#airbnb customer service

[sreepadamangaraj]

The top 3 perks of running a serviced accommodation business.

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

So that's delightful: the desk beneath which I've been storing my (open) suitcase is COVERED IN MOLD

And now all my shit has mold growing on it. ALL OF IT

[headlinehorizon]

AI Revolutionizing Airbnb: Enhancing Customer Service and Personalizing Experiences

In a recent meeting, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky discussed the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the home-sharing platform. Chesky highlighted the transformative power of AI in improving customer service and optimizing the search process. Discover how AI is set to revolutionize Airbnb with personalized experiences and round-the-clock support.

[monicascot]

Are you ready for Airbnb scorecard! 🏡💯

Running an Airbnb business requires careful attention to various aspects to ensure a successful and profitable operation. Firstly, it's important to create an appealing listing that accurately represents your property and highlights its unique features. High-quality photos and detailed descriptions can attract potential guests and set realistic expectations.

[alphajocklover]

AirBoyfriendNBoyfriend

**based off an ask I accidentally deleted, but had already written a story for. I don't remember the exact words, but I'll do my best to paraphrase. Was written with the help of my friend, editor and beta reader, @innermostthoughtsartappreciation **

'My 2 straight friends and I are going on vacation together. We went to our AirBnB but things have been weird since we got here. One of my friends seems more muscular than usual? He was already pretty tall but not he's really built. And last night I swear I heard my friends talking about sex in the other room or something? And this morning I woke up with a ring on my finger? Whats happening?'

You say this all started because you and your two friends went to an Airbnb? And you woke up with a ring on your finger?

In this case, what's happening isn’t some sort of elaborate conspiracy conducted by a shadowy cabal, nor is it some nefarious scheme by one of your friends/enemies to transform you to their liking, nor is it anything else of that sort. What happened here is very simple: you guys used the wrong AirBnB.

No doubt you all know that I’ve talked about EB Jewelry before. You know the jewelry company that transforms people using their products. They’re one of, if not, the biggest name in the transformation business. Still, there are plenty of other companies out there that use transformation devices and items. Most are much smaller than EB Jewelry and try to fly under the radar when it comes to being able to transform people, but they are still out there. Including the very AirBnB that you and your friends signed up for. Air-Boyfriend-and-Boyfriend. Usually only referred to as simply AirBFnBF by those who use it, they’re often mistaken for AirBnB. You probably think they should be sued for copyright infringement, but you are entirely wrong. It is shockingly near impossible to sue a company that uses magic, and not as shockingly completely not worth the hassle and complications it would cause. For a $70 billion company like the real AirBnB to sue.

Despite their similar-sounding names and acronyms, the two companies do wildly different things and cater to a rather starkly different clientele. Airbnb lets you rent different houses for short periods and market themselves for all people to use, while AirBFnBF lets you rent out different relationships for however you wish to be in them, and usually exclusively caters their services to gay men.

Here's how it works. Just like with Airbnb, you go into the app or on their website and you choose the place you want to stay at during the duration of your trip from the list of vacant places. Unlike AirBnB however, you also get to choose the people you want to become during your trip. You can customize whoever each party member becomes, and your relationship to and with each other. It’s a way for groups of people, though usually a couple, to try out different fantasies and sexual scenarios together.

What I believe must have happened was that one of your friends earnestly mistook the AirBFnBF app for the AirBnB app, and skipped the relationship settings page entirely because he didn’t understand what it was for what it was supposed to mean. Therefore, if he did do that, the app would have gone to a random fixed preset, which there aren’t a lot of for a group of three men.

I have a friend who works for AirBFnBF, and they told me you guys have probably been randomly assigned their most popular thresome preset: A Newlywed Throuple: consisting of a Hunk, a Muscle Daddy, and a Twunk. I know it sounds strangely specific, but you’d be surprised by just how many people love to use this one Throuple in particular.

You’re going to be in for a lot of surprises during these next two weeks. Including a new body, new memories, and a ludicrous amount of hot & steamy sex with your two new husbands. None of you will remember your true- selves until the two-week vacation rental is over. So until then, enjoy yourself!

That's what you’re supposed to do on a honeymoon after all. Your friends will probably be very confused when these two weeks are over. However, on the off chance they or you all enjoy being big gay hunks and having tons of hot & steamy sex with you or together, there is a permanent settlement option you can invoke. It cost a small fortune, but with how happy, hot, and horny the three of you are all acting together now, I'd bet anything you guys will make your money back in no time

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech disrupted disruption

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/08/permanent-overlords/#republicans-want-to-defund-the-police

Before "disruption" turned into a punchline, it was a genuinely exciting idea. Using technology, we could connect people to one another and allow them to collaborate, share, and cooperate to make great things happen.

It's easy (and valid) to dismiss the "disruption" of Uber, which "disrupted" taxis and transit by losing $31b worth of Saudi royal money in a bid to collapse the world's rival transportation system, while quietly promising its investors that it would someday have pricing power as a monopoly, and would attain profit through price-gouging and wage-theft.

Uber's disruption story was wreathed in bullshit: lies about the "independence" of its drivers, about the imminence of self-driving taxis, about the impact that replacing buses and subways with millions of circling, empty cars would have on traffic congestion. There were and are plenty of problems with traditional taxis and transit, but Uber magnified these problems, under cover of "disrupting" them away.

But there are other feats of high-tech disruption that were and are genuinely transformative – Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, RSS, and more. These disruptive technologies altered the balance of power between powerful institutions and the businesses, communities and individuals they dominated, in ways that have proven both beneficial and durable.

When we speak of commercial disruption today, we usually mean a tech company disrupting a non-tech company. Tinder disrupts singles bars. Netflix disrupts Blockbuster. Airbnb disrupts Marriott.

