It’s really sad. Because I made my experience public on their forums, I have received threats and hate email/texts from the rapist’s supporters, but additionally I have received messages from those who have been similarly affected. Raped, tried reporting to CS, got nothing, and then had their lives threatened by the rapist because he got notified by CS of a report having been made on him, rapist keeps profile, woman is shunned and humiliated depending on rapist’s public reputation in the community. (I know rape happens to both men and women, I only say “women” here because I’ve only been contacted by other women with their experiences.)

In my personal experience of being raped by a couchsurfing host and reporting it to Couchsurfing’s MDST, they temporarily removed his reference on my page. Within hours, it was back with more vicious words written to claim that my “allegations were false” and MDST responded to me that it was a he-said she-said situation so they would disregard the case.

I talked to two other women who were harassed by the same man (but not raped). They were too scared to report it.

After the rape and my confronting him about it, he became determined to add over 50 positive references (briefly written as if he were coercing them to write them for him) to his profile within a few months. I have continually received threats from him. Couchsurfing does nothing.

It all happened at Harvard. Brazilian student Eduardo Saverin collaborated with Mark Zuckerberg in founding FB while still in college.

Mark originally got the idea of a social network for college students from the rich and bratty twin brothers, Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, who hired the talented Mark to code the twins’ brainchild for them.

Eventually, Mark bailed out on all of them, including his business partner and best friend Eduardo. Much like Casey Fenton seems to have done so on all you former volunteer programmers.

Anyway, years later, after FB gained significant success, Mark found himself embroiled in two separate lawsuits, one with each of the plaintiff parties. Eduardo had more of a case than the Winkelvoss twins (who probably didn’t really have any IP rights, at all, unlike Eduardo) — but whatever the case, the plaintiffs’ lawyers won out-of-court settlements for their clients.

The Winkelvosses won a $65 billion settlement; and Eduardo, for an undisclosed amount.

MY POINT in mentioning this is to suggest that you guys might have a much more legitimate case that’s worth considering, in light of the recent development going on over at CS. Very many people are unhappy with CS becoming for-profit, and a class-action lawsuit may be appropriate to hold CS’s leadership accountable. I’d really like for you all to not give up. I’ve supported your cause all this time, and it would be really sad to see it ended.

(sidenote: interestingly, the twins were also picked for the US Olympic team in Beijing 2008).

Also cs is right to move away from the non profit /community driven structure
they both are filled with flame wars/politics/groupism and everything which is really bad for a site which is looking to give value to its share holders.

Also we have threads with idiots like you who argue about useless stuff like ( AdBlockPlus, not AdBlock).Any idiot would have known the only extension is called AdBlockPlus but users refer to it sometimes as AdBlock.The trouble with your reply is it lacks substance and this is the biggest problem with the threads on cs. They are will with users finding fault with the previous posts.If a site wants to grow they need to ban users like you . It is so commons for people like your to totally make a thread go off topic with dumb replies like this (causing major flame wars and thousands of posts where are off topic)

yes you are right the extension remove sponsored posts but users on facebook do not need to use the sponsored feature at all to get to their target audience. (sadly this thread is going off topic because of idiots who still are on cs and have learned the wrong habits from mingling with the wrong people on the forums there). Cs forums instill a sense of hate,anger and everything negative (this is the brainstorm groups ).People post bs on the bs group for years and then cry wolf(like you just did) when cs makes changes and never cares about the stuff posted on the bs groups(whose users feel “a fall sense of entitlement”). You are a USER of the site NOTHING MORE.IF you have not figured that out till now (in the past x number of years ) then you are dumber than most of the users who left .

I specifically mentioned AdBlockPlus, not AdBlock (and gave you the link.) So that means you DO NOT understand how to read.

I don’t see a single ad’ on Facebook. I also have several keyword list services installed into ABP, like EasyList.

So that means you DO NOT understand how the tool works.

