Seems Legit

Seems Legit

Airbnb Asks San Francisco Hosts to Lay Down Astroturf

Douglas Atkin, Global Head of Community at controversial online vacation rental broker Airbnb, sent out an email today urging people to “Stop the Evictions and Protect Home-sharing in San Francisco” by signing an online petition. Coincidentally, Atkins just happens to be a co-founder of Peers, the petition host, which primarily promotes ostensibly user-led lobbying efforts from regulation-dodging #SharingEconomy startups. In further coincidences, the organization which started the petition, “Home Sharers of San Francisco,” just crowdsourced a logo design last month, and the link for the petition hit Twitter only two days before David Chiu announced his proposed Airbnb legislation.

Of course, this might be a waste of the $500 million funding round the company just closed, especially since Airbnb investor and possible time traveler Ron Conway was named an “honorary survivor” of The Great Earthquake and Fire by Mayor Ed Lee for no particular reason, so they’ll probably get mostly whatever they want in any case.