Airbnb's impact on cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/25/from-berlin-to-barcelona-will-airbnb-ruin-our-most-loved-cities <comment><USER3> I know this isn't the main point, but airbnb lost me a long time ago with statements like this:

"If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes," Airbnb fumed.

By "share", do they mean a quid pro quo exchange of goods and services for money?

It's nuts to call this "sharing", and I don't think this is quibbling about words when people at pro airbnb rallies chant "sharing is caring". Of course they're trying to grab the emotional connotations of "sharing" that exist outside the commerce world, which include friendship, generosity, and a wish to help others. I don't expect airbnb to stop this bit of manipulation, but I do think the mainstream media should certainly stop referring to the contract "you may stay in my house on the condition that you pay me the price I have specified" as "sharing". An argument by ambiguity uses the fact that words have more than one meaning, but honestly, I'm not sure how "sharing" even applies at all to such a clear cut unambiguous example of commerce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

There they go again, claiming that governments are regulating or fining "sharing". No, they are regulating _commerce_. They are threatening fines on businesses that fail to properly comply with regulations on commerce.

Airbnb's corporate-speak is pretty brazen.

<comment><USER4> I'm generally in favor of letting companies like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and Turo operate in cities. But I completely agree with you that it's infuriating to see the word "sharing" being used to describe them. They're platforms that make it easy for people to operate various kinds of small businesses - <USER2> sometimes maybe micro businesses.

I suppose they think it's good for PR to peddle the warm and fuzzy concept of "sharing" but in most people's eyes it just makes them seem more deceptive and untrustworthy. I'm generally a fan of what these companies are doing, and I worry that pushing a false description of themselves only sets them up for stronger backlash.

A much better term than the "sharing economy" for these kinds of two-sided marketplace platforms is the "access economy". The fundamentally new thing they provide is much easier access to both buyers and sellers. As a traveler, AirBnB gives me access to lots of vacation rental listings, many of the them reviewed and to some extent vetted by the crowd. As someone looking to rent out my home, AirBnB gives me access to millions of potential customers, who are, to varying degrees, vetted by other hosts.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, I'd agree with you if you'd left airbnb out of that list.

I see something more menacing in airbnb, probably because I've witnessed families getting outbid for single family homes by owners who turn around and airbnb out the "spare" rooms - in a city where I grew up and where the percentage of children has plummeted from about 22% to below 14% in my lifetime (yes, I'm talking about San Francisco).

Airbnb and related services do convert the housing used for children, who don't pay rent and cost a bundle, into short term rentals for tourists. This isn't the only harm it does, but it's the one that worries me the most.

If this isn't true, by all means I'd love to see the data, provided airbnb doesn't scrub it of all evidence first, ahem.

BTW, I like airbnb style rentals fine if they are regulated properly. 75-90 days is a lot of time to get to rent out a house that is zoned for long term residence. If I go off on vacation for a couple of weeks, and I rent my place out, I don't see much harm there. But if a former kid's room is converted into a revolving door for tourists, one more kid is displaced from SF? There is tremendous harm if San Francisco ceases to be a place where people are _from_.

The problem is that airbnb is lobbying fiercely against meaningful regulation. I'm personally not against zoning to ensure a proper mix of housing in a city. I don't think that these regulations are obsolete just because someone wrote a rails program that allows you to type in your address and click the "Create Hotel Here" button.

<comment><USER5> Sounds similar to the problem of ticket prices and scalping. It absolutely sucks that families are getting displaced, but at the same time it's a correction in the market.

I'd be curious to know why family residences are more valuable as short-term rentals. My guess would be that there's just more people that want to stay in SF than there are hotels available at prices people want to pay. The tight housing market isn't helping that either. People are getting evicted and replaced by renters willing to pay more, regardless of Airbnb. There's premium on space, short or long term.

Airbnb's not helping, but I think it's more of a symptom of the bay's broken housing market than anything else. I'd wonder if regulating Airbnb rentals wouldn't have a negative effect similar to rent control. My understanding is that most economists agree that price ceilings on real estate only exacerbate the supply problem that places like SF are facing, and the best solution is to build.

On the other hand, why risk the capital to build a hotel, when you can just use the existing housing instead?

<comment><USER6> >more people that want to stay in SF than there are hotels available at prices people want to pay

The price discrepancy is _enormous_. Last time I looked, I could generally find a room on Airbnb in the neighborhood of $90-100/night. The shittiest national chain at the airport (I'm deliberately excluding the Tenderloin) was going to be at least $200/night.

"Hotel taxes" is an intellectually lazy explanation. If you actually price out a hotel stay in SF, you'll see "taxes and fees" are around 10%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here in Dublin, Ireland, rents are exploding, mostly because of a severe shortage in apartments, and it's a fair question to ask if AirBnB is partially to blame. From [1]:

> The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000 > per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being > occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb.

> Investors have confirmed that if correctly managed, the income can be double > that of a long-term rental.

(AirBnB disagrees [2])

As much as I like the idea of AirBnB, their impact on the housing market in any given city needs to be considered. Unfortunately the article doesn't mention that at all, focussing solely on tourism.

[1] [http://www.independent.ie/business/personal- finance/property...](http://www.independent.ie/business/personal- finance/property-mortgages/booming-airbnb-adding-to-dublins-rent- squeeze-34715683.html) [2] [http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social- affairs/airbnb-insists...](http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social- affairs/airbnb-insists-home-hosting-is-not-taking-housing-off- market-1.2584950)

<comment><USER7> The obvious solution to a severe shortage in apartments is to build more. Why doesn't Ireland do this?

Pigeonhole principle: if K people want to be in Ireland at any one time, and there are N < K apartments, K - N people will have a problem. All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren't the ones who face the problem.

<comment><USER8> Not quite - Airbnb shifts demand from traditional tourist accommodation like hotels and guest houses into standard domestic units.

I'm not arguing that this is necessarily bad, but it's really interesting to look at the reasons why this is happening and the negative effects it can have. Increasing domestic prices because of underutilisation is one.

<comment><USER7> As I said: _All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren 't the ones who face the problem._

Tourists are people too, and need a place to live. The folks in Barcelona just want to make sure it's the tourists, rather than them, who suffer from the housing shortage.

<comment><USER9> Tourists before AirBnB would simply not visit somewhere if the hotel price was beyond what they could afford.

Is there any justification at all that could prioritise tourists over residents for living space?

<comment><USER10> Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring the sorts of costs in services that residents do. Similar motivations cause cities to build office buildings without corresponding homes.

Empirically it seems like cities value tourists over residents -- if cities actually wanted residents, they'd approve construction of housing for them.

<comment><USER11> Tourism still incurs some costs, and a common solution to this is hotel taxes to pay for those costs. AirBNB dodges those taxes. Also, since AirBNB converts housing constructed for residents into tourist housing regardless of legality, it doesn't matter much which cities value more.

<comment><USER12> I can't help but think this whole thing could be solved by charging hotel taxes on AirBNB room nights. Can someone explain why it's not that simple?

<comment><USER13> AirBnB does not share who's renting rooms. A significant share of the hosts use that to dodge taxes. Now AirBnB could collect and forward those taxes but well, they have no incentive to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm staying longer term in BCN for a month and a half and accidentally ended up at an outdoor concert last night before realizing that it was protesting tourists. "Tourism kills the city" was the slogan on the signs around the area. In 2 weeks, I've seen at least 2 demonstrations like this and it seems to be picking up from previous years that I've been here. Things are a little more crowded and I feel like every day there's a bachelor / bachelorette party running around - the density of which reminds me of vegas.

I like to think that I blend in more than most tourists - the ones you see in groups of 8 with 2-3 roller bags each fumbling for the keys and trying to make sure they find the right building - but I'm probably biased.

I'm not sure what BCN's solution will be. Tourism is 12-15% of their economy in Catalonia, so it's not a small chunk for a country with 20% unemployment rate. The hotel options aren't _great_ for what you pay for. AirBnB is definitely cheaper (and usually roomier), but it's a difference when you notice that all your neighbors in "old town" are german / british tourists that pop in for a weekend and then leave. Barcelona does have an ordinance that you can only rent rooms for longer than 30 days - so they have people that come around on occasion to check - but I think it's sort of hit & miss enforcement.

I'm not sure I have answers as much as questions - and it's interesting being on the ground zero and seeing this take place.

<comment><USER15> Take it with a grain of salt: the Catalans will find any excuse to protest. I've lived all over the world and nothing even comes close to the number of street demonstrations I witnessed during my time in Barcelona.

<comment><USER16> Maybe it was the time you choose to be in Barcelona what was different, not the Catalan people?

