INTO THIN AIR

Airbnb Hosts Ditch Platform as Billionaire Co-Founder Joins Elon Musk’s DOGE

The platform’s hosts are turning to competitors as its once-Democratic co-founder goes full MAGA.

Many Airbnb hosts have ditched the platform since its billionaire co-founder Joe Gebbia went full MAGA after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Gebbia—who left Airbnb three years ago, but still sits on its board—was revealed to have joined Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last week. The San Francisco Standard reported that the news has short-term rental hosts fleeing in droves.

More than half of the posts on Airbnb’s message boards since Thursday are reportedly from hosts and travelers threatening—or outright announcing—they are cutting ties with the platform over Gebbia’s affiliation with DOGE, which has fired federal workers en masse and, in some cases, seemingly at random.

Host Krista O’Connell told the Standard that she has been using the platform over a decade in Arlington, Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. The federal worker purge orchestrated by DOGE has devastated her community, and she wants no affiliation with anyone supporting the department.

“I can no longer be an Airbnb host in good faith,” she told the Standard. “I don’t want to be a part of an organization that’s generating profit for someone that’s destroying the government and destroying my community… I can’t be a part of the destruction.”

O’Connell says she removed her rental listing “immediately” upon learning of Gebbia’s affiliation with DOGE. She also expressed shock that Gebbia, a former Hillary Clinton donor who supported housing Afghan refugees in Airbnbs for free, would want to be affiliated with the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.

What’s more is the growing boycott does not appear to be limited to the states. Cheri DiNovo, a former Canadian politician in Ontario, Canada, made a viral post this week that urged people to use Airbnb’s competitors. The post was liked 15,000 times on Musk’s X platform.

Gebbia, 43, serves on the board of Musk’s Tesla company and has long been one of Musk’s friends. Forbes estimates Gebbia, a suburban Atlanta native, to be worth $8.8 billion.

It is unclear what Gebbia’s role in DOGE might be, and he has yet to personally confirm his affiliation with the department, which was unearthed by The New York Times last week. The outlet reported that Gebbia, who lives in a $10 million minimalist home in Austin, was spotted walking into the Office of Personnel Management’s D.C. office flanked by three security guards.

Gebbia donated to the Democrats in 2023, giving $20,000 to Joe Biden’s re-election bid before it sputtered out the following summer. However, the entrepreneur is a major supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and appears to have shifted his politics around the same time Kennedy dropped out of the 2024 race and did the same.

Gebbia has also not kept his changing political affiliations a secret. He revealed a day before Trump’s inauguration that he voted for the Republican and, more recently, traveled to attend Kennedy’s confirmation hearing. In a post that morning, he declared that it was a “big day ahead for the future of health in America.”

Amid growing calls to boycott Airbnb, a spokesperson told Newsweek that Gebbia is no longer involved in its day-to-day operations.

“Joe serves on Airbnb’s Board of Directors, but he has not been involved in day-to-day operations since he stepped down in 2022,” according to the statement. “Airbnb has always been about more than the viewpoint of any one person, our community is made up of millions of hosts and hundreds of millions of guests from all walks of life.”

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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