is the simple truth. I truly hope she will recover and learn from this awful experience.

Nobody here is claiming that she is 'on trial', but when you go public with a story there will always be questions.

That is because people will align with your story and your interests if they consider you to be the party that is speaking the truth.

This is a fairly normal thing and has nothing to do with trials. You are seeing this much too black-and-white.

By now, it should be pretty clear to everyone that she is 'on trial', although perhaps not by choice. I've observed with events prior to this that anyone can start one of these public trials by posting an accusation publicly. Then that opening statement is responded to by the defendant, also publicly. At which point its 'game on' as it were.

I suspect it is a natural consequence of the desire to know by the folks involved, whether its poor EJ here or 'geohot' or Charlie Sheen. Everyone wants to know "what is right?" or "what is the real story here?" and that process that people go through and the community that participates in it, has all of the elements of a trial. Evidence is uncovered and presented, testimony is called for and presented from various people involved, pundits line up to endorse or discredit evidence and/or folks testimonies.

So there are a lot of questions. Clearly there is a lot of outrage here and elsewhere. Hopefully it will be sorted out to everyone's satisfaction, and it certainly will provide a test of AirBnB's management team.

Like many here, I share the outrage and the commensurate desire to help. I recognize that being effectively outside the event horizon (wasn't a witness, not a personal friend, not an investor, not a freelance plaintiff lawyer, etc etc) I'm limited to offering moral support.

But she did this on her personal blog! She didn't go running to the media or fan this story. The story got picked up here then exploded. That was not her choice, and it caused her privacy to be invaded again -- by folks like us trying to figure out who she is, how credible she is, what she should or shouldn't have done, how she's feeling, etc. -- all while she's still recovering from the initial episode.

If you're referring to her follow up post, don't you think she's entitled to speak up to address this discussion, given how the circumstances unfolded (again, which she never chose)?

And it worked, very well.

There you go again Jacques with your wording that is designed to raise suspicion on the crime victim and her motivations. You pass her personal identity to an investor with a billion dollar reason to silence her, you say she should show proof she was really robbed in the form of photographs on the internet of her personal private home that was already violated, and now you are implying that she went public because she is greedy and is leveraging negative publicity in a negotiation of settlement terms. Yes, you will respond to this that you are not implying any of that and, but that is bullshit. You know exactly what you are doing Jacques, it's quite clear. Jacques, I want an answer for you, what are your financial and professional relationships with YCombinator. That's two questions there.

Putting her on trial and stalking her is disgusting. Your claiming you are not doing it as you are doing it is not fooling anyone. You are a psychopath. Stop what you are doing right now.

You want to know why she went public? BECAUSE AIRBNB DID NOT KNOW THE IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE THAT THEY ALLOWED TO ROB HER HOUSE. That is legal negligence on their part, but it also created a situation where she is not safe. Not that she "feels unsafe". This has nothing to do with feelings. She IS unsafe because the people who robbed her apartment stalked her by email, manipulated her, and were still out there at large a month after the crime was discovered. Their stalking was almost but not quite as malicious as you are being right here right now with your public insinuations.

On the other hand, she had the good luck to be criminalised by people who went to all the effort of using a service to make sure the home they robbed was empty instead of chancing it on one that looked empty, to lie to her during the crime to keep from being discovered, to be gone before she returned, and to have not returned for a month afterwards.

I wonder if there are any studies indicating if she would be at statistically significantly higher risk of crime than most people now?

THE PEOPLE [AirBnB] ALLOWED TO ROB HER HOUSE.

And you accuse jacquesm of manipulative wording.

None and None. That's two answers.

Whether you'll believe me or not is another point of course.

Please tell me who she owes this responsibility to?

To the people, if she cares about public opinion.

> That is because people will align with your story and your interests if they consider you to be the party that is speaking the truth.

This summarizes it all.