But the history of "disruption" features far more examples of tech companies disrupting other tech companies: DEC disrupts IBM. Netscape disrupts Microsoft. Google disrupts Yahoo. Nokia disrupts Kodak, sure – but then Apple disrupts Nokia. It's only natural that the businesses most vulnerable to digital disruption are other digital businesses.

And yet…disruption is nowhere to be seen when it comes to the tech sector itself. Five giant companies have been running the show for more than a decade. A couple of these companies (Apple, Microsoft) are Gen-Xers, having been born in the 70s, then there's a couple of Millennials (Amazon, Google), and that one Gen-Z kid (Facebook). Big Tech shows no sign of being disrupted, despite the continuous enshittification of their core products and services. How can this be? Has Big Tech disrupted disruption itself?

That's the contention of "Coopting Disruption," a new paper from two law profs: Mark Lemley (Stanford) and Matthew Wansley (Yeshiva U):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4713845

The paper opens with a review of the literature on disruption. Big companies have some major advantages: they've got people and infrastructure they can leverage to bring new products to market more cheaply than startups. They've got existing relationships with suppliers, distributors and customers. People trust them.

Diversified, monopolistic companies are also able to capture "involuntary spillovers": when Google spends money on AI for image recognition, it can improve Google Photos, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps and many other products. A startup with just one product can't capitalize on these spillovers in the same way, so it doesn't have the same incentives to spend big on R&D.

Finally, big companies have access to cheap money. They get better credit terms from lenders, they can float bonds, they can tap the public markets, or just spend their own profits on R&D. They can also afford to take a long view, because they're not tied to VCs whose funds turn over every 5-10 years. Big companies get cheap money, play a long game, pay less to innovate and get more out of innovation.

But those advantages are swamped by the disadvantages of incumbency, all the various curses of bigness. Take Arrow's "replacement effect": new companies that compete with incumbents drive down the incumbents' prices and tempt their customers away. But an incumbent that buys a disruptive new company can just shut it down, and whittle down its ideas to "sustaining innovation" (small improvements to existing products), killing "disruptive innovation" (major changes that make the existing products obsolete).

Arrow's Replacement Effect also comes into play before a new product even exists. An incumbent that allows a rival to do R&D that would eventually disrupt its product is at risk; but if the incumbent buys this pre-product, R&D-heavy startup, it can turn the research to sustaining innovation and defund any disruptive innovation.

Arrow asks us to look at the innovation question from the point of view of the company as a whole. Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" looks at the motivations of individual decision-makers in large, successful companies. These individuals don't want to disrupt their own business, because that will render some part of their own company obsolete (perhaps their own division!). They also don't want to radically change their customers' businesses, because those customers would also face negative effects from disruption.

A startup, by contrast, has no existing successful divisions and no giant customers to safeguard. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from disruption. Where a large company has no way for individual employees to initiate major changes in corporate strategy, a startup has fewer hops between employees and management. What's more, a startup that rewards an employee's good idea with a stock-grant ties that employee's future finances to the outcome of that idea – while a giant corporation's stock bonuses are only incidentally tied to the ideas of any individual worker.

Big companies are where good ideas go to die. If a big company passes on its employees' cool, disruptive ideas, that's the end of the story for that idea. But even if 100 VCs pass on a startup's cool idea and only one VC funds it, the startup still gets to pursue that idea. In startup land, a good idea gets lots of chances – in a big company, it only gets one.

Given how innately disruptable tech companies are, given how hard it is for big companies to innovate, and given how little innovation we've gotten from Big Tech, how is it that the tech giants haven't been disrupted?

The authors propose a four-step program for the would-be Tech Baron hoping to defend their turf from disruption.

First, gather information about startups that might develop disruptive technologies and steer them away from competing with you, by investing in them or partnering with them.

Second, cut off any would-be competitor's supply of resources they need to develop a disruptive product that challenges your own.

Third, convince the government to pass regulations that big, established companies can comply with but that are business-killing challenges for small competitors.

Finally, buy up any company that resists your steering, succeeds despite your resource war, and escapes the compliance moats of regulation that favors incumbents.

Then: kill those companies.

The authors proceed to show that all four tactics are in play today. Big Tech companies operate their own VC funds, which means they get a look at every promising company in the field, even if they don't want to invest in them. Big Tech companies are also awash in money and their "rival" VCs know it, and so financial VCs and Big Tech collude to fund potential disruptors and then sell them to Big Tech companies as "aqui-hires" that see the disruption neutralized.

On resources, the authors focus on data, and how companies like Facebook have explicit policies of only permitting companies they don't see as potential disruptors to access Facebook data. They reproduce internal Facebook strategy memos that divide potential platform users into "existing competitors, possible future competitors, [or] developers that we have alignment with on business models." These categories allow Facebook to decide which companies are capable of developing disruptive products and which ones aren't. For example, Amazon – which doesn't compete with Facebook – is allowed to access FB data to target shoppers. But Messageme, a startup, was cut off from Facebook as soon as management perceived them as a future rival. Ironically – but unsurprisingly – Facebook spins these policies as pro-privacy, not anti-competitive.

These data policies cast a long shadow. They don't just block existing companies from accessing the data they need to pursue disruptive offerings – they also "send a message" to would-be founders and investors, letting them know that if they try to disrupt a tech giant, they will have their market oxygen cut off before they can draw breath. The only way to build a product that challenges Facebook is as Facebook's partner, under Facebook's direction, with Facebook's veto.