What is the real reason?

each thread is ranked by google. so when you search a particular forum the “worst” threads (usually about woman safety,ugly flame wars ) ranked the high and showed up to a user who searched google . The threads could be from any where in time 2005-2010 depending on how many times the particular thread was viewed and linked . This showed the nastiest part of the community driven site. This would have not happened if the forums were regulated (proper rules and guide lines were set down ).Sadly with designations like “ambassadors” users felt they were privileged to make rules or suppress whole communities with their virtual power.This caused the many flame wars on cs.

As usually just like the UN and security council the reason reasons for a statement will never come out.

you DO NOT NEED to be a member to read group posts if you know how to do that.

And content is king.If couchsurfing needs to grow (and get more funding) they need to increase their traffic which is getting lost to the much cooler (less flame wars, easier for fb members to share ANY info they want to share link to their blogs (1000s of times) or any other info )also they dont have members who think they own the site (which disables half of the site ) . This is also the case on bewelcome where there are so many guys like midsch who are so scared of privacy they the site just cant function like a truly social site .

adblock does not work on facebook ads (so that means you DO NOT understand how the site works) .

couchsurfing is not a community driven site anymore so try and get over it . Callum has rightly said time to move on!!

https://adblockplus.org/

“Five Billion Dollars of Personal Information”

Facebook’s IPO is expected to be largest ever sale of shares by a US web company, with the business looking to raise raise $5bn. That would dwarf Google’s float in 2004, which raised $1.67bn.

The issue puts front and centre the commercial value of our personal information and raises some serious questions about the protection of privacy.
…
Facebook’s business is based on advertising, like most online companies. The number of ads on the site rose by 42% in 2011, while the price per ad grew by 18%. To increase the amount of money it can charge for ads, Facebook needs to convince advertisers that it is better able to target advertisements than alternative services. The more personal information about us Facebook has, the better Facebook can target advertisements, and the more it can charge for them.

So if investors start to see Facebook’s numbers sliding – and given that 2011 earnings were around $500m lower than analysts expected that isn’t too remote a possibility – the company may find itself forced to choose between user privacy and profit.

Indeed, they may see privacy as an obstacle to profit. In the five core values published by the company, the word privacy does not appear once.

As Facebook’s social mission to make the world more ‘open and connected’ meets the harsh reality of the stock market, consumer privacy is more at risk than ever before.

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2012/02/billion-dollars-personal-information.html

http://www.couchsurfing.org/group_read.html?gid=7621

http://www.couchsurfing.org/group_read.html?gid=7621&post=11194107

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/couchsurfing-extension/

https://www.change.org/petitions/couchsurfing-stop-upcoming-change-to-cs-groups

You really don’t understand the situation, do you? Apparently hundreds of other members, do. +1.

“A forum that is not searchable is only the shadow of a forum.”

Couldn’t agree more. Still doesn’t require opening all old and future posts to Google and non-members.

Apparently “hundreds of members” did not share your desire. Myself included, obviously.

“anyone can register on CouchSurfing in a couple of minutes and can view the whole site.”

Not the same thing as opening all past, present, and future posts to Google and the entire WWW, without requiring a registration and login. Invalid comparison.

“He listened to people”

He was facing a revolt, and not the first one, by far. As documented quite thoroughly on this very site, that you founded. His choice to listen to his members (for once) wasn’t entirely voluntary.

What I suspect, is that after the first announcement hundreds of users immediately deleted old Groups posts. Which then provoked a panic in Casey, as he watched years of our personal input start to evaporate, preventing him from selling that data or otherwise benefiting himself.

“He stuck with the original (and sensible) goal”

Sensible, to whom? And actually, no, his original goal was soundly thwarted, by allowing members to hide Groups post from Google.

“Sounds like good leadership to me.”

If you would now like to characterize Casey’s leadership as “good,” then why did you establish this site, and why are you throwing your official, public endorsement behind BeWelome?

Anyone paying attention Callum, can see that you’ve lived (practically) rent-free for 3-5 years while relying on the kindness of dozens of strangers, and while extracting absolute maximum value from CS.

