"Communications on eBay's platform have long used pseudonyms and automatic salutations, so AirBnB could easily implement that approach."<p>Well, not quite. Messaging on eBay is anonymized (but that can be defeated), but if a <i>purchase</i> is made, the Paypal transaction has the buyer's full name and email.<p>eBay is so zealous about forcing people to Paypal, <i>you can't even mention</i> the word "cash" in a listing or under Shipping And Payments.
One thing they don't control for is the perceived social class of the names. If they ran the same experiment with Khristen, Brandy, Brayden, Raelyn, and Marriah, would they get similar results to the "black" names?