Couchers is officially out of beta

laurentlb | 249 points | 13day ago | couchers.org

daft_pink|13day ago

I hosted couchsurfers and it was fun, but i stopped when i started getting detailed reviews about random shit about my home after people left.

Letting people live in your house in the central business district of a top tier city and then having them comment on your towel designs.

It’s not a hotel. I’m so over it.

pcthrowaway|13day ago

Couchsurfing really went to shit towards the end (2020 when they went from "we will always keep our core service free" to locking you out of your account unless you paid them overnight without any warning)

I think reviews criticizing aesthetic choices or even cleanliness would tend to be taken with a grain of salt, but also I hosted people (and couchsurfed) from 2005-2020 and managed to avoid bad reviews, so perhaps if I personally had received a slew of silly bad reviews over silly things like that I would have abandoned it earlier.

daft_pink|13day ago

Yeah, I really doubt any one turned down the opportunity, because of the criticism. It was just one review mentioned it and the next review disputed it. It just became a train of reviews. I just became annoyed by it and it made me wonder why I was bothering.

k__|13day ago

Interesting.

I had the impression it slowly transformed itself to a hook-up community and that attracted a different crowd than intended.

mattigames|13day ago

Reviews in these kind of sites should always be moderated before it reaches the hosts, if not by a moderation team (due lack of fund) then at least other users, e.g. 2 out of 3 other hosts that mark the review as helpful and within the spirit of the website.

onionisafruit|13day ago

In this scenario hosting couch surfers also puts you on the hook as a moderator? I’ll pass.

mattigames|13day ago

As much as stackoverflow puts you on the hook as a moderator.

madaxe_again|13day ago

This is just hospitality reviews 101. I run a couple of Airbnbs in the uk - 99.9% of guests leave gushing reviews, 0.01% break open locked cupboards and are like “There was a cupboard FULL of cleaning supplies! Disgusting! 1/5!”.

I’ve even had people bring a plastic rat with them and pose it around the apartment to then complain to customer service - successfully. That one cost me about £5,000 in a refund, lost revenue as I was made to cancel bookings until I had a pest controller in, and a mystified but still expensive pest controller.

Pareto’s law is pareto’s law.

akudha|12day ago

Some people are just plain...weird? I was reading reviews of some book on Amazon (can't remember which one now). Someone gave the book a one star review, because "it was delivered two days later than it was promised" while simultaneously saying they haven't read the book. How is it the book's/author's fault that Amazon delivered the book late? Why are they giving lowest rating for a book without even reading it? None of this makes any sense

x187463|12day ago

In that case, the reviewer seems to have completely misunderstood the subject of the review. That's a fine review (I guess) if the subject of the review is Amazon and the purchasing/delivery experience. Of course, it would be obvious from reading the review that it's not useful to somebody looking for book reviews and it should be (re)moved, but for whatever reason we have accepted platforms such as Amazon will simply fail to handle it properly.

daseiner1|12day ago

i would hope by now such reviews are heavily down-weighted on the back end as far as contribution to the overall rating displayed for a given product. seems relatively easy to automatically detect and I struggle to see why Amazon would want deflated reviews for products they're selling.

maybe it's a legal thing, could be viewed as market place manipulation i suppose. and they've certainly had enough worries about anti-trust already.

Suppafly|11day ago

Honestly, part of the overall ordering experience has pretty much always been included as part of the review on Amazon. It's weird that people take such umbrage with it. It may not be the author's "fault" but that's part of having your products on Amazon. I want to know if the product won't be delivered in a timely manner or if it won't be packed correctly.

MisterTea|12day ago

These are selfish, immature people. They exist all over and the reason why we can't have nice things.

figmert|13day ago

I think the difference between Airbnbs and couchsurfers is huge. Couch surfing is a voluntary yet free service provided by someone out of the goodwill of their heart. Airbnb is provided for profit. Leaving such reviews is fine for an Airbnb (assuming it's deserved ofc), but certainly not okay for couch surfing.

It does depend what they've reviewed though. Is the person hosting living in a in a gross apartment vs the towel designs are not nice.

gosub100|12day ago

Just consider it a tax on the amount of damage your business did to local housing costs.

nandomrumber|13day ago

Scam plan: know someone in Airbnb customer satisfaction team > rent expensive Airbnb accommodation > make bogus complaint complete with faked pictures to support bogus claim > have the claim approved by acquaintance > share profit.

seanhunter|13day ago

The “profit” you would be sharing with the person in Airbnb customer satisfaction in your hypothetical scam is a refund of your money which you would have paid to rent the place. This is like Homer Simpson’s grease business.

UltraSane|13day ago

"He has the ugliest towels I have ever seen! I still have nightmares about them! 1 star!"

daft_pink|13day ago

But then the next one is like… “The towels ARE ugly but it’s worth it for the location," you can’t make this sh*t up.

laborcontract|13day ago

I’ve only had boring towels in the entirety of my life and i’m suddenly curious about what your towels look like.

Hrun0|13day ago

That's hilarious I am sorry lol

sieabahlpark|13day ago

[dead]

gattr|12day ago

You jest, but if you encountered towels with print of the logo of a programming language you detest?...

muppetman|13day ago

Can we please see a photo of the towel(s) I'm too invested in this now.

getlawgdon|12day ago

"...and upon reaching for a hand towel I realized that the motif on it was not a diagonal pattern of dog bones but without doubt actually row after slanted row of penises, 100%"

AStonesThrow|12day ago

[dead]

aapeli|12day ago

(I'm the Couchers co-founder who wrote this blog post.)