Your entire lifestyle and cost-of-living budget would change drastically would it not, if your CS account was closed? In the crudest simplification, you’re reliant on Casey paying your rent, so you can’t afford to rock the boat too much, can you?

So I say make it all public. There is no privacy in public forums on the internet. Perhaps that needs to be made more clear to users, but once it’s been written online, there’s no getting it back.

I think Casey made a good decision here. He listened to people, he took on board the legitimate points (members who have left won’t know anything about this) and changed the plan. He stuck with the original (and sensible) goal, but modified in response to feedback. Sounds like good leadership to me.

Something scarily similar happened to a CS friend of mine in Japan a month ago (unfortunately, the Japanese police is a lot less sympathetic to rape claims without physical evidence and a rapist willingly hosted by the victim)… All along, CS’s response has been covering the spectrum from criminally negligent to comically incompetent (not managing to notice that a single guy sent gazilions of unsolicited message to young female users, deleted his profile, *twice*, after getting very negative reviews etc). I already had a pretty low opinion of CS after the announcement of their move to corporation (guess I was quite naive until that point), but with this, they sunk to new lows…

This is a very serious claim, and one that I couldn’t find a single good example of if you put a gun to my head. Even when someone attempts speaking Giraffe and messes up, it still works out more beneficially for cooperation than the average comment. I have practiced NVC in my darkest of hours, and it has never failed me. And because it’s based on trading implying wrongness for openly stating desires, anything spoken from true Giraffe will automatically be geared for resolution while elegantly bypassing all the fighting and negativity.

You had might as well say that it’s disruptive for people to openly state their issues in groups in the most unoffensive way they can word it. Assuming this was written by someone who’s not trolling, by someone who actually does feel this way, then I would love it if you could include some real-world examples of this ‘disruption’. it might really help us giraffes.

I would also love to hear what alternatives you’ve found, at this point I’m rather curious.

I’m also baffled by the idea of a consensus terrorist, is that what you call someone who’s more interested in finding a consensus than you are? Can we get an example? I’ve seen people use their need for finding consensus to imply wrongness of others, however Giraffe specifically teaches people to not do that. So, yeah, example please.

my question shd be the start of a new thread i think, but i don’t see how to do that here, so i will ask the question as a comment on yr post for lack of a better alternative.

couchsurfing does not seem to offer anything like a chat room for its members. was this always the case, or only since The Sellout?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/after-horror-stories-airbnb-unveils-new-policies/

“My roommate. This one was dead, unlike the smaller one I spotted on the toilet seat.”

https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/11/11/your-money/20111111_MONEY-3.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/your-money/airbnb-gets-five-night-test-in-new-york-city.html

(By RON LIEBER)

For any fan of disruptive consumer technologies, watching Airbnb’s rise has been all sorts of fun.

Since its debut in 2008, the company, based in San Francisco, has booked more than two million nights of lodging all over the world. But it’s not a hotel. Instead, it allows people to rent out their entire home or apartment — or just a room or a bed — to others who find Marriott boring or want to see life in a new area as a local would.

Today, Airbnb has about 100,000 listings in 19,000 cities and towns in 192 countries. The company takes a small cut from both host and guest and has a friendly-looking Web site connecting both parties.

For hosts, Airbnb can be a great way to make extra money. Guests can rent family-size lodgings that hotels can’t offer, or they can sleep on a couch and use the savings to eat and drink more richly.

But my hypothesis since the beginning has been that the best use for Airbnb is as a hotel replacement in cities like New York, where rates are generally absurd.

So this week, I took an Airbnb lap of New York City, staying in five places in different neighborhoods to see how much I could save and what I’d have to put up with to achieve those savings.

Along the way, I rented from three hosts who were probably breaking the law, encountered one who was tipsy, another in revealing pajamas and saw two bugs, only one of which was alive.