Next, regulation. Starting in 2019, Facebook started publishing full-page newspaper ads calling for regulation. Someone ghost-wrote a Washington Post op-ed under Zuckerberg's byline, arguing the case for more tech regulation. Google, Apple, OpenAI other tech giants have all (selectively) lobbied in favor of many regulations. These rules covered a lot of ground, but they all share a characteristic: complying with them requires huge amounts of money – money that giant tech companies can spare, but potential disruptors lack.

Finally, there's predatory acquisitions. Mark Zuckerberg, working without the benefit of a ghost writer (or in-house counsel to review his statements for actionable intent) has repeatedly confessed to buying companies like Instagram to ensure that they never grow to be competitors. As he told one colleague, "I remember your internal post about how Instagram was our threat and not Google+. You were basically right. The thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.”

All the tech giants are acquisition factories. Every successful Google product, almost without exception, is a product they bought from someone else. By contrast, Google's own internal products typically crash and burn, from G+ to Reader to Google Videos. Apple, meanwhile, buys 90 companies per year – Tim Apple brings home a new company for his shareholders more often than you bring home a bag of groceries for your family. All the Big Tech companies' AI offerings are acquisitions, and Apple has bought more AI companies than any of them.

Big Tech claims to be innovating, but it's really just operationalizing. Any company that threatens to disrupt a tech giant is bought, its products stripped of any really innovative features, and the residue is added to existing products as a "sustaining innovation" – a dot-release feature that has all the innovative disruption of rounding the corners on a new mobile phone.

The authors present three case-studies of tech companies using this four-point strategy to forestall disruption in AI, VR and self-driving cars. I'm not excited about any of these three categories, but it's clear that the tech giants are worried about them, and the authors make a devastating case for these disruptions being disrupted by Big Tech.

What do to about it? If we like (some) disruption, and if Big Tech is enshittifying at speed without facing dethroning-by-disruption, how do we get the dynamism and innovation that gave us the best of tech?

The authors make four suggestions.

First, revive the authorities under existing antitrust law to ban executives from Big Tech companies from serving on the boards of startups. More broadly, kill interlocking boards altogether. Remember, these powers already exist in the lawbooks, so accomplishing this goal means a change in enforcement priorities, not a new act of Congress or rulemaking. What's more, interlocking boards between competing companies are illegal per se, meaning there's no expensive, difficult fact-finding needed to demonstrate that two companies are breaking the law by sharing directors.

Next: create a nondiscrimination policy that requires the largest tech companies that share data with some unaffiliated companies to offer data on the same terms to other companies, except when they are direct competitors. They argue that this rule will keep tech giants from choking off disruptive technologies that make them obsolete (rather than competing with them).

On the subject of regulation and compliance moats, they have less concrete advice. They counsel lawmakers to greet tech giants' demands to be regulated with suspicion, to proceed with caution when they do regulate, and to shape regulation so that it doesn't limit market entry, by keeping in mind the disproportionate burdens regulations put on established giants and small new companies. This is all good advice, but it's more a set of principles than any kind of specific practice, test or procedure.

Finally, they call for increased scrutiny of mergers, including mergers between very large companies and small startups. They argue that existing law (Sec 2 of the Sherman Act and Sec 7 of the Clayton Act) both empower enforcers to block these acquisitions. They admit that the case-law on this is poor, but that just means that enforcers need to start making new case-law.

I like all of these suggestions! We're certainly enjoying a more activist set of regulators, who are more interested in Big Tech, than we've seen in generations.

But they are grossly under-resourced even without giving them additional duties. As Matt Stoller points out, "the DOJ's Antitrust Division has fewer people enforcing anti-monopoly laws in a $24 trillion economy than the Smithsonian Museum has security guards."

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/congressional-republicans-to-defund

What's more, Republicans are trying to slash their budgets even further. The American conservative movement has finally located a police force they're eager to defund: the corporate police who defend us all from predatory monopolies.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[wormshirt]

The biggest mistake i think you could make in making a "they're humans doing a dnd rp" au of dungeon meshi would be making the mistake of having the campaign be a campaign run between friends or at a club or gaming store or something. No. That's happening at a convention. That's Gencon. Garycon. Whatever. Listen to me. No matter what in any other situation you could leave. Some of those characters are so extremely polite that they would be trapped within the shackles of social convention, but there are essential characters in dungeon meshi who would simply Not Put Up With Laios's Shit unless they had paid for transportation, food, an Airbnb, multiple events/event tickets, planned a full weekend's schedule, AND were also stuck there under threat of LITERALLY HAVING TO WAIT TO CATCH A FLIGHT BACK HOME or BEING PAID TO RUN TABLES AS A DUNGEON MASTER. Plus you have a direct allegory for the dungeon sucking the soul out of you- your glorified customer service job. And I fully honest to god believe that there is literally no other scenario in which you could properly recreate the feeling when a character is talking to Laios and realizes. "OH. *I'M* trapped in here with *HIM*."

[broughtandborn]

I got a message this morning that Airbnb had cancelled my reservation for our trip to Baltimore later this month "due to concerns about the quality and reliability of the listing". Apparently they have a customer service thing where some polite dude called me and asked some questions about where we were trying to stay, how many people, etc., and then he sent me a possible replacement listing. However, the replacement was not in walking distance of anything we were trying to go see, so I found a hotel that'll work instead, and apparently Airbnb will still refund us the extra charge they were willing to cover for the new listing?? So I call to book the hotel after getting like zero work done today and I'm getting off the phone with the guy while I'm reading the confirmation email and I definitely said "okay, love you, bye" to the polite gentleman who helped me book the room, so that's my day.

[piratefalls]

i don't have a snarky opening line this week. have fic instead.

masterlist.

