Six months ago, tech entrepreneur Rohan Gilkes tried to rent a cabin in Idaho over the July 4 weekend, using the website Airbnb. All seemed well, until the host told him her plans had changed: she needed to use the cabin herself. Then a friend of Rohan’s tried to book the same cabin on the same weekend, and his booking was immediately accepted. Rohan’s friend is white; Rohan is black.

This is not a one-off. Late last year, three researchers from Harvard Business School — Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca and Dan Svirsky — published a working paper with experimental evidence of discrimination. Using fake profiles to request accommodation, the researchers found that applicants with distinctively African-American names were 16 per cent less likely to have their bookings accepted. Edelman and Luca have also published evidence that black hosts receive lower incomes than whites while letting out very similar properties on Airbnb. The hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack has started to circulate.

Can anything be done to prevent such discrimination? It’s not a straightforward problem. Airbnb condemns racial discrimination but, by making names and photographs such a prominent feature of its website, it makes discrimination, conscious or unconscious, very easy.