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Bad Outcomes

I had a recent experience with an Airbnb host cancelling on me while we were on our way to her home. This left us stranded in the middle of a new city in a foreign country close to 11 pm. She insisted that I cancel even though she was the one who was no longer able to accommodate because the penalties for her to cancel were very punitive. The whole experience left a terrible taste in the mouth. This was an elderly woman who was still working every day -the income from being a host might not be discretionary for her. Yet the situation she put me in made me unwilling to work with her. She did get penalized, I was refunded in full and one way to see the event was that I as a guest came out ahead. 

But when large numbers of actors are involved on both sides - guests and hosts, a sharp skew by the platform to favor one or the other category all the time will end up having bad consequences for everyone. This incident made me think about intention and outcome - the elimination of 3rd party cookies for example. This is meant to be a good thing for consumers but my guess is that it will backfire. We will be consenting to share much more than would have been possible by way of a 3rd party cookie because we will never have the time to read the legalese the precedes the click of a button that captures our intent. 

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