(make me) misbehave by r_holland

Alex Claremont-Diaz has done it again. The Texas-born singer-songwriter released his fourth studio album second skin Thursday at midnight. Full of Claremont-Diaz’s signature lyricism, critics are praising the album for the cohesive image it paints. second skin is the result of a young writer at the top of his game, and every lyric depicts for the listener a picture of a sun-drenched secret romance. Fans are clamoring to be the first to uncover the mystery girl at the center of it all, although Claremont-Diaz remains tight-lipped on the subject… -- Or: Alex Claremont-Diaz is a singer-songwriter rising up in the music industry. Henry Fox is the shining star of an acting empire. This is a love story.

NFWMB by cricketnationrise

5 Times Alex Fights Customer Service for Henry + 1 Time He Doesn't Have To

falling in love (in the cruelest way) by coffeecatsme

“Alex?” The name makes Alex stop halfway to the register and look back. Henry is standing in the same spot, shifting from foot to foot, before he juts his chin out. He meets Alex’s eyes. “Where are you traveling to?” Or, Alex picks up a stranger on a road trip, only to realize too late he's the missing Prince of Wales.

We've Got To Stop Meeting like This by everwitch

Alex books an Airbnb studio with a shared bathroom. The other studio is occupied by a man with lush pink lips and impressive personal hygiene — really, he’s super diligent about lathering and rinsing. Alex would know, seeing as the lock to the bathroom is seriously unreliable. Or: the Airbnb romp you didn’t know you needed.

quad shot americano by saintlynomenclature

Like always, Henry’s made it perfectly—the espresso is rich, decidedly not burnt, and the cinnamon tastes like it’s been infused rather than sprinkled in. “How the fuck do you do this?” Alex demands, taking another sip as Henry laughs at him. “If I tell you, you won’t come back.” Henry smiles, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. Alex lets his eyes follow the line of Henry’s shoulders, falling down to the veins in his forearms after the ends of his bunched-up sleeves. The ring on Henry’s left pinky doesn’t reflect in the lowlight of the back corner—without the sun glinting off of it, Alex can finally see that the surface of it is engraved. “If you think coffee's the only thing keeping me around, sweetheart, then I need to try harder.” The blush coats Henry’s cheeks again. He dips his head bashfully, eyes skating away from Alex’s face. “Whatever will I do with you?” he murmurs under his breath.

- Or, Alex spends an exorbitant amount of money on coffee.

Not So Silent Night by inexplicablymine

Sure, Alex can admit in the deepest recesses of his mind, at two in the morning, when the Liszt is playing forlornly like some kind of bugle call for grief, that whoever the fuck lives next to him is on another level with the keys. Or Alex has no idea who his piano playing neighbor is, but Alex knows one thing for certain… This means war.

Airplane Mode by clottedcreamfudge

Getting into an argument with someone in the airport lounge had probably been a mistake, in hindsight; Alex knows this. But with so many fucking delays and the fact that the signal on his phone is currently making it about as useful as two paper cups joined by a piece of string, he’s kind of on-edge. It’s not entirely his fault that he snaps. Attractive people with perfect hair who take the last almond croissant before Alex can get to it probably just need to understand this. Alex is at the end of his tether, and he will not be swayed by, “Well, I was here first,” in a British accent so smooth it could butter bread.

something more, something right by rizcriz

Alex blinks at him, seemingly entirely unimpressed. “So, you’re just going to pretend we’re not in love with each other?” 

here the whole time by HypnosTheory

Alex frowns, massaging Henry’s scalp. “It feels like you’re getting headaches more often babe. Anything wrong?” “It’s nothing,” Henry says, melting under Alex’s fingers on his scalp. “My suppressants are just killing my head. Think I’ve been taking them too long, I probably need a break soon.” Alex hums thoughtfully. “Or you could get off them for good.” -- Married and bonded, Henry and Alex decide it's about time to get off suppressants and start enjoying their bond fully.

Of Who I Am (Golden) by MayQueen517

There's magic and Henry is hiding something. Alex is determined to figure it out at all costs.

Dependence is a Childhood Illness by aubsoluteaudacity

As he stands by the counter and waits for the kettle to boil, Henry goes over his illness management tactics in his head. Drink lots of tea and water. Take more medication whenever he reasonably can. Never, ever, let anyone see how sick he is. He has been following this mantra since his late teens. Royalty isn’t allowed to miss an event because of a cold. It simply isn’t done to stay in bed when there are hands to press and ribbons to cut.

pictures of you (pictures of me) by yeolocity

alex keeps polaroids.

If You Love Something by allmylovesatonce

Alex calls Henry to tell him a funny incident from his day. When a miscommunication sends them both reeling, both of them are questioning if the other is wanting to end their relationship. Their friends take things upon themselves to get them to see eye to eye.

An Amateur's Guide to Piping That Cream and Beating That Meat by firenati0n

Alex invites Henry to his Extremely Specific and Ethnic Friendsgiving dinner, issuing a stern warning—no beige foods and no colonizer behavior. So basically, Henry's screwed. In an effort to find the perfect recipe, Henry stumbles upon a popular TikTok chef who thirst traps from the neck down and flusters Henry to his core. But his food is banging, along with the bod. A recipe for feral disaster. Or, Alex is an anonymous thirst-trapping chef on TikTok. Henry is an amateur cook who needs a recipe for Friendsgiving. Alex knows Henry's watching. Henry doesn't know it's Alex. Shenanigans ensue.

it's midnight in Texas by viciouslyqueer

When Henry mentions a charity polo match in Connecticut, Alex doesn’t think much of it. When Henry asks him on a date and puts him on a plane to Paris, Alex smiles and lets himself be romanced. When Henry says he wants to do it right, Alex is too in love to protest.