I stayed in two one-room studios, one one-bedroom apartment, the second bedroom of a two-bedroom unit and behind a screen in a living room next to a window with an unobstructed view of Lower Manhattan.

Here’s what I learned:

FLAKINESS Airbnb’s nice-looking booking engine is only as good as the hosts standing behind it. And many don’t bother to keep the calendars on their listing pages up to date. That makes the site’s search-by-date function maddeningly misleading.

For every reservation request for which I got a reply (hosts must decide whether or not to accept your booking; more on that later) for an open date, there was at least one other that yielded a reply telling me that the place was actually unavailable.

Some people didn’t reply at all, and others did days later, which is a problem for anyone traveling soon.

An Airbnb spokesman, Christopher Lukezic, said the company had a sort of flakiness algorithm that recognized and eventually punished such behavior, taking steps up to and including removal of listings.

It took me a fair bit of work over many days to set up five nights of stays. What I didn’t realize is that many Airbnb users will send out several reservation requests at once; this is fine with the company, and it says its systems will not allow guests (or hosts) to double-book accidentally.

When it comes to the financial transaction, the casualness ends. Airbnb charges you before you check in to deter no-shows. But the hosts don’t get the money until a day or so after your arrival, just in case the lodging is not as advertised.

DISCRIMINATION Because hosts can reject guest bookings for any reason, you have no way of knowing whether there is truly no room at the inn or whether they find you untrustworthy.

I was turned away by, among others, a teenager renting out his brother’s old room and a family with four children. Did they not like my picture? Or the fact that I was a man traveling alone?

I did start the week with one positive review on my profile from a previous host, which should have helped some. Guests can review hosts, too. (I did not, by the way, mention my affiliation with The New York Times in my Airbnb user profile, and it didn’t come up in conversation during my stays. I did let my hosts all know about my plan to write this column after I checked out.)

CANCELLATIONS Even after all that work, hosts can (and do) cancel confirmed reservations at the last minute. So can hotels if they are overbooked, but my hunch, given the number of reviews mentioning this, is that it happens at Airbnb more than it does at hotels.

When it does, as it did to me in California several months ago, Airbnb tries to find you another place to stay and may compensate you with a voucher, too.

Hosts can suffer if enough reviewers mention this problem. Airbnb can also penalize them by lowering where they show up in the site’s search results.

SECURITY Over the summer, Airbnb badly bungled a situation where one of its hosts returned from a trip to find that her home had been ransacked. But potential guests may not feel 100 percent comfortable either.

You may want to book only with hosts who have many positive reviews. That said, you may still find it hard to shake the feeling that there is a stranger in the apartment with you or one with a key somewhere else in town.

CLEANLINESS The apartment where I stayed in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn smelled reassuringly of bleach. On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there were a couple of bobby pins strewn on the floor.

In Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, there were long dark hairs on the toilet seat, but I was willing to let that go because the whole place had such a lovely scent.

And yes, I checked for bedbugs. Nothing doing. But there was a small, live insect on the toilet seat of that Upper West Side studio in the middle of the night and a larger dead one on the floor next to the bed.

COMFORT There are no brand standards on Airbnb, no heavenly bed or anything like it. I encountered both high thread counts and scratchy sheets.

The best-looking place — that Battery Park City two-bedroom — had the least comfortable mattress. So there’s no predicting what you’ll experience, and reviews from previous guests may not help much.

FEES Airbnb charges both the hosts and the guests, hitting the latter with a service fee of 6 to 12 percent of the room rate.

The hosts, meanwhile, are free to take a security deposit and charge a cleaning fee, which I’ve never seen at a hotel before. I paid $50 one night and saw others as high as $100.

NOISE Hotels have their peace-and-quiet challenges, and Airbnb is its own mystery on this front. On my New York tour, I slept through the night only once, on the 30th floor of a building with a fan blowing.

Elsewhere, I was roused by scavengers ravaging the recycling bins, a relentless banging radiator, a giggling host and a profane order to shut a building’s door.