<comment><USER15> Potser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not only Airbnb in Europe, but also Erasmus (twice a year they make finding housing very difficult), Uniplaces (like Airbnb but for EU students), local classifieds sites (which now just double as Airbnb and Uniplaces listings) and being known as an affordable city (like here, in Lisbon, which is being called "the new Berlin" as well as the new "startup capital city").

Over the past 3 years, rental prices here have increased 30%, pushing locals out of the city center. A quick look on Airbnb for Lisbon, one sees the average monthly price at around 700 euro (for a room) while some listings go well above 1,000 euro. Three years ago, the norm for a room - no matter how you found it - was 180 to 220 euro per month, now the minimum is 300 and increasing. People are mad, and rightly so since minimum wage here is 530 euro.

If anyone wishes to see all the stats well laid out, this article below (in Portuguese) has been circulating locally. I suggest running it through an online translator. It's titled "Who is going to be able to live in Lisbon?" [http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em- lisbo...](http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em-lisboa)?

One of the images from the article is this ([http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg)) showing local Airbnb saturation, where 75% of listings are entire homes/apts. Airbnb's regional head says in 2015 there were 12K homes listed in the Greater Lisbon area, a 60% jump from 2014 numbers. We're a small city but data shows there are 174 hostels and 184 hotels here, with many more in the pipeline.

It's out of hand and the govt hasn't done much of anything to stop it. By the way, that local listing at over 1K euro per month? It had lots of reviews, meaning there have been plenty of takers.

<comment><USER18> As someone who rents out rooms in Lisbon (not on AirBnB), I can assure you the minimum is not 300/month, nor are those rare. A five minute search finds multiple available rooms for <250€ - often with expenses included.

I do agree there is cause for concern, but the knee-jerk attacks on AirBnB is silly. For example, there's not a single word in that article regarding the concerns of landlords in making long term rentals. When it takes _two years_ , hundreds of euros and many lost working days to evict a non-paying tenant, is it any wonder that people prefer short term rentals? When you have a building falling to pieces after decades of rent-controlled tenants paying ridiculously low amounts (I know people paying 30€/m for a three bedroom apartment) and you can't afford to fix it, is it any wonder that you'll sell to foreign investors who can?

<comment><USER19> same in Italy. Nobody wants to rent long term anymore and lose the apartment to someone who can't pay but can stay for a year or two. I personally met owners who had to pay gas, electricity and water to a tenant who didn't pay rent for 3 years. As soon as she left they went on Airbnb and didn't look back. Managing an Airbnb is not simple many people would prefer a long term tenant but it's just too risky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Surely the projections cited in this article aren't accurate.

> Already operating in 191 countries and 34,000 cities, analysts at financial > services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, Airbnb hosts will be > taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a staggering one billion by > 2025.

If the population of the world is about 8.2 billion in 2025, which is the UN's expectation [0], that'd mean one Airbnb booking a night per eight humans on Earth. Perhaps they mean yearly, not nightly?

[0] [http://www.unfpa.org/news/world-population-increase-one- bill...](http://www.unfpa.org/news/world-population-increase-one-billion-2025)

<comment><USER21> I just assume that Cowen & Co must be bad at predictions.

<comment><USER12> They got to 191 countries in 8 years. By 2024 AirBNB will be in 382 countries!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It'd be awesome if Airbnb integrated each city's regulation into its software. e.g. it ensures that you can't host more than X nights a year.

It could even extract the taxes from each host's incomes and pay them directly to each city council.

Prediction: if Airbnb doesn't do it, someone else will and councils will rule out competitors as illegal.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the "ruining" of cities more due to general lack of affordable space in light of increased urbanization and tourism?

Granted, Airbnb will add its share to the overall shortage, but if I'd take all Airbnb apartments off of any market, would this put rents back to an affordable level or curtail tourism?

Airbnb reminds me a bit of eBay - good idea led to an influx of professional sellers, which at some point had to be regulated (register as business, taxable income) and in growing up, the platform lost most of its appeal and discoverability of the things it once was created for. Still fills a large enough demand to be around.

I'll call the same for Airbnb: There's demand for staying at a place which does not feel like a hotel and I found the Berlin ruling made for Airbnb to be going in a good direction (Zwecksentfremdungsverbot - use Airbnb if you rent out part of your place, but if you rent on as a business, it must be registered as such). I'll expect other cities to follow suit, because it also postpones having to address the underlying issue.

(regular Couchsurfing host and sparse surfer)

</comment><comment><USER24> Answer? Probably not. Especially if you don't provide housing stock numbers.

The last AirBnB complaint I read was in Seattle which had a whopping 1000 units on the market. Which is jack shit.

If you want top argue that AirBnB is a problem then you have to list the number of houses, apartments, hotel rooms, and AirBnB units. I'm not convinced it's s talk problem in any city in the world.

Now regulations that inhibit new construction? _That 's_ an issues in more than a few places!

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, for Dublin only. A quick search of _all_ properties for rent in Dublin on the market leading website (daft.ie) comes up with 1,437 properties, and that's without any limitations to the search. A quick search on AirBnB _for just the next weekend_ (in the middle of tourist season) finds "300+" listings. That's a very rough snapshot of course (e.g. there might be many double listings), but it hints at the potentially large portion of properties that could be off the long-term market thanks to AirBnB (and their competitors, for what it's worth).

<comment><USER24> Dublin has a population of 530k/1.1M/1.8M for city/urban/metro. Having a thousand apartments off the market is irrelevant at that scale. It's is not a "large portion". Or even close.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty broad statement that doesn't take into account any of the pecularities of the local property market. First of all, ownership is quite high. Secondly, it's about proportion _of available rental properties_ , not absolute numbers or proportion of population. Thirdly, if there's already a severe shortage, even absolute numbers matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I just can raise the rent?

Right, no one would and no one will.

Without the state intervening we will have a lot of new york cities around the globe.

<comment><USER26>
        The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I
        can just raise the rent?

It might actually be more profitable for you to have more units of housing at a lower price, than fewer units of housing at a higher price. Profit follows a quadratic formula, and it's quite possible to raise profits dramatically by selling more units at a (slightly) lower price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > analysts at financial services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, > Airbnb hosts will be taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a > staggering one billion by 2025.

In a world of 7-8 billion people (and where most people live with and travel with others, so there are many fewer households and travel groups), these numbers seem more than a little unlikely.

<comment><USER28> The author misread the actual predictions from Cowen & Co, which predict 500 million "room nights" per year — a term that we refer to internally as "nights booked" per year — which would mean that a total of 500 million nights were booked across all hosts over the course of a year. A single "booking" may count as multiple "nights," since often you'll be staying at (and have booked) a place for more than one night. Here's a better report of the Cowen & Co analysis: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one- wall-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-wall-street- firm-expects-airbnb-to-book-a-billion-nights-a-year-within-a-decade) — it's a far, far cry from "500 million bookings a night."

You're 100% correct that the size of the total world population makes it spectacularly unlikely that we'll ever have 500 million bookings per night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am also becoming wary of using airbnb, for some of the reasons mentioned here. I did meet some great hosts, but at other times I felt I would have been better off e.g. in a hostel.

Also, people who care about hosting and getting to know travelers could just sign up to Couchsurfing or Hospitalityclub, which strangely don't seem to be booming.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Earlier this month, it released data showing that since it began it has collected $85m in tax revenue for cities worldwide."

That's not a very impressive figure. That's for a global company with massive revenue, now in it's eight year?

"If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes," Airbnb fumed.

Uhm no, lower class New Yorkers don't own they rent and this is the point - the property is not theirs to profit from. Most middle class New Yorkers don't own their own homes either and if they do its likely a one bedroom or a studio. A two bedroom in New York is well out of reach of whatever is left of the middle class there. People that can afford two bedrooms in New York are generally not the "lets make a few extra dollars from this sharing economy" types.

I know that in New Orleans the hotel industry has felt the pinch of Airbnb. Even during big weekend like Jazz Fest, you could still get a room last minute this year, something that used to be unheard of. While its great that tourist dollars still enter the local economy, the hotels employ a lot of people. This is significant in an economy that is almost solely based around hospitality and tourism.

</comment><comment><USER31> In the past 6 years, I've traveled significantly in New England, the New York City region, the Paris and Marseille regions, London, Leeds, Manchester, and Edinburgh, Iceland, Barcelona, Mallorca, Rome, Geneva, Genoa, Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Austin, across a mix of work-related travel to conferences, vacations, and graduate school that involved time at a foreign program.