we should get married by smc_27

He’d spent most of the week sitting on the floor with his laptop open on the table, typing away about absolute nonsense in between sessions and phone calls with immigration and a lawyer trying to see if it’s possible there’s any way in the world he can stay in America while this gets sorted. The good news is this doesn’t bar him from trying again and just returning when it all gets sorted. Not that that will be easy, but still. It’s a possibility. He makes the absolutely foolish mistake, after pouring his second drink, of googling ‘marriage visa’ as if that will be the answer to any or all of his problems. Allows himself a brief, excruciating moment to imagine he has someone to marry and make that a reality. But then…he does, does he not? OR, a greencard marriage AU

i need that charles dickens by @whimsymanaged

Henry’s flatmate (and crush) Alex is suddenly obsessed with Charles Dickens. But when Henry asks to borrow Alex’s Dickens, he quickly learns that Alex hasn’t, in fact, been talking about a book.

Amazed at How We Talk (Once, Successfully) by @sparklepocalypse

And, well. Fuck that guy. Alex isn’t about to rub elbows with people who can’t even stand to be in the same room as him. Alex isn’t sulking when he sidles up to the bar and steals a man’s whisky. He also isn’t sulking when he obtains a second glass, this one neat. Or when he snags a large plate of canapés from one of the waitstaff and nonchalantly strolls out of the room. (Movieverse; a riff on the trope that asks, What if Cakegate didn't happen?)

like a bridge over troubled water, i will ease your mind by anincompletelist

And then— relief. So palpable that it sends more tears springing to his eyes, a sob at his lips that Henry quiets with a kiss. Everything from the past week was so much, had been building up pretty much from the moment Henry first left, and leaving him teetering on the edge of fine and definitively, very much not fine, one more useless appearance or shitty headline away from breaking into a million pieces. And shatter he had. But somehow, by some miracle, he’d been able to wait until Henry was here, was back with him in their home, to do it. His safety net, his safe place, his everything; the only one capable of holding all of his broken shards and figuring out how to piece them all back together again in the aftermath. The only one who has asked for the privilege of being there to do it.

Truth by cmere

Alex always does this, hauls every base fucking instinct that Henry has out into the open between them, plain for both to see. And every time it happens, Henry expects him to laugh it off or give him a hard time, but instead he just encourages it with soft, pliant lips and greedy fingers until Henry gives in to himself and his desires. Alex has never made him feel bad, or odd, or disgusting, always treats him with the utmost patience and care. Henry loves him so fucking much. It's just past midnight on Alex's birthday and he's going to get what he wants. Which is, of course, to give Henry what he wants.

as always, if you want me to tag you in future lists just let me know!

@starkfridays @stilesgivesmefeels @midnightsfp

[eaglesnick]

“You know you’re priced right when your customers complain—but buy anyway.” — John Harrison

Dynamic pricing is not new but it has not been widespread up until recently.

We all know about train fares being more expensive during peak times and parents know that holidays cost more during school breaks than at any other time of the year. Airline tickets are subject to dynamic pricing and there was a trend towards off-peak electricity tariffs at one time. This summer we saw tickets for Oasis concerts subject to dynamic pricing, resulting in massive spikes in the cost of a ticket.

Dynamic pricing is when a company changes their pricing to match demand and supply. Hence train journeys are more expensive during the rush hour than in the middle of the day when demand is lower. Holidays are more expensive during school breaks because demand is higher from families with children.

Few of us like this traditional method of dynamic pricing but we have accepted it as part of our way of life. The old fashioned dynamic pricing model was fairly unsophisticated and based on the time of day in the case of rail and airline tickets and specific weeks and months of the year in the case of holidays.

This is no longer the case. Artificial Intelligence allows companies to literally change prices in line with changes in demand every second if they so want. Some of the companies using AI to set prices are Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Tesco, Ocado and Sky. Amazon is said to reset prices every ten minutes.

The days of “fixed pricing" are fast disappearing. Long gone are the days when a company added up all of its production costs to work out the cost per unit and then added a little bit more in order to make a profit. This was basically what is known as the objective or labour theory of value. This has been supplanted by the "subjective theory of value" (STV).

According to the subjective theory of value a products worth (price) is not determined by how much it costs to produce but by how much people are willing to pay for that good at any given moment. At its worst this means that ALL goods and services should be sold for maximum monetary return regardless of the cost of production. No wonder supporters of neo-liberal economics favour STV.

At one level this doesn’t really matter. Oasis concert tickets may have doubled in original price due to dynamic pricing but not being able to afford a concert ticket is not a matter of life or death. It is however, symptomatic of a growing social problem.

The assumption of neo-liberal economists and their support of STV pricing is that individual choice is paramount in all economic transactions. For the neo-liberal societal values do not exist, there is only individual choice. Mrs Thatcher, the woman who championed neo-liberal economics in the UK, famously said: “There’s no such thing as society”. Many Tory's still believe this to be true but they are demonstratively mistaken.

During Covid we all stood at our doors every Thursday night clapping and banging pots to applaud the bravery of our dedicated health professionals. Yes, we did this as individuals but also as a society. When the England football team were progressing through the stages of the European cup we watched each game as individuals but also as a nation. The same is true of the recent Olympic and Paralympic games.

Ironically, some of our most ardent neo-liberal Tory MP’s have been recently admonishing us for not being proud of our English identity. Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party said yesterday that English identity had “started to fray” due to mass immigration and public institutions “dismissing our history”.

Sorry, the neo-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either there is an entity called English society, with its own history and set of values, or we are just individuals all acting according to our own individual needs. The fact that latter view is obviously mistaken does not deter the advocates of dynamic pricing. For them the goal is maximisation of profit regardless of social cost.

