Charged with not tackling discrimination seriously enough in the past, home sharing platform Airbnb has got tough and cancelled the accounts of people attending a white supremacist rally this weekend.
Airbnb confirmed the cancelation of bookings from users who are affiliated with the ‘Unite the Right’ rally taking place on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Airbnb’s ‘Community Commitment’ requires all hosts and guests to ‘accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age.’
"We asked all members of the Airbnb to affirmatively sign on to this commitment. When through our background check processes or from input of our community we identify and determine that there are those who would be pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment, we seek to take appropriate action including, as in this case, removing them from the platform," it said in a statement.
A post on a neo-Nazi website said up to 90 people from various right wing groups attending the rally had been booked at Airbnb properties in the area.
The rally’s organizer, Jason Kessler has threatened legal action against the San Francisco based company.
"Airbnb’s anti-discrimination policy was ostensibly to keep renters from denying service to individuals based on race, religion or other identity characteristics," Kessler told the Washington Post.
"They have now unjustly expanded that policy to imply that they will search through your social media accounts looking for controversial opinions and deny service based on that."
The rally has been described as the ‘largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the United States’ by the nonprofit civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center.