I have not ever used Airbnb, never found difficulty in getting good hotel accommodations for reasonable prices, never found difficult being shown around the "non-touristy" parts of every place I've visited, either by just asking locals, getting advice from friends, using travel websites, etc., and have really, really valued the nicer accommodations in traditional hotels (especially the extra privacy, standardized cleanliness, and lower variance in terms of noise and sounds that reduce sleep quality).

I'm not being snarky or critical of Airbnb, many of my good friends love it and seem to get a lot of value out of it. But I cannot see any aspect of Airbnb that offers value to me or satisfies my search criteria when looking for housing.

Given this, it is almost bewildering to me that there is so much demand for Airbnb-provided short term lodging that landlords would even consider the idea that renting an apartment solely as an Airbnb rental is more profitable than traditional rental agreements.

I mean, I can't blame the landlords if that's the case. But I sure do feel like the mass of travelers who believe they are getting value from Airbnb simply cannot be correct in their belief that they are actually receiving that value. I just wonder why they _think_ they are.

<comment><USER32> I find that Airbnb is most attractive when (a) travelling in a small group, because it can be cheaper to get a place that fits three adults and a kid on airbnb than at a hotel, and (b) when visiting people that live somewhere, since it's frequently hard to find a hotel in the residential suburbs where they live, but you can often find an airbnb nearby or (c) when I'm staying somewhere long enough that I want to be able to cook my own food. In specific cities (like Dublin) it also turned out to be much cheaper than an equivalent hotel.

<comment><USER31> For me, (c) is not really a pro for Airbnb. I'm vegan and cooking is a passion of mine, so I almost always want to cook for myself if I can. I'll even pre- cook meals that can be sealed and go through bag check at the airport just to avoid dining at restaurants. If it weren't for the social aspect, mostly appeasing others, I think I would never eat at a restaurant.

But I've always found that even in dense urban areas (and especially in suburban areas) it's always very easy to find an extended-stay suite sort of place that has an adequate kitchen. The huge benefit for me is also that I'm in control of the kitchen, instead of having to deal with someone else's haphazard stuff, personal ticks, etc.

In terms of (a) I've rented a lot of cabins and houses for small group hiking vacations, but never used Airbnb for it. I can't say anything about how it works on Airbnb, but on other travel sites and one-off sites like Craigslist, I've always had easy, positive experiences and never found the prices to be anything but reasonable.

Obviously (b) depends on exactly who you're visiting. When I visit my family in small town southern Ohio, Airbnb is not an option (too few listings, and I would not trust the safety in that region anyway), so hotels are necessary. I've never had trouble getting cost-effective and nice hotel rooms in suburbia, but perhaps some cities are just much worse than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I stayed in 4 different Airbnbs in Barcelona around the time when Ada Colau was pushing to have them all registered [1]. The major concern I heard from my hosts were about properties used _only for Airbnb_, which were particularly notorious in Barceloneta.

A few people figured out they could pose as fake tenets in several apartments at once, then turn a profit by listing them all on Airbnb. This was where things went from bad to worse — some people were listing 10+ properties at the same time [2].

With all of that, I'm not surprised there was such a backlash. The type of subletting that was going on in BCN is clearly not what Airbnb is about. It's unfortunate that it's led to a much larger/more political movement against tourism in general.

[1] [http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb- tour...](http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb- tourism/421788/) [2] [http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651...](http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651764.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> New businesses and ways of doing business always disrupt the existing businesses, and the existing ones frequently advocate for regulations to preserve their niche.

</comment><comment><USER35> In Budapest, Hungary I can see a rise in prices from 250 EUR/month to almost 350 EUR/month for the same flat in the last 2 years thanks to Airbnb. What happens here is that most property owners realized that they can make more money by renting their flat (not just a room) instead of underleasing it. This leads to a LOT of people hopelessly scrambling for flats to rent because there are not a lot of new flats being built. Basically tourists are taking away flats from people who are trying to live in the city. This is horrible IMHO. I hope that the government will assess brutal taxes on Airbnb to make it useless or otherwise a lot of people will either become homeless or are forced to return to the countryside.

</comment><comment><USER36> Obviously this must be an impact of increased mobility and globalization forcing previously isolated economies to compete in larger market, with Airbnb merely riding the wave.

Dwellers of comparatively more well-off cities probably aren't complaining about tourists driving them out, in other words. In Seoul, for example, monthly rate for a studio on Airbnb right now seems close to what a local would pay for a similar option found via old-school real estate agency[0].

[0] If they could get away without depositing some $xxxxx upfront. Based on experience of a friend who in 2014–2015 rented a studio found via an agency.

</comment><comment><USER37> So the argument is that since Airbnb makes travel cheaper, it is ruining the cities?

Suggesting that hotels were keeping the prices artificially high to limit tourists and hence conserve the cities?

Try harder next time.

<comment><USER38> No it's not that hotel prices are artificially high, they are priced in a completely separate market to residential properties. If there is no regulation on Airbnb rentals, tourists are now competing more in the residential market. This can obviously have an effect on cities.

<comment><USER39> I don't see what is artificially high about hotel prices. As someone else pointed out tourist do incur costs, and that can be added to hotel taxes. So Airbnb are both reducing taxes as well as making less accommodation available for residents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Airbnb is definitely not the analogy of Uber. It's extremely expensive service - prices of dirty rooms with old furniture are higher than in 4-stars apart- hotels. In city I live (Saint Petersburg) price for room in Airbnb is 8-9 times higher than on local sites. And I tried to find room in Rome, Prague, Barcelona - every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels.

<comment><USER41> >... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels.

Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

<comment><USER42> No, I doubt most people find this to be true. I generally find clean private apartments in good areas, cheaper than hotels, sometimes cheaper than hostels too. Used to be more availability of single rooms for even cheaper too. Seems like prices have gone up over the last couple of years, but certainly not a surfeit of low quality expensive places.

<comment><USER40> If you want to call me a liar, I can find apart-hotel in Barcelona for you (4 stars, good reviews on Booking), and comparable set of rooms on Airbnb. And after that you will bring apologizes. Deal?

<comment><USER43> Please don't escalate like this. People can (and do, and need to) disagree without calling each other a liar. One main purpose of discussion here is to share different experiences.

<comment><USER40> Answer "I disagree" is one thing, answer "you are wrong" \- is fine also. Answer "it's not true" \- is calling opponent a liar. It's offensive and I see nothing wrong in my try to defend myself.

Only thing I regret is typo in previous comment in this branch.

<comment><USER43> You appear to have missed the key word in what I posted, which is "escalate". For example:

> _Answer "it's not true" \- is calling opponent a liar._

That's literally what it's not doing. Equating these two things is escalating, i.e. substituting one utterance for a more provocative one and replying to that instead.

You may feel that the train of logic inevitably takes you there down a one-way deductive track. But there are many opportunities to get off that train, and good manners and civility demand that we do. If we don't, all disagreement ends in conflict, which is tedious (for everyone else) and destructive.

I wonder if there may be a crossed cultural channel here, because the gap between "you are wrong" and "it's not true" strikes me as tiny—not the chasm that you describe—and if anything, "you are wrong" sounds slightly less polite since it's more personal. This is the kind of thing that people with different cultural and language backgrounds routinely hear differently, and the presence of many different backgrounds on HN is one reason why we all need to be charitable in our interpretations.

p.s. I've fixed the typo for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There is explosion of cheap flight tickets.

</comment><comment><USER19> rencently Airbnb introduced Smart Prices. It's an optional automated system which allows the host to accept prices suggested by Airbnb's algorithm. They prices are usually very low and I have the feeling they'll make it less interesting for many renters to stay on the market. Maybe it will bring some balance. It's completely counterintiuitive but I'm afraid they are destroying the market. I already know some people going off Airbnb and moving to other platforms because it only brings cheap bookings.

</comment><comment><USER43> This article is better than a lot of comparables and the discussion isn't bad, so we've reduced the downweights (not Airbnb-related) that got automatically applied to this submission and replaced the baity title with something more neutral. If anyone wants to suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

<comment><USER45> What's wrong with the original title? Would the subtitle "Airbnb has become so successful that hotels are losing business and tourist sites face being ruined" be acceptable?

<comment><USER43> "Ruin" is hyperbolic and "ruin our most-loved" is over the top.

<comment><USER45> Ok, your site, your rules. But I'm surprised to see that that title in another submission in the top page has been changed from "Reasons not to use Facebook" (the title of the document in the <h1> sense) to the less neutral and more hyperbolic "Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook" (which is the <head><title>).

<comment><USER43> We changed that one to the original title of the article. Is it misleading or linkbait? Those are the conditions under which it should be changed.

