AirBnB landed in some hot water earlier this year. After a lawsuit that alleged AirBnB hosts were discriminating against minority guests, a flood of accusations began to come forward. Hosts on the platform were accused of declining rental applications to minority groups, and then renting out their units to white people instead.

This prompted the company to conduct an internal investigation. The results proved that discrimination was a definite problem on the platform. As a result, the company has announced several new policies to combat the issue.

The company has put together a new team comprised of engineers, data scientists, researchers and designers. This team will focus solely on identifying and stopping any bias found on the website. AirBnB officials also hope to improve the diversity of their staff. They plan to increase the number of employees who are members of underrepresented populations.

Changes to booking policies will also begin rolling out in 2017. Hosts who decline a potential guest’s application will no longer be able to rent out their home during the period that was inquired about. In addition, the website is also encouraging users to take advantage of their “open doors” customer support team. This will assist guests in finding other accommodations and handling complaints.

Although many users have requested that profile pictures be removed to prevent discrimination, AirBnB has declined. They argue that profile pictures enhance the social aspect of their platform. It is hoped that the proposed changes above will be sufficient in pushing the platform forward and resolving discrimination issues.

According to www.benedelman.org:

“In an experiment on Airbnb, we find that applications from guests with distinctively African-American names are 16% less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctively White names. Discrimination occurs among landlords of all sizes, including small landlords sharing the property and larger landlords with multiple properties. It is most pronounced among hosts who have never had an African-American guest, suggesting only a subset of hosts discriminate. While rental markets have achieved significant reductions in discrimination in recent decades, our results suggest that Airbnb’s current design choices facilitate discrimination and raise the possibility of erasing some of these civil rights gains.”

This is unfortunate but not surprising. This same tactic has been used for decades by corporations all over the country. Now they also use your address to discriminate.