Yes I agree, CouchSurfing.com went to shit through a slow process of enshittification that ended up looking like this. That's exactly why we founded Couchers.org when CouchSurfing.com put up a paywall (it was the last straw for us). We're trying to take what Couchsurfing was at its best and go further. We're solving these issues you're talking about with better moderation, better safety tools, and nudging users to behave in a way that's best for the community, etc.

I think it comes down to setting clear expectations and educating users about what it is and what it's not. We try to make it very clear and then enforce those rules very carefully. Once this happens, it's surprising how quickly the community roots out that behavior.

lippihom|12day ago

What's the plan to monetize and keep the lights on without starting to charge users like Couchsurfing did?

nosioptar|13day ago

That's some weird shit. I'd never couch surf without my own towel.

stevekemp|13day ago

Hey, you sass that hoopy nosioptar? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

apt-apt-apt-apt|13day ago

Sharing towels is a great way to feel better about not being the only one with a fungal infection.

pavel_lishin|12day ago

Surely people wash bath towels after visitors use them, no?

apt-apt-apt-apt|12day ago

You need a high-touch process, something like wash with high heat, maybe disinfectant, not overloaded, separate loads (cross-contamination). Dry with high heat for a long time, run a hot empty cycle after to clean machine.

In an ideal world, the host cares about your health and cleanliness and of course does all this for your sake. In the real world, it's toss and wash for minimal care, time and money.

sontek|7day ago

Do you bring a towel to a hotel? There is no difference. People do wash their things, you don't have to bring your own.

aapeli|13day ago

I'm one of the Couchers founders and wrote this blog post (and incidentally spend way too much time on HN), awesome to see this show up here!

This launch is the culmination of a huge push from our volunteer team to clean up a bunch of core features and make the platform easier to use. We are also launching a new branding strategy and new landing page.

Quick plug: we are looking for senior React Native devs to join us and help us get a mobile app out, as well as React/Python devs for frontend/backend. Everything we do is open source (under MIT): https://github.com/Couchers-org/couchers/

Happy to answer any questions folks might have!

jonp888|13day ago

Alternatives to Couchsurfing.com such as BeWelcome and WarmShowers have been around for many years, decades even and have users counts into 6 figures. They've remained non-corporate but never managed to reach mainstream popularity like Couchsurfing.com did.

What are you hoping to achieve by launching another hospitality sharing site that the other established non-profit sites couldn't?

nabramow|13day ago

Couchers Frontend Team Lead here. Aapeli is out for the night so I'm popping in to answer from my POV.

I think the main difference is that we're trying to capture the spirit of what CouchSurfing.com used to be: modern, easy to use, welcoming to newbies and centered on genuine social connection. But we also want to go beyond that. Build for today’s world—with better safety tools, better moderation, and more community-driven features that help people find each other easier.

Couchsurfing was initially about free hospitality and cultural exchange but is now largely driven by monetization. They also haven't really provided many new features to users since going for-profit.

BeWelcome is another alternative that came out of the CouchSurfing community years ago. It has a more ideological focus around democratic decision-making and they are not as newbie friendly, have an older UI, and are a bit slower to adopt new tech.

WarmShowers on the other hand is for a completely different crowd: it's for bike tourers that leave at the crack of dawn and arrive at sunset. They need a shower (hence the name), a place to put their bike, and a bed to sleep on. They'll probably be a bit too tired to socialize. That's very different from the traditional couch surfing platforms where socialization is the focus.

vincnetas|13day ago

so couchers focus on better UI and new tech? why not join efforts with bewellcome? or are they too "democratic" and not everyone sees new tech and better UI as major improvement?

curious where this new road will lead surfers.

aapeli|12day ago

Part of it is the better UI and new tech, but there's a lot more too.

Just on that point though: there's actually another open-source platform called Trustroots. They initally started as a rewrite of the BeWelcome frontend, but because of politics and such, BW never let them merge those big changes, so they spun off. Trustroots is a cool project but I think they swung too far into the realm of anarchism in their vibe both as a platform (they are very hitchhikey, so their moderation model is extremely hands off) and as a project (they have this things called a "do-ocracy"). We think there needs to be some planning and roadmapping and a healthy mix of dev + non-dev, as well as serious moderation to keep the platform safe.

raffael_de|12day ago

I cannot select England, Northern Ireland, Great Britain ... as a visited region. Those countries are not listed.

mattl|12day ago

No United Kingdom?

raffael_de|12day ago

Indeed is listed!

aapeli|12day ago

Send a bug report and we'll add them!

subarctic|13day ago

I guess their advantage is they have Couch in the name? Joking but I'm curious what the answer is here, I think everyone that remembers the Couchsurfing glory days is hoping that they or someone succeeds in bringing them back

johanyc|12day ago

I do think Coucher is easier to remember than the others lol

erlend_sh|13day ago

Highly recommend integrating with the atproto network to hop onto its social graph; that could be a major differentiator for your service. I’d love to log in with my Bluesky account and see who else in my network has opted to share their couchsurfing status.

(I put up a GitHub issue)

aapeli|12day ago

Thanks, will look into it. Get in touch if you want to help out on it too!