Arguably it is, but then the site is Stallman's, which makes the context of the advocacy unmistakeable. Also the verbal twist of "use, (i.e. be used by)" is marginally gratifying of curiosity in its own right, and not the same thing as the usual clickbait. So IMO that title squeaks by as ok.

Obviously different editors would call some of these differently, but that's not the same thing as arbitrarily changing the rules. The rule is pretty fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Long term the impact I see is better tourists and better cities.

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't think so

</comment><comment><USER43> You've been posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. Instead, please (re)-read the site guidelines and follow them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

Edit: oops, I misread that comment, so have detached this one from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980147) and marked it off topic.

<comment><USER37> That is exactly what I got from the article. I would suggest you to read it but that breaks the guidelines.

Even the original title reads "From Berlin to Barcelona; will Airbnb ruin our most loved cities?". If anything, you should ban the article.

<comment><USER43> I'm sorry! I misread you. I thought "Try harder next time" was a swipe at another user, which it wasn't.

(But [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979795) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963888), the other comments I had in mind, did break the site guidelines, so I still need to ask you not to do that.)

That title is indeed bad, but I've explained why we haven't banned the article here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981664). Also, if we had, people would accuse us of trying to suppress criticism of a YC-funded startup, which is something we err on the side of not doing.

<comment><USER37> OK, understood. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tourists are human beings, same as residents. Tourists value the opportunity to visit for 2 weeks more than residents value the opportunity to live there for 2 weeks (as evidenced by their willingness to pay more).

Why do you believe tourists deserve fewer rights than residents?

I realize that in terms of blatant power struggles to control the means of violence, tourists will lose. But lets not pretend that's anything other than the strong exploiting the weak.

<comment><USER43> > _I realize that in terms of blatant power struggles to control the means of > violence, tourists will lose. But lets not pretend that 's anything other > than the strong exploiting the weak._

Please don't go off into ideological boilerplate, not to mention flamewar fodder, like that.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980175) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER7> How is a post claiming residents deserve special privileges not ideological, but one claiming they don't is?

<comment><USER43> It's taking the thread into ideological generalities that I object to. Playing the monopoly-of-violence card is just upping the ideological ante in a way that can only polarize the argument, at the same time taking the discussion to so abstract a level that there is little of substance left to say. That combination of escalation and generality is one of the worst thing you can do in discussions like this; it's a kind of trolling whether you mean it to be or not.

Similarly for taking a trope like "the strong exploiting the weak" and applying it to tourists (of all people) in a way that's guaranteed to tick off the readers who go in for that kind of phrase. That's basically just a stunt, and it's one that seems designed to offend. Why do you go out of your way to make the people you disagree with uncomfortable? Again, that's trolling whether you intend it to be or not. (I used to do this myself without realizing it. It took me a long time to see that.)

The kind of discussion we want here is people trying respectfully to figure out the truth together. Your comments frequently strike me as conforming to the letter of that idea while violating its spirit—almost as if you'd discovered a loophole in the rules of discourse and were gleefully exploiting it. That's not as bad as violating the letter outright, which is what most people do who use HN as an ideological battlefield. But it's still dismaying, and it still leaves one with the feeling of being trolled. As, for that matter, do your naive-sounding "how is" questions that always seem to leave the real problem unmentioned.

<comment><USER7> I'm attempting to distinguish between a normative claim (residents _should_ be treated the same as tourists) and a similar positive claim (residents _will_ be treated the same as tourists). People often conflate such claims so I wanted to preemptively disambiguate. (I do this often, e.g.: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7724652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7724652) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669705) )

Am I correct in understanding that you are detaching/penalizing my post because while it's positive claims are correct, and within the letter of the law, you think folks who disagree with me might have negative emotional reactions and perhaps behave badly?

That's quite the hecklers veto you are building there.

<comment><USER43> No.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PlatformIO, open source ecosystem for IoT - <AUTHOR> http://platformio.org/ <comment><USER2> I've only heard good things about PlatformIO, but it always seems like they sorta reinvented the wheel instead of using existing tools. They've done a LOT of the hard work of making stuff "just-work", but why didn't they do all this using the normal tool-chain like CMake/git/GNU-tools/crosstool-NG/etc.?

Is there something extra I'm missing that you can't do with the existing tools? Or is it to get some kind of lock-in and promote a commercial product? I've only done a very little programming for Arduino and the ESP8266 (where you can get the normal toolchain running... with some effort), but I got the impression that the embedded world has been trying to move away from magic "platforms" that do things for you in the background

<comment><USER3> I agree.

I've been in a row with their founder over the same criticism you offer.

PlatformIO is really nice and smooth and seamless, as long as you do exactly what they think you should be doing.

It would be a great product if it un-bundled all the functions. Of course that would make it not-really-a-product, and they couldn't charge money for it as easily. But instead it's a monolith that offers you little wiggle-room.

For instance for the longest time it didn't expect you would do unit testing. There was no way to include it in your build, other than hacking PlatformIO itself. They've since added unit testing, but only using a framework of their choice. Which is nice, unless you already have a code base, or a preference for a framework.

My friend put it quite succinctly:

"I understand it from a vendors POV: they know that customers feel the pain of integrating disparate systems, so the sell the product that has done all that for them. Once both sides have bought in, they are reluctant to acknowledge that what they have is a monolith that makes the integration problem _harder_ rather than making it go away."

> Is there something extra I'm missing that you can't do with the existing > tools?

There isn't. And in fact there are other build systems you can use without having to use either the vendor's tools, or start form scratch.

> Or is it to get some kind of lock-in and promote a commercial product?

Pretty much. They're a company, and are (legitimately) trying to make a profit.

<comment><USER4> > It would be a great product if it un-bundled all the functions. Of course > that would make it not-really-a-product, and they couldn't charge money for > it as easily. But instead it's a monolith that offers you little wiggle- > room.

Could you explain in details? Do you know that you can create own development platform or add support for new embedded board wihout our support? \- [http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/platforms/custom_platfo...](http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/platforms/custom_platform_and_board.html)

Yes, PIO Core 2.0 was monolitic. We rewrote it from scratch and announced decentrizlied PIO Core 3.0 in September, 2016: \- [http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/history.html#id7](http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/history.html#id7)

> They've since added unit testing, but only using a framework of their > choice. Which is nice, unless you already have a code base, or a preference > for a framework.

Which framework/workflow do you use for unit testing?

<comment><USER3> > Could you explain in details?

Mayb ein a separate post. That's a lot details :-)

> Do you know that you can create own development platform or add support for > new embedded board wihout our support?

But you would still force me to use PlatformIO as my build system, correct?

Now, assuming I accepted that:

How much effort is it for someone who doesn't know PlatformIO that well, doesn't know (or car about) SCons? Is it more or less effort than just using make/cmake/build system of my choice instead?

Can I be certain that I won't find out too late that I'm now locked in somehow? Are its processes truly flexible enough for what I need, and might need in the future?

Can I even (with reasonable effort) create new commands (e.g. platformio static_code_analysis) to shape PlatformIO to my needs?

> Yes, PIO Core 2.0 was monolitic. We rewrote it from scratch and announced > decentrizlied PIO Core 3.0

Nice. Can you give me a quick pointer on how to just use the uploader portion of PlatformIO given I already have binaries at some location?

> Which framework/workflow do you use for unit testing?

The one that makes the most sense. If I get to pick, I like to use Catch. But since the decision tends to have already been made for me (through existing test suites, or coworker's preferences), I use whichever is most practical.

Or even several in parallel, as is the case on my current project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PlatformIO is great. If you want to do serious work, and not just mess around with Arduino, it provides a great ecosystem and excellent tooling. No custom IDE necessary.

<comment><USER6> I especially love the library management part. There's no versioning, but it's really helpful to be able to just list your libraries and have them be automatically downloaded and linked to your executable.

<comment><USER7> I love and use PlatformIO, but I've dumped their library system because often the libraries in the pio db are a version or two behind what I can get from github.

<comment><USER4> It depends on a library manifest (library.json, library.properties or module.json). If library's author updates "version" field, then PIO Library Crawler will update it in a registry.