A thousand reasons why dynamic pricing is good for the consumer will be rolled out as more and more companies adopt this system of pricing, but the bottom line will always be making more profit. And in a system where pricing is determined by what price the individual is willing to pay rather than the actual cost of production, in the end it is only the rich who benefit.

South West Water has recently introduced the cruder form of dynamic pricing to their customers. They will be charging more for water use in summer than in winter. Consumers were given no choice about this and they have yet to be told what the charges will be. This “trial" will last for 2 years.

This is the spin:

“These pioneering trials are designed to make sure that water bills are fairer and more reflective of individual consumption patterns and are part of our wider commitment to making customer-first decisions in everything we do.” (CornwallLive:19/09/24)

Note the emphasis on “individual consumption". To my mind water is a public good, a societal necessity. As such I want to see pricing evened out over the whole community. Under dynamic pricing  the rich can consume as much water as they like because they can afford to pay, while the poorer members of society will have to suddenly become use conscious. While the rich fill their swimming pools and have the lawn sprinklers on day and night, the poor will have to think twice about how often the toilet is flushed, how often the washing machine is used and can they afford to shower everyday. The poor pensioner will be calculating whether or not they have enough money to water their beloved garden.

Ok, my pensioner being unable to afford to water the garden is a hypothetical scenario. The cost of music venue tickets isn’t, neither are the prices you pay for an Uber, a holiday let from Airbnb, the food you buy from Tesco or Ocado. Even the price of a pint is now affected by dynamic pricing.

“A campaign group representing pubgoers has criticised the move by Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company, to raise the price of pints during its busiest trading hours in some of its venues by 20p..."  Financial Times: 12/09/24)

If the price of a British pint of beer is now subject to dynamic pricing then nothing is sacred!

More seriously, when the market economy becomes the market society, when those in power promote the value of maximising profit for the few at the expense of the happiness and well being of the many, then, as a society, we lose all sense of humanity, morality and common decency.

There has been much theoretical discussion of late about the threat of Artificial Intelligence to humanity. I would argue that maybe we should be more concerned about those  humans using AI to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

[kyeterna]

I am starting to think that being a tourist visiting Greek islands is completely unethical.

In a similar way as buying fast fashion is unethical.

This problem is very prevalent in the islands which is why I am specifically talking about them and not tourism throughout the country (though in specific areas that are tourism heavy the problem still stands).

Very coincidentally, along with Greece's economic protections of the working class collapsing, the new lucrative industry of tourism arose, after the economic crisis. With labour laws becoming more lax to "help the economy" we've seen the rise of seasonal work. What's that you might ask. Young adults with no working experience working in tourist heavy areas in service at restaurants and cafés and what not. Sometimes for 12 hours a day if not more, no benefits, sometimes they don't even provide you with housing, barely any days off. I've had cousins and friends who worked the summer season, it is hell and dehumanising. Especially with how many tourists there just are. Just earlier this month there was a story about how a sea side cafe bar owner had his waiters serve their patrons *in the sea*. THE WAITERS HAD TO WALK INTO THE SEA WITH THE DRINKS TO SERVE THE CUSTOMERS WHO WERE SWIMMING. "But tourists give good tips" AND THAT FIXES THINGS???? YOU THINK THIS MAKES THINGS BETTER??

But it's not just worker exploitation. It's how tourism becomes hostile to the locals themselves. How tourism is actively destroying the local environment. A friend of mine who comes from an island talks about how because of AirBnB locals are outpriced out of their rented homes. How students are kicked out of their apartments as soon as May enters because that's when thr tourism season starts. We gotta rent those apartments to our lovely tourists! How in islands even as big as Crete, every summer the locals have no access to water because it is all used up by hotels and tourists. All greek islands have limited access to drinking water and this is made worse through tourism. But you see you can't have the tourists not use water in abundance! How over the years I have seen my local beach become commercialised. How the public umbrellas crumbled and were replaced by privately owned by a sea side cafe bar umbrellas and sunbeds, making it so you have to pay to have access to that beach. How tourists have no beach etiquette, which ends up littering the area. How businesses' desire to get more tourist customers leaves to natural landmarks just altered beyond recognition, local fauna driven out.

Our government has over relied on tourism to rebuild its economy. When covid happened this showed how vulnerable an economy is if it relies on tourism alone. It feels like even our government treats us more like a tourist attraction than an actual nation. Obviously the issue is capitalism. Some might say it's unregulated capitalism. Whatever. The whole tourism industry was set up so that its vulnerable workers cannot even organise nor fight back. They are only contracted to work 3-4 months a year after all.

If you ever decide to visit Greece for vacation, I don't know, maybe think about all this.

[fawnanddusk]

A lot of my friends these days are hopping onto the bandwagon of wanting to make it illegal to own more than one house.

This is due to the housing market at large taking advantage of a lack of homes to jack up rent and housing costs in general, and I understand the desire and logic behind wanting more houses to be available to buyers and renters because of it. It makes no sense for so many houses to be left standing and gathering moss and mold and dust and sunken roofs and broken foundations because someone occasionally wants to rent it out as an Airbnb. It makes no sense for these places to be unavailable as homes because the owner who lives on the other side of the continent finds it more convenient to occasionally turn a profit than to be responsible for the upkeep of their renters' home.

But.

Then I think about my friend with a gift for hospitality who wants to run a little bed and breakfast and cook all the meals and be the best host, who would actually be great at it.

I think about my years-long dream to build affordable housing that's close to nature and agriculture and restrict the rentals to working guests, college students, and elderly tenants who don't need or want to buy a whole house in their current situation, but would benefit from living and breathing in a small-town environment.