THE LAW Airbnb’s name alludes to bed-and-breakfast establishments, which typically are subject to various regulations, as are innkeepers and hoteliers.

In New York, there’s a new law that prohibits people in residential buildings with three or more units from renting out the entire apartment for short-term stays.

Three of my five hosts appeared to be breaking that law. Airbnb also knows that a large number of its New York hosts (and others in areas with similar rules) are probably breaking it. Yet it continues to help them do so, even though it could root out those listings pretty easily, especially in big cities where the rules are quite clear.

So why doesn’t the company do this? Mr. Lukezic, the company spokesman, fell silent when I asked. His outside public relations counsel intervened and asked me to send the question in writing. The next day, she sent me the following statement: “Airbnb is a marketplace that operates in over 19,000 cities worldwide. All users, when they agree to our terms of service, agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.”

But what if someone were burned alive in a law-violating apartment, and one of the company’s executives had to explain to a jury why it continued to allow the listings to appear? You can imagine the beeline of plaintiffs’ lawyers eager to take on such cases.

BOTTOM LINE In spite of all of this, I would return to four of the five places I stayed this week without much hesitation. Why? The savings are just so good. I spent a total of $922 on my five-night Airbnb binge, $724 less than the $1,646 that comparable (or worse) hotels nearby would have cost, according to Expedia.

Then again, I’m an adventurous 6-foot-3, 215-pound man who doesn’t worry so much about safety. I also have an intense curiosity about out-of-the-ordinary consumer experiences and enjoy beating the system.

That’s just me, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if a vast majority of the grown-up population ends up feeling very differently about all of this.

maybe you meant BeVolunteer?

The original founders are now finding out the problems with the current forum on BW . Now if only they had listened when they were old almost 4 years ago.

It’s such a big big joke how he tries to sell out his users, letting them host paying customers and putting the money to his pocket, calling it “support”. Support for what?

The 50 EUR/month server bill????

AirBnB is paying 72 Euros for each customer you bring to them (http://www.airbnb.com/referrals) and I’m pretty sure that they agreed on even more, as the hosts that come from HC to AirBnB are experienced ones == value for the AirBnB Inc. PLUS the percentage he will get for each ‘hosting’ – rofl. How stupid can the users that use this be?

R.I.P. HC + CS, long live BeWelcome.

That’s a contradiction – do you really believe people can’t see your bullshit for what it is, dickhead? We could also treat you (Veit) as honest, kind-hearted, and transparent, but that would also be denying reality. The “guests” are still paying customers, and they certainly won’t think of themselves as anything else.

They might say, “oh, that’s nice, you’re donating the market-rate fee you require from me to someone else; who’s the deserving recipient? An orphanage? A homeless shelter, or food bank? The school softball team?

“Uh, this dude named Veit…”

So basically, Veit opened (sold out) his directory listing of users willing to host without exchanging money, to be exploited by AirBnB, to make their list of _paid_ crash-pads even larger.

But the people who _do_ use AirBnB to make some money from their empty rooms/apartments, will now kindly decide to let (potentially) even more people stay in their place, but will then give the money they would’ve collected as a rental fee, to Veit.

LMFAO!

“Hospitality Club and Airbnb have partnered to support one another in our shared vision to bring people together.”

Wrong. AirBnB is purely a profit making venture, web directory, and booking tool. Nothing more. No different than Orbitz or Travelocity for airplane seats. Veit is also solely interested in enriching himself, just like a business.

There’s also the recent horror story of a young woman who rented her place via AirBnB, and the meth’-addicts who stayed there who destroyed everything in it and stole her personal property (including family heirlooms) and identity documents. AirBnB wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it, but then suddenly found some concern when she blogged about it. (The power of open publishing!)

http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/

HospEx is not about making money, is about “hospitality exchange” without any money changing hands!

Yeah Veit, when are you going to publish your financials? It would seem “never,” “your hospitality is my profit” and “the money’s all mine!” are your answers. Is that correct?