Please note that you can manually update manifest and make PR to author's repository. Click on "Manifest" tab when looking at a library in Web Registry and you will see "Edit" button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PlatformIO is just cool. Let me switch from Arduino IDE. Also, it provides great CLI tool so that it could be well integrated with other IDEs/Editors. Since I am a VS Code fan, so I could leverage the good CLI and build a PlatformIO extension for VS Code: [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=formulah...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=formulahendry.platformio)

</comment><comment><USER9> One major error in principle is that PlatformIO will infiltrate an existing Atom installation. PlatformIO can not be installed in parallel (as far as I know) and it will not warn before doing serious changes to your nicely nurtured Atom configuration.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing you mean the PlatformIO editor, which is different from PlatformIO itself. You can install PlatformIO without installing the editor at all, which is entirely how I use it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah sure but Atom is one of the most intriguing parts of PlatformIO, especially if you want a better alternative to the shitty Arduino Editor...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed using its CLI in a summer job two years ago, I used it for making some basic light-responsive RGB leds. Ivan Kravets was also very helpful and responsive in the issue tracker.

</comment><comment><USER11> Happy user here as well. Doing Arduino/ESP8266 development using macOS host. PlatformIO is a fresh breeze for embedded development.

<comment><USER12> I've been using [https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open- rtos](https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open-rtos). Who exactly is the target audience for PlatformIO?

<comment><USER11> Compare the 'Quick Start' documentation of esp-open-tool to ´brew install platformio´, ´platformio init´. That's pretty much the point of PlatformIO, I guess.

<comment><USER12> Right, but is the expectation to stay in that platform as one improves his skills?

<comment><USER11> I don't know. Personally, embedded programming is a hobby for me. As a long time unix user, I've no problems with complex development environment setups, but if there exists a _scripted_ , _tested_ , and _mainained_ alternative, I'll probably prefer that, because I don't want to recall the configuration details for every platform I program on (esp. if it's non-daily activity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work with Arduino on ESP chips.

I could not imagine embedded development without PlatformIO. With just so many types of hardware, each having slight dofferences and intricacies, it quickly becomes wasteful to use individual solutions. PlatformIO accomplishes so many goals at once, I am deeply grateful for this product!

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been using it for a while developing ESP8266 projects. It's really enjoyable to not having to mess around with Makefiles and managing dependencies myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> Been using it for a while. It's pretty good. Allows to do serious work in a controlled environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been using it for at least a year now, A++ would code again.</comment>


Seattle area meetup alternative app - <AUTHOR> http://getfeather.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HackerNews - We're Feather, and we just launched this morning.

Our thesis is that Meetup.com is failing because there's not enough motivated human organizers. Feather automates the organizing of meetups by figuring out the best time, place, and group for each user and sending a curated list of suggestions every weekend.

We're starting off with iOS users in the Seattle area. We'd love to hear feedback, thoughts, requests, etc.</comment>


I made a site for Swift programming jobs – it's free to post vacancies - <AUTHOR> http://www.swift-jobs.com <comment><USER2> Curious if the site was written in Swift.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the future hopefully it will be :) At present it's just a little ironic.</comment></comment>


Intelligent Canary Deployments in AWS ECS - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.snagajob.com/shifting-release-ownership-with-intelligent-canary-deployments-and-aws-ecs-3bc30ea6c624 <comment><USER2> This is awesome! The idea to first deploy the change to a small subset of docker containers, test it, and then roll the change out to the rest of the servers is truly amazing and controlled.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really innovative</comment>


SQL Server on Linux – get started - <AUTHOR> http://piotrgankiewicz.com/2017/01/30/sql-server-on-linux-get-started/ <comment><USER2> Has anyone been able to get the developer sku of sql server running on docker for Linux or windows? I'd like to get replication (pub and sub) working but it's slow going. Microsoft has since pulled the dockerfile that enabled the developer sku and has only given us the express file even though the developer edition is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried to do that, so unfortunately I'm not able to help you.

<comment><USER2> I open an issue on the github page and they said SQL Agent would be coming in either late feb or early march. So one might hope for at least transactional replication too</comment></comment></comment>


Improving DuckDuckGo - <AUTHOR> https://duck.co/help/privacy/atb <comment><USER2> If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off of me, I am willing to donate/pay for your service but cannot find any place on your site to do so.

<comment><USER3> White list their page.

<comment><USER4> I vehemently disagree with advertising in general, and go to efforts to make sure myself and my wife/kids see ads as little as possible (Pi-Hole, adblock plugins, no TV other than as a NAS screen, etc). I very much believe it is a form of malicious brainwashing.

But, I very much want to reward the people who create the things I use.

So I'll never whitelist any site or service, but I'll absolutely donate or make sure they get paid in other ways (and usually willingly donate more than they'd get from showing me ads).

<comment><USER5> I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

<comment><USER4> I have Pi-Hole on the network that every device in the house runs through, with extra blocklists and a year or so of manual tweaking, that covers most stuff. I also run ad block plugins just in case, don't allow commercial TV (they only watch Netflix or ABC Kids app), and that pretty much covers everything for our family.

It's also just a thing we keep in mind and work around in life. We won't use any service that has ads, or any site that finds ways around the Pi Hole, or watch shows/movies with heavy product placement, etc etc. It's just part of mine and my wife's core beliefs (privacy in general) so we just guide our kids towards "good" content and taught them from the minute they could understand, that "ads are bad, we don't like ads".

<comment><USER6>
      don't allow commercial TV (they only watch Netflix or ABC Kids app

How are Netflix and ABC Kids not "commercial"?

Even PBS is "commercial", given the growing practice of underwriter ads.

<comment><USER7> They probably meant TV shows with commercial break. Not sure about ABC but Netflix you can watch uninterrupted without ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I run [https://jivesearch.com](https://jivesearch.com), so I might be biased. The single biggest thing they can do to improve their product is open source everything. They've instead decided to move away from that by freezing their instant answers with no explanation as to if/when they will re-open source them. Makes me question their commitment to privacy and transparency.

<comment><USER9> Won't open sourcing the code make sites get to cheat their ranking by trying to make it rank logic friendly?

<comment><USER10> No because DDG is a frontend to Bing results. The ads are different (DDG shows Yahoo ads, which also shows Bing ads) and Bing shows Bing ads only.

<comment><USER11> Source?

<comment><USER12> [https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which > we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) > and Bing.

They do not have their own search index.

<comment><USER13> Really... You read the last part of that paragraph, but no the first?

>In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes).

Kinda silly to have a crawler that doesn't index anything.

<comment><USER12> They have an index but just for their Instant Answers (for which they have 400 sources) and not the organic search results. The last paragraph is what's relevant to the actual search index.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so.

For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is hardkernel.com. The first result from hardkernel comes up at #6 for me. I'd love to have a way to suggest the official domain for a product like that so it shows up as #1.

<comment><USER15> Are DDG users comfortable knowing that their search results are always going to be inferior?

<comment><USER16> I really don't think that the results on DDG are inferior, but I'm comfortable with the results. If I want something more personalize or near for my location(Venezuela is not available on DDG) I just go to Google directly or with !g

<comment><USER15> Search is significantly better when it can consider previous search history.

<comment><USER17> I actually think that breaks it, I like it better when everybody gets the same results for the same queries. People (via algorithms or directly) shaping what others get to see, rather than configuration and user empowerment, is something I reject.

<comment><USER15> I used to think that but now I see very little value in it to the current searcher. Why would you ever care what other people get?

<comment><USER17> To have that be part of the common world. Just like I wouldn't want Wikipedia to show a different version of the world to every visitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love duckduckgo and I feel I can almost replace google completely with it. I only have the following comments on it.

1\. They're hosted in the US. I wish the company would pick up and move to a country not within the 14 eyes and out of jurisdiction of the cyber super powers(US, China, and Russia). Maybe panama? At least move it virtually with a warrant canary in place.

2\. The search results need better contrasting colors for glancing through. Google is noticeable better with it's bolder fonts and better typeface/colors. I feel this would be easy place to innovate in over google.

3\. Better site specific searches. Right now you can search a specific site for results. For example right now you can search specific sites using `site:ycombinator.com rust programming langugage` and you will only get results from hackernews. It works great right now and I use daily in my workflows but it would be great to do this from the search bar for firefox or some better way.

Search engines have _alot_ of areas they can innovate in and I feel google with all its controversy(prism program, chinese state surveillance, etc) that many people would prefer to have their searches(and their life stories) in a company that values their users privacy to a fanatical extent.

<comment><USER19> > a country not within the 14 eyes

I hadn't heard that term; in case anyone else hadn't, this page explains it pretty well:

[https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/](https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/)

<comment><USER20> Is the OP Swiss and wants it hosted where he/she lives? I'd be fine with that as an alternative to US, but do not understand why that would be better than, say, Sweden

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish we had clear/consistent vocabulary for talking about privacy and personal data captured. This seemed pretty clear but it did take a lot of text to explain it and in the end, I still wanted to know if sessions are tagged together such that you can recreate sessions? Can you associate multiple sessions in anyway? You can tell a lot about an individual even if you don't know who they are from information like this.