I think about co-op living spaces and homeowners with boarders, either renting a room or living in an attached unit. I think about people with executive dysfunction, crippling phobias, physical disabilities, or anything else that would make it more convenient and more pleasant to rent from a handyman or managerially gifted homeowner than to buy and have to hire a new contractor for every little broken tile and pest control issue.

And I think about how banning multiple home ownership is insufficient when the alternative to individuals building thoughtfully and often artfully designed living spaces is large companies building en masse, as cheaply as humanly possible, designed by people who never cook in kitchens, have guests over, or do outdoor hobbies.

What we SHOULD be doing is offering legal protections for home ownership by people, and raising care requirements for housing industry businesses. One of which should be a mandate to be "on-call" more than 50% of the time. (My apartment complex could never qualify with their 9am-5pm office schedule. In terms of customer service, my friend would run circles around that of every apartment complex and rental management company I've ever encountered.)

I know that any solution that I come up with wouldn't be sufficient. I'm hardly an expert on housing industry law, statewide, nationwide, or worldwide. I just think it would be nice if we could lean on and build each other up, rather than being forced to take whatever scraps the industry is willing to offer.

[ausmartlock]

Install Top Notch Digital Locks for Lockers to Safeguard Confidential Documentation

Nowadays, offices and commercial spaces install digital locks for lockers to keep confidential documents safe as well as avoid the risk of misplacement. Further, these smart locks have pincode or fingerprint that only individual could access. One could store important and personal stuff inside the locker without any hesitation. Experts provide locks with compact design, easy to install, user friendly, and visually appealing. These locks avoid the chance of key duplication and other problems so one could rest assured.

Benefits of Installing Smart Locks for Homes & Businesses:

The main objective of installing top notch electric deadbolt is to upgrade the safety of your loved ones and limit the risk of potential theft or robbery. Moreover, these locks are feasible for both metal and wooden doors so one could simply opt for latest version of locks. Well known companies offer colour options for deadbolt that will enhance the overall look of the house or office doors.

Generally, these locks have facilities of digital pincode and fingerprint so one could choose their preferred version. According to verified portals, many companies offer compact locks that could easily fit in any doors without any glitch. Professionals are knowledgeable enough to advice customers over doubts and assist them for choosing appropriate locks that will fit in the criteria. They also guide employees on accessing electric locks with ease.

Basically, these locks are designed from high quality aluminium material that is resistant to wear and tear as well as could withstand dangerous external containments. These deadbolts are constructed durable and would last for longer period so one could avoid investing in new ones.

Reasons to Install Smart Digital Locks for Overall Safety:

Renowned companies offer diverse range of locks for homes, apartments, workplaces, offices, airbnb, and commercial spaces so one could choose depending on their requirements.

They provide card and key facilities with digital locks in case of lose or misplacement concerns.

As a part of support service they also provide repairs and replacement for locks so one customer could rest assured.

Furthermore, these locks are user friendly and come with different languages.

One should enquire with the best company, if they are planning to install digital locks for better safety.

Source

[monicascot]

Are you ready for Airbnb scorecard! 🏡💯

Running an Airbnb business requires careful attention to various aspects to ensure a successful and profitable operation. Firstly, it's important to create an appealing listing that accurately represents your property and highlights its unique features. High-quality photos and detailed descriptions can attract potential guests and set realistic expectations.

[techhy-simpson]

Smart Growth: Cost-Saving Expansion Tactics for Startups

For any growing startup, scaling up in a cost-effective way is a dream and a dilemma. These young businesses aim to boost their reach and operations. The big question is: Can they increase their team size without burning through their budget? This is where staff augmentation comes in. It's a practical, flexible method that lets startups grow without breaking the bank.

A Look at Startup Expansion Pitfalls

Take a fictional startup, ByteWave, as a case in point. Three university pals had a fantastic idea for a cloud-based service and ByteWave was born. After a year, their user base ballooned to 50,000. This explosive growth brought a heap of operational headaches. ByteWave's tiny 12-member team was swamped, battling to stay afloat amidst demands for customer support, software updates, and fresh feature rollouts.

Traditional hiring seemed the logical move. However, it's a costly option. The Society for Human Resource Management estimates the average cost of recruiting a new U.S. worker is $4,129, taking an average of 42 days. For a startup like ByteWave, this approach was simply out of reach in terms of time and budget.

The Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is a far more efficient solution. It gives startups the flexibility to temporarily hire skilled personnel for key roles. ByteWave could quickly bring in specialist developers and customer service agents for specific projects. This gave the founders the ability to dynamically scale their team, tackling particular problems without the delays and costs of full-time recruitment.

A Smart Financial Move

Staff augmentation brings significant savings. Deloitte's research shows businesses can save as much as 30% in labor costs by adopting flexible staffing models. These cost cuts result from reduced essential overheads like benefits, office space, and training costs. Plus, it speeds up time-to-market. Deloitte's study also discovered projects are completed 20-25% quicker with staff augmentation, giving startups a crucial competitive edge.

Success Stories

Numerous real-world examples demonstrate how startups have used staff augmentation effectively:

Airbnb: To boost user appeal, Airbnb brought in freelance photographers to produce quality property listings, enhancing the platform's appeal without having to recruit full-time photographers.

Slack: During a critical period of rapid growth, Slack used remote contractors to provide 24/7 customer support, avoiding the costs of a large, permanent team.

Uber: Expanding into new locations, Uber used local contractors for tasks such as driver onboarding and market research, allowing fast growth without the long-term overheads of permanent local staffing.

Steps to Implement Staff Augmentation

If you're a startup considering staff augmentation, follow these practical steps:

Be Transparent: Define the needed skills and roles. This helps you find the right talent.

