That actually makes a lot of sense. It leverages your own judgement about your friend's judgement and provides potential social consequences for bad behavior.
But the nature of your friendships is poorly captured by Facebook. You can't really tell if people have been friends for 20 years or 20 minutes. Or if they've never met or made a baby together.
There ought to be a simple way to quantify both the "trustedness" of a relationship. At the very least, there should be a "Trust" button underneath every friend's profile photo.
With that info, Airbnb could tell you who your trusted friends trust, which is way more useful.
That all depends on what criteria you use for adding people on Facebook. Personally I try to keep it to people that I actually know in contrast to people whom I've met once or twice.
No matter what happens you're still trusting your friends' judgement in character.
Would the 'Trust' button really work any better than the 'Friend' concept? It would just get devalued due to 'inflation' in the same way that people has 800+ 'friends' on Facebook.
What message does not clicking the 'trust' button for friend send to them! Only purely factual information would avoid the problem, e.g. showing family relationships. Showing how long you've known the person would be a good start.
But the nature of your friendships is poorly captured by Facebook. You can't really tell if people have been friends for 20 years or 20 minutes. Or if they've never met or made a baby together.
There ought to be a simple way to quantify both the "trustedness" of a relationship. At the very least, there should be a "Trust" button underneath every friend's profile photo.
With that info, Airbnb could tell you who your trusted friends trust, which is way more useful.