</comment><comment><USER22> One request I have is to be able to filter results by longer time ranges. If that was added I could switch over.

<comment><USER23> Yeah agreed. As a js dev any search that isn't limited to 1 year is pretty much useless, but 1 month isn't enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > All of these requests are all fully encrypted in transit to DuckDuckGo, such > that nobody else but us can see them. And like with all other requests to > DuckDuckGo, there is no personally identifiable information embedded in > them, and we do not store IP addresses associated with them.

They say they don't Store IPs, but every request presumably has one. So it would be very easy for them to change this if they so wished, at which point their data collection wouldn't be anonymous. As much as I like DuckDuckGo, I'd really like it if I could trust that they protect my privacy without having to trust them that they are doing so.

<comment><USER25> It's hard for Duck Duck Go to deliberately put themselves in a position where they're unable to collect IP addresses.

You could, however, use them via their Tor onion service: [https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/](https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/)

It took me a while to find out somewhere where this is really run by them rather than a third-party proxy, but this seems to confirm it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1hdqs6/weve_upd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1hdqs6/weve_updated_our_tor_hidden_service_to_work_over/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > To be clear, this means we cannot ever tell what individual people are doing > since everyone is anonymous

Nope. This means that they tell us that they cannot tell what individual people are doing. But as they said right in the sentence before that, we are supposed to believe that they don't store IP addresses.

> And like with all other requests to DuckDuckGo, there is no personally > identifiable information embedded in them, and we do not store IP addresses > associated with them.

That is an outright lie even. HTTP Headers contain enough data already to make individuals distinguishable. Add some data science and you got some fancy profiles of your users.

I don't know what's going on with HN and DDG, but seriously is everyone just buying into this marketing bs? Why should I trust DDG with their claims about privacy instead of Google, Bing, or any other company?

</comment><comment><USER27> DuckDuckGo should start an email service.

<comment><USER28> How are they going to make money from that?

<comment><USER29> Charge a monthly / yearly fee?

<comment><USER28> if you are willing to pay for private email, why not any of the dozens of existing ones? e.g. protonmail or fast mail? there is little differentiation available for them here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love "private by design". It was easy to switch and results are good enough. As a publisher I do NOT like the cash donations model - too feudal for me.. I think donating time to improve product - as they are asking - makes more sense. Not sure I see value in them open sourcing their software. In short, I think DDG is great and should keep doing more of what they do.

</comment><comment> 100-xyz I used to use duckduckgo and liked it, till the Chinese government blocked it to protect me from the evils of the internet :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> DDG sells your attention, just like all of them. It's nothing about privacy, or selling your profile. You search a term, you get ads. When they say 'We don't sell your data', it is a distraction, they are selling your immediate attention. DDG is part of the yahoo-Microsoft search alliance. To advertise on DDG, use Bing Ads.

</comment><comment><USER32> Glad to see they built their product-use data tracking tools in house.

</comment><comment><USER33> Proudly using DDG search over the competitor!

</comment><comment><USER34> i tried to change google to duckduckgo. it was not sustainable. immediately noticeable poor search results. Searching an address brings me to a subpar open map site,

<comment><USER35> I don't know why you're being downvoted, because your experience is as valid as anybody else's. I'm with you, I can't switch to DDG because my productivity tanks with the poorer results than Google.

I tried Startpage as a sort of in-between solution, but that site's so dang slow.

<comment><USER36> > I don't know why you're being downvoted

HN users use the downvote to show disagreement. Ideally it would only be used to bury comments that were off topic, spam, etc, but the only system I've seen with a correct implementation of this is [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs).

Edit: This comment is a case in point since I've been downvoted less than 30 seconds after posting it. Ha. I challenge someone to prove me wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, please stop "auto-correcting" my queries!!!!! "you" "know" what I mean

<comment><USER13> Google does the same thing, and it even leaves out words if it believe that is won't give you (enough?) results.

But I agree, it's rare that auto-correcting helps me, more often than not it changes my search to something wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm waiting for DDG to integrate dates in the search results. Date is crucial to understand how new or old the content is. This is one of the reasons why I'm not using it.

</comment><comment><USER39> While we have a duckduckgo thread going, does anyone know when duckduckhack is coming back?

</comment><comment><USER40> could you determine who somebody is by evaluating the decision tree at each split?

</comment><comment><USER41> I would buy a router with Adblock filters enabled.

</comment><comment><USER42> Very nice ideas. I'll stay on ddg

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems completely reasonable to me.

</comment><comment><USER44> thanks ddg for improving user experience and privacy unlike other search engines. No wonder folks are not only blocking but using things like adnauseam - [https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam](https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam)</comment>


Ask HN: what cloud services do you want? - <AUTHOR>

Welcome to the quick-and-easy, single-page, no-patents-pending, not-got-much-rat-in-it Cloud Backend Services Survey!
A brief introduction: I'm Steve Newman, co-founder of Writely (now part of Google Docs) and ex-Google engineer. It seems to me that the Internet is on the cusp of a golden age of interdependent services. In particular, hosted (aka "cloud") services that are used as building blocks. This is an exciting field and what we've seen to date is just a warm-up.
I'd like to do my part to advance the state of the art, and to start with I'm gathering information on the status quo -- what services are you using, what is your experience, what would you like to see. If you're reading this, you're the kind of person I need help from. I've posted a short-and-sweet survey at http://app.fluidsurveys.com/s/backend-services/, or just respond here in the comment thread.
Since I'm asking the community for help, I'd like to give back as well. I'll do that in two ways:
1. By publishing the survey results on my blog (http://amistrongeryet.blogspot.com).
2. By donating to the EFF! For each survey response up to 200, I'll donate $2.50. If I get 200 responses, the donation will jump to $1000. (Disclaimer: the EFF has not endorsed this offer; they don't even know about it. I'll just write them a check.) <comment><AUTHOR> That survey link again: <http://app.fluidsurveys.com/s/backend-services/></comment>


"Microsoft security software (...) removes this unwanted software" (AskToolbar) - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/threat/encyclopedia/entry.aspx?Name=BrowserModifier%3AWin32%2FAskToolbarNotifier&wa=wsignin1.0#tab=1

<comment><USER2> I'm visiting the inlaws in a few days which means I'll be spending sometime removing browser toolbars. Again. Microsoft needs to remove a few more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Will Oracle, the ever righteous ask toolbar installer, sue Microsoft because of this? That, or will the makers of such toolbars do so?</comment>


TLS 1.3 Is an Opportunity for Amazon, Google and Microsoft to End Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2018/08/tls-1-3-is-coming-an-opportunity-for-amazon-google-and-microsoft-to-end-censorship/ <comment><USER2> Why would anybody think that Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are against censorship? Recent events have demonstrated that they love them some censorship, when they do it. Witness the case of gab.ai - Google was happy to pull their app from the Play store. Microsoft didn't mind at all threatening to shut down their Azure account unless they censored a post. The Azure case is particularly amazing. I can't believe the tech press isn't picking up on a supposed cloud provider threatening to shut down someone's account unless they make their website behave in a particular way.

I will say I haven't heard of Amazon censoring anything yet, at least not at a level I would consider massively inappropriate for a cloud services provider. Not selling something on their normal store is one thing, but pulling the plug on an AWS account for website behavior would be something entirely different.

<comment><USER3> AWS has absolutely taken down websites because they didn't like what was on them, just recently, in fact:

[https://freebeacon.com/issues/gun-rights-activists-posted- gu...](https://freebeacon.com/issues/gun-rights-activists-posted-gun-files- say-facebook-amazon-censored-site/)

I'm a journalist and have seen a screencap of the takedown that Amazon issued to the Firearms Policy Coalition, which started and maintains the censored site (CodeIsFreeSpeech.com). The takedown erroneously cited a temporary restraining order issued against an entirely different site (defcad.com) as the reason for the sudden, no-warning booting of the site from AWS.

And as you mentioned, Azure just now threatened to pull Gab.ai off its platform over a pair of anti-Semitic posts.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-gab-azure-cloud- an...](https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-gab-azure-cloud-anti- semitism-2018-8)

So these infrastructure providers are absolutely involved in censorship right now.

<comment><USER4> I wrote about this last year:

[https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of- corporate-...](https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate- censorship/)

It's easy to side with CloudFlair when they go against a site like The Daily Stormer (Which is so out there it might just fall into Poe's Law).

The fact is that most decent hosting is only available in a handful of industries. Even the CF CEO has had misgivings of his decision and it gets us into a really questionable space.