Choose Wisely: Partner with reliable staffing agencies or platforms that are familiar with your industry. They can quickly hook you up with vetted professionals.

Foster a Team Spirit: Treat augmented staff as integral team members. Make sure they attend meetings, have the necessary tools and keep communication lines open.

Be Clear: Set out the scope, deadlines, and deliverables for each project. This ensures all parties are on the same page and promotes effective collaboration.

Share Knowledge: Ensure the knowledge and experience that the temporary staff bring is shared with your permanent team.

Challenge Navigation

Staff augmentation, while beneficial, is not without its obstacles. Here's how to address them:

Building the Team: Temporary staff might not naturally fit into your company culture. To bridge this gap, include them in team activities and clearly communicate your values and aims.

Maintaining Standards: Keep high-quality work by setting clear quality benchmarks, and conducting regular work reviews.

Data Protection: Safeguard critical information with strict NDAs and limit access to crucial systems.

Employee Relations: Permanent team members might feel uneasy about temporary staff. Be clear about the roles of augmented staff and stress that they are an additional resource, not a threat to the core team.

The Way Forward

The move towards flexible work arrangements is increasing. An Upwork study predicts that by 2028, 73% of all teams will include remote workers. This factors make staff augmentation an appealing option for startups. Tools for remote project management and communication like Trello, Asana, and Slack are helping facilitate this shift, allowing efficient collaboration regardless of location.

Conclusion

Staff augmentation can be a lifesaver for startups trying to expand while preserving their budgets. It permits them to bring in specialized skills as needed, accelerate growth, and compete effectively without long-term financial commitments.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing

As tech giants reach terminal enshittification, hollowed out to the point where they are barely able to keep their end-users or business customers locked in, the capital classes are ready for the final rug-pull, where all the value is transfered from people who make things for a living to people who own things for a living.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/tech-workers/#sharpen-your-blades-boys

“Activist investors” have triggered massive waves of tech layoffs, firing so many tech workers so quickly that it’s hard to even come up with an accurate count. The total is somewhere around 280,000 workers:

https://layoffs.fyi/

These layoffs have nothing to do with “trimming the fat” or correcting the hiring excesses of the lockdown. They’re a project to transfer value from workers, customers and users to shareholders. Google’s layoff of 12,000 workers followed fast on the heels of gargantuan stock buyback where the company pissed away enough money to pay those 12,000 salaries…for the next 27 years.

The equation is simple: the more companies invest in maintenance, research, development, moderation, anti-fraud, customer service and all the other essential functions of the business, the less money there is to remit to people who do nothing and own everything.

The tech sector has grown and grown since the first days of the PC — which were also the first days of neoliberalism (literally: the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail). But despite a long-run tight labor market for tech workers, there have been two other periods of mass layoffs — the 2001 dotcom collapse and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008.

Both of those were mass extinction events for startups and the workers who depended on them. The mass dislocations of those times were traumatic, and each one had its own aftermath. The dotcom collapse freed up tons of workers, servers, offices and furniture, and a massive surge in useful, user-centric technologies. The Great Financial Crisis created the gig economy and a series of exploitative, scammy “bro” startups, from cryptocurrency grifts to services like Airbnb, bent on converting the world’s housing stock into unlicensed hotel rooms filled with hidden cameras.

Likewise, the post-lockdown layoffs have their own character: as Eira May writes on StackOverflow, many in the vast cohort of laid-off tech workers is finding it relatively easy to find new tech jobs, outside of the tech sector:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/03/19/whats-different-about-these-layoffs/

May cites a Ziprecruiter analysis that claims that 80% of laid-off tech workers found tech jobs within 3 months, and that there are 375,000 open tech roles in American firms today (and that figure is growing):

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/laid-off-tech-workers/

There are plenty of tech jobs — just not in tech companies. They’re in “energy and climate technology, healthcare, retail, finance, agriculture, and more” — firms with intensely technical needs and no technical staff. Historically, many of these firms would have outsourced their technological back-ends to the Big Tech firms that just destroyed so many jobs to further enrich the richest people on Earth. Now, those companies are hiring ex-Big Tech employees to run their own services.

The Big Tech firms are locked in a race to see who can eat their seed corn the fastest. Spreading tech expertise out of the tech firms is a good thing, on balance. Big Tech’s vast profits come from smaller businesses in the real economy who couldn’t outbid the tech giants for tech talent — until now.

These mass layoff speak volumes about the ethos of Silicon Valley. The same investors who rent their garments demanding a bailout for Silicon Valley Bank to “help the everyday workers” are also the loudest voices for mass layoffs and transfers to shareholders. The self-styled “angel investor” who spent the weekend of SVB’s collapse all-caps tweeting dire warnings about the impact on “the middle class” and “Main Street” also gleefully DM’ed Elon Musk in the runup to his takeover of Twitter:

Day zero

Sharpen your blades boys 🔪

2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-venture-capitalists-dilemma

For many technologists, the allure of digital tools is the possibility of emancipation, a world where we can collaborate to make things without bosses or masters. But for the bosses and masters, automation’s allure is the possibility of getting rid of workers, shattering their power, and replacing them with meeker, cheaper, more easily replaced labor.

That means that workers who go from tech firms to firms in the real economy might be getting lucky — escaping the grasp of bosses who dream of a world where technology lets them pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom on wages, benefits and working conditions, to employers who are glad to have them as partners in their drive to escape Big Tech’s grasp.

Tomorrow (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.

Image: University of North Texas Libraries (modified) https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth586821/

[Image ID: A group of firefighters holding a safety net under a building from which a man is falling; he is supine and has his hands behind his head. The sky has a faint, greyscale version of the 'Matrix Waterfall' effect. The building bears a Google logo.]