Platforms should be free to do what they want right? They should be able to deny customers .. just like an airplane company should be allowed to keep people who crazy political opinions from boarding plans right? .. oh and black people too. Oh wait..what?

The freedom of speech in the US is pretty limited to government censorship. But we don't let businesses do whatever they want. They can't keep a certain ethnic group from eating at their restaurant, and in many states they can't choose if their venue allows smoking. The big question is, does speech need to fit into this same framework?

With the recent child protection act that gutted craigslist and took down backpage (an act that is leading to more violence against sex workers in the US and an act that the EFF and ACLU are actively fighting as being unconstitutional), we see the US government holding content hosting companies liable for the criminal actions of their user base. That is disturbing and already a form of government control over what customers a business is allowed to have.

It'd be one thing if censored sites could just go to another provider, but there are only a couple of big providers and their mass has the ability to crush anything they find questionable.

<comment><USER5> It's actually worse than there being only a couple of big providers.

The problem is that the same sort of people who are trying to shut down sites through legal pressure tactics against Amazon, Google etc are absolutely happy to use illegal tactics too. In particular once sites are booted off large providers onto smaller ones or self hosted sites, that's when the DDoS attacks start. Infowars already saw one, for instance. How many firms can sink large DDoS attacks without needing to kick out the target? Not many.

If a pressure group or activist employee base can get content off CloudFlare, Google, Amazon and Microsoft then DDoS-wielding ideological zealots will do the rest and then the site is gone for good.

Where does speech go then?

It's a very dangerous game for the people at these content platforms to play. I don't see Republicans sitting back doing nothing as their worldview and voter base is systematically wiped off the internet. Legislation seems likely.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I see this all the time when otherwise reasonable people spout "oh well, Google/FB/Twitter are private companies so free speech argument does not apply to them and that racists/nazis etc aren't owed anything by social media platforms."

<comment><USER7> This is based on a slippery slope argument: if the major platforms can ban speech inciting violence against Jews and African-Americans, then what's to stop them from doing it for other classes of speech? The answer is that the public outcry for kicking off other kinds of users is likely to be more pronounced and more justified. I'm not shedding any tears for the Daily Stormer or Gab, and I don't view them as canaries in the coal mine.

<comment><USER8> Relying on public outcry to defend free speech is by definition guaranteed not to work, because the only speech that needs protecting is unpopular speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a few thoughts that come to mind.

One mistake we make frequently as tech people is trying to solve human relationship problems with a technology fixes. Censorship has existed for 10,000+ years; encrypted s night isn't going to magically fix it. There isn't an easy answer, just the hard path educate everyone.

Requiring encrypted sni will only mean the little influence thought leaders have in censored countries will be blotted our and replaced with state-run companies.

MITM proxies are a necessary evil, unfortunately, but the internet giants aren't doing a good job letting clients know when their TLS is being intercepted, so we're failing hard on education right now.

Also the makers of the commercial MITM proxies do a terrible job of staying current on TLS specs. This is likely in part due to customers being unwilling to install patches that cause a service interruption, so that should be taken into the design of said devices.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I think the recent death of domain fronting and the collateral damage from Russia blocking Telegram are pretty indicative.

Regimes are completely willing to block large chunks of the internet if they can't do targeted blocks. And cloud providers aren't particularly interested in using their customers as collateral.

I expect surveillance prone regimes to just block anything with encrypted SNI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is unfortunately inaccurate. TLS1.3 does not include encrypted SNI. Encrypted SNI is still being worked on by the TLS working group, and isn't in a deployable state.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the heads up. I've made some proxy software that routes on SNI. If TLS1.3 drops SNI then I feel like that will accelerate ipv6 adoption because we're going to need a shitload more IP addresses.

<comment><USER13> I'm not following the connection between how IPv6 would accelerate in the absence of SNI. Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER14> Without SNI the only way for a client to talk to this.example rather than that.example over TLS and thus HTTPS is to give this.example and that.example different IP addresses. There aren't enough addresses to plausibly do this in IPv4, but in IPv6 there are plenty (except in some unusual corner cases)

<comment><USER13> Indeed and I remember the bad old days of burning /24s for IP based virtual hosts in order to provide TLS. our current IPv4 exhaustion was the part I was missing. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seeing how search results are being censored in "free countries" due to things like the DMCA and The Right To Be Forgotten, maybe we shouldn't look to private companies to fix this issue.

<comment><USER14> Technology does have implications for whether a country can effectively control something. Consider this for example:

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/673425/Guidance_from_the_Secretary_of_State_for_Digital__Culture__Media_and_Sport_to_the_Age- Verification_Regulator_for_Online_Pornography_-_January_2018.pdf)

That's the UK government explaining how it's going to enforce a worldwide requirement for Age Verification on all sites with (what it considers to be) pornographic material.

Now regardless of whether you think this policy goal makes any actual sense, or whether a potential regulator would even try to do more than clamp down on UK porn companies that don't do age verification, the mechanism described has two halves to it:

1\. UK ISPs voluntarily block non-complaint sites in DNS

2\. Hopefully everybody uses their ISP's DNS servers

Why doesn't it say the UK government will make every ISP run all connections through a government-owned proxy to enforce these rules regardless of DNS? Because that would cost an eye-watering amount of money and "We had to raise taxes by 10% for our anti-pornography law" is a guaranteed vote loser. It would also be ineffective but let's see them spend that money first.

<comment><USER16> It has nothing to do with money. Setting up a DNS like that would not even require raising of taxes by 0.1%.

The reason is that the law is only a political battle. Once the battle and the marketing are over non of this law or how it is or is not implemented. At best you get a bunch of bureaucrats in place that monitor these things and write a report every so often. Those will be ignored until some politician is again interested in fighting this battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Encrypted SNI is great for individual privacy but terrible for business/corporate security.

At the moment it is possible to MITM proxy (without the possibility decryption) to inspect the SNI and determine if the host is allowed, and if so the proxy does its own IP resolution and transparently proxies/forwards the TCP traffic. Ie it never engages in the TLS session. This is useful for restricting access from a LAN to services hosted on large cloud provides like AWS, GCP, etc where fixed IPs are not available (well, the third party service/website elects to use a CDN/load balancer/etc without regard to the full security impact).

A good example is PCI DSS and the payment card LAN. You should firewall and lock down so devices can only communicate with necessary services. Along with actual payment services, these LANs often need to allow access out to third party loyalty systems, digital receipt systems, etc that are cloud based.

With Encrypted SNI this won't be possible to do securely anymore. A full MITM TLS decrypting proxy with explicitly configure clients will be required to ensure the encrypted SNI isn't changed to a malicous host to eg upload captured payment data to. That's a lot more overhead both in:

1\. Configuring clients to use a proxy and custom CA (let's hope all the various third parties apps support proxy setup and custom CAs, and no cert pinning!) 2\. Running a proxy that now it has to do full decryption and encryption (to make sure you aren't messing with the SNI and going to a host you shouldn't).

Of course I don't expect businesses to these lengths until there has been a serious breach exploiting encrypted SNI. Even then I don't know which side will take action (or if neither side will)— merchants installing MITM proxies (unlikely), or third party service providers ditching load balancers and sticking to fixed IPs on their cloud hosts (less unlikely).

<comment><USER18> Aren't businesses that are serious about meeting their legal/regulatory obligations for controlling internet access already using full MITM TLS interception with their own CAs?

Given a malicious actor can register any old domain and get a cert for it very easily, I'm not sure what particular threat blocking TLS connections based just on the SNI is actually protecting you from.

<comment><USER17> Think of all the small 1-2 employee businesses / mom & pop businesses etc that take credit cards. They have no dedicated IT person. They'd be lucky to have a dedicated LAN for payments (a PCI DSS requirement). Increasing the barriers to compliance for these people is not a good thing. In practice they will just close their eyes and pretend nothing is wrong, or they will just pay the fine charges by the banks for non compliance— which doesn't improve your credit card security at all.

You can't tell all these small businesses they can't take card payments, and you can't make an already tough job harder, more complex and more expensive without an associated drop in compliance.

<comment><USER18> 1-2 person businesses are likely outsourcing the entire problem of payment processing (and thus, the majority of the PCI controls) to a 3rd party like Stripe. The only PCI compliance needed then is an annual self-attestation which basically asks "Did you change your router's default password?" and "do you apply patches?" [1]

There _may_ be some mildly masochistic tiny businesses that choose to process / store payment details on their own networks and try to manage all the controls needed for that, but in the presence of so many options for outsourcing the problem, this doesn't seem like a particularly rational decision.

> You can't tell all these small businesses they can't take card payments, and > you can't make an already tough job harder, more complex and more expensive > without an associated drop in compliance.

This is only true if there are no sane alternatives.

[1] [https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/PCI- DSS-v3_2_...](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/PCI- DSS-v3_2_1-SAQ-A.pdf)

<comment><USER17> For bricks and mortar businesses Stripe won't help much, still need a chip and PIN reader on premise.

Square on the other hand does let you outsource the entire problem of physical card payments to them, at the cost of much higher fees, as they are the merchant of record so you don't need to be PCI compliant at all. Which is a real worry as that doesn't give me much confidence when buying from a square "seller".

Their card reader originally didn't encrypt data, and at least one model that did encrypt could be bypassed via tampering [https://www.zdnet.com/article/square-reader-to-card- skimmer-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/square-reader-to-card-skimmer-in- less-than-10-minutes/) and while their current hardware may or may not have issues, they display a distinct lack of concern for local device security. Defense in depth is the way to go, but with Square you can put your Android/iOS device onto any WiFi network and without any security on who else is on it. Likewise you can download any random app that may look innocent enough but is full of exploits (eg an app that claims to help you manage a customer mailing list so you can grab signups on the same device as you take payments, or an app that claims to help with inventory levels, etc).

<comment><USER18> Can you link the PCI requirement that means anyone who simply accepts physical payments needs to TLS-intercept all network traffic?

<comment><USER17> See requirement 1.2 of [https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/PCI_DSS_v3-2-...](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/PCI_DSS_v3-2-1.pdf)

Only services necessary for the business should be allowed in/out. If the service can't be firewalled by simple IP:port then you are left with having to use a proxy to enforce the access control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ESNI is sadly not in the final standard, only in a seperate RFC. Hopefully it'll be ready soon...

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure that many countries will block Amazon, Google and whatever else if needed. It won't end censorship, it would make life of ordinary people there even harder.

<comment><USER21> But, if they do, they have a tougher sell. They might get away with "we're just protecting you from certain sites we deem harmful, and we're thorough with your best interests in mind" when they block specific sites. It requires a far more gullible public to pull that off if it's more than half the Internet.

<comment><USER22> They'll just spin it as "supporting local businesses" who could not compete with FANG otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > If Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure allow domain > fronting with TLS 1.3, censorship countries like China are faced with a > binary choice.

This sounds inaccurate to me. If encrypted SNI is applied, the middleman should not be able to figure out which domain you are connecting to, without interrupting the connection. Domain fronting is a technique for prior TLS which you had to disguise the hostname.

<comment><USER14> Encrypted SNI isn't a feature of TLS 1.3. The article never outright says that it is, but it manages to give that impression.

It was a desirable feature, but it wasn't delivered even for the final drafts at the top of this year, let alone back in 2016 when TLS 1.3 was originally thought to be finished.

The TLS Working Group is going to adopt it (consensus at IETF 102 and on the mailing list was to adopt) but there's a LOT of work needed before Rescorla's rough sketch turns into something you'd want to actually deploy to millions of users.

Here's the email about adopting (Joe is one of the WG chairs) Rescorla's draft.

[https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg26842.h...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg26842.html)

Note that this is nowhere close to a finished feature. They're not sure whether to do DNS TXT records, whether this should live in a SRV record, some new DNS record (DNS Ops doesn't like TXT, but real world DNS services often don't have fancy new records for years because they're crap). They're not even sure if this should be two documents (one about DNS, one about how you use the keys which you presumably got from DNS) or just one.

Because TLS 1.3 doesn't always (today never) encrypt SNI, a middleman could just insist on refusing connections with encrypted SNI. This becomes a staring contest - do the browsers deploy this anyway, and risk losing customers in places where governments have deployed a technology to prohibit it, or do they blink and hide it in some "Privacy" feature no ordinary users will ever enable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The problem is that Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud currently do not > allow domain fronting. Only Microsoft Azure does.

Is there an official word from Microsoft that they allow it or just "they didn't ban it yet"?

</comment><comment><USER25> TLS 1.3 is just a protocol for transporting encrypting communications. We have had such protocols for a long time. Censorship has continued unabated.

There is no technical solution that can prevent censorship. Censorship is a social issue. If a government policy, or the policy of a privately held corporation, insists on censoring something, it will do so.

Literally the only way a transport protocol could end censorship is if a law were enacted that specifically stated _" This protocol may not be circumvented or obstructed by any party, private or public, by any means, for the purpose of censorship."_.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Currently, SNI in TLS 1.2 has a flaw that allows censors to differentiate > between a "real" service and a "fake" service if they are savvy enough to > figure it out. Interestingly, SNI in TLS 1.3 fixes this problem by hiding > all of the information about the service behind encryption.

Isn't this (Encrypted SNI) was the one been extensively discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17538390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17538390) ?

This is great. I hope CDNs like Cloudflare etc deploy it ASAP. Also, deprecate previous TLS versions as ASAP so it can be more effective.

<comment><USER27> That was my thought reading the article. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft- ietf-tls-sni-encryption-03](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-sni- encryption-03) indicates this is not a solved problem for TLS 1.3, and the key in DNS solution is still in the experimental phase (though compatible with TLS 1.3)

This article is premature?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The issue with dealing with nation states, is that they actually have the power of physical coercion. Even if you have a technical solution to say domain front, the nation state depending on how big it is, may just make it a crime to domain front a censored site. They can levy civil penalties and possibly even criminal penalties against the company/employees. There is not much benefit to the company to go against a nation state actor.

</comment><comment><USER29> In fact, google cloud already be blocked by GFW. Many of AWS server's ip have been blocked by GFW. Only Azure can be used in China.

<comment><USER30> Yeah the article writes "They can either block gigantic swaths of the Internet (and face enormous backlash) or allow SNI to work" but I think China shows that depressingly the enormous backlash is a myth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article is ironically censored for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> The author does not consider that a filter can block TLS 1.3 and force apps to continue using TLS 1.2.

<comment><USER33> The downgrade protection in 1.3 is supposedly much better than 1.2, [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8446#section-4.1.3](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8446#section-4.1.3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unless TLS 1.3 includes built-in stenography, it will do nothing for censhorship. Oppressive regions have historically used simple throttling/DoS to make encrypted protocols unusable.

</comment><comment><USER35> That assumes they want to end censorship. Google, for instance, outright participates in political censorship, especially on Youtube - I've seen many right and alt-right youtubers disappear or get strikes for something unimportant that the left does without any repercussions. They also fired Damore for quite mild comments about sex/gender.

<comment><USER36> If Chinese government was only censoring racists / misogynists / homophobes, I'm sure less people wouldn't have a problem with that.

<comment><USER8> How about we don't censor based on what is the most political palatable? Censorship via racism is especially slippery these days, should Sarah Jeong be censored or the NYT taken down for publishing articles written by a racist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why is the assumption always that AMZN, GOOG and MSFT doesn't want censorship? Especially when they have taken to censorship like duck to water.

Why is the assumption that when given a "binary choice", entities like China, EU, etc would give in to tech companies? Especially when these companies so easily succumbed to US government/media pressure at home where we have a strong tradition of free speech? When a binary choice is created, it's the companies that have given in, not the state.

Why are these tech companies being portrayed as being on the side of "good", while nations are portrayed as being on the side of "bad". The idea that AMZN, GOOG and MSFT have chinese, european or anyone else's best interest at heart while the PRC, EU or any other state doesn't. Did the british east india company have india's best interest at heart compared to mughal india? Considering how suspiciously we view foreign companies ( especially chinese tech companies ), it's odd that we view our own so highly.

<comment><USER38> I don't like Google as a whole.

But I don't think Google is evil, in the sense of doing bad things because they're bad. At a low resolution, I think it responds to incentives and tries to make as much money as it can get away with. At a higher resolution, it's made up of a lot of people and smaller groups that each have their own incentives to follow, and whose goals don't exactly line up with Google's.

Fighting censorship is nice for PR, supporting censorship is bad for PR. Some (not all!) ways of supporting censorship might help make more money, but good PR also helps make more money, so it's a trade-off. Drawing attention to Google's ability to fight censorship slightly shifts that trade-off.

But not all of Google's decisions are made centrally. Many (almost all, I would guess) people in Google are well-meaning, and I expect they can get away with making good decisions a lot of the time. The people working on TLS probably aren't individually pro-censorship just because they work for Google, which means they may not make pro-censorship decisions unless specifically pressured to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sure if these companies want to lose market share. And whats censorship? Who decides, the US? No thanks.</comment>