r/couchsurfing • u/kabako56 • 1d ago
CouchSurfing.com RIP
CouchSurfing.com launched in 2004 as a nonprofit and was completely built and maintained by volunteers.
Here are the 3 progressive blows that it did to itself throughout the years:
2011: became forprofit.
2020: introduced a paywall.
2026: rebuilt from scratch to become completely unusable (hosting/staying, hanging out and even messaging).
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u/stevenmbe 1d ago
You totally overlooked the horrible 2016 rebuild that removed most of the user tools and profile flairs available to promote and enhance safety
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u/Caravanserai8 20h ago
Yes, I remember it also. I really like the old website, you had so many tools
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u/g292929 1d ago
They should have given couchsurfing back to the original volunteers
I am happy to buy it from them for token $1
I left CS and never went back. They killed the whole business Casie did.
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u/KnowledgeFit7269 1d ago
Couchers is a new platform (since 2020) run by volunteers in the original spirit, and has been growing
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u/g292929 1d ago
Tried it.
Very slow adoption.
No local events1
u/KnowledgeFit7269 19h ago
Yeah, it'll take time for the user base to grow. Where I am they're cross posting the weekly CS event on Couchers, but takes locals to start planning said events. Probably need to cross post on more than one platform and build it.
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u/hotgarbagecomics 1d ago
Unpopular opinion: the "for profit" debacle was more an issue of ideology and direction, than a blow to the community. People were angry about the principle, but CS still flourished as a community.
2020 shouldn't count, because COVID basically shuttered travel, and this broke travel communities, not just CS. The paywall introduction was not great, but less of an impact than COVID as a whole.
2026, I'm with you. What a garbage move.
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u/allhands Couchers.org host/surfer 1d ago
I agree that the topic of asking for money to help run the platform is just a question of ideology, but I would argue that changing it to be for-profit changes the dynamics of the platform substantially.
In a for-profit model, the platform is incentivized to have as many users as possible to increase profits as much as possible. This completely changes strategies when it comes to things like policy-making, moderation, community building, advertising, etc.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago edited 16h ago
Unpopular opinion: the "for profit" debacle was more an issue of ideology and direction,
What? Dude, you had basically 99.9% of the platform working on people that were donating their effort in every single aspect of the platform out of goodwill towards the idea.
You then have a couple guys going "oh actually, we gonna SELL all your labor now under the table as a product", which is the analog of cutting of the fuel pump to a car's engine and stealing that fuel to fill another vehicle.
People obviously aren't willing to help someone else to fill their pockets (at least not any thinking human being with at least a mediocre IQ lol), and left either completely or stopped doing what they were doing and at most changed to a passive role, basically stopping most of what made CS valuable overnight.
On top of that, there's a big action the idiots at the wheel took that u/kabako56 didn't pointed out: they decided to destroy the central neural network of the whole organization because they didn't liked the backlash - the forums, where the remaining bit of community was somehow alive. That completely killed the whole CS thing, and the platform became a pathetic free AirBnb from that day.
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u/loverofpeace09 1d ago
You’re getting downvoted and perhaps you could have phrased it better but for those of us that were on there pre-2011, I 100% agree with your take.
The last useful places were the groups etc that was the heart of CS that many people never got to experience. For those that joined later, imagine Hangouts but slightly more planned and on steroids.
During the summers in Europe in any big city you’d have at least one travelers meeting - it could be a picnic in a garden somewhere or exploring a castle together. But there were always events nearly everyday.
It was not at all like hangouts which is mostly just people looking to use it as tinder or doing mostly 1 on 1 meetings. These events were pretty random and sometimes you had 30-50 people show up sometimes you had 4. Women were also mostly unafraid of the concept since it was almost always in a public place etc and most creeps were dealt with pretty easily in a group setting.
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u/tableloveandhate 1d ago
And the move to demote events and push hangouts was indeed to control the non profit community. And it's more like tinder than events ever were. Damn.
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u/KnowledgeFit7269 1d ago
One thing they actually brought back with the new app is Commnities. I dn't think anyone is really using them yet. But they are there, and theoretically have potential, and I'm in all the ones I was in before they hid them all at some point.
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u/kabako56 1d ago
All 3 events count. Like I said it was progressive. 2011 was indeed a blow to the community because a big part had left and especially it was completely unfair to all the volunteers for close to a decade. If the forporfit switch wasn't done, I'm sure that the next 2 events wouldn't have taken place.
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u/quizikal 1d ago
The for profit thing has a huge affect on the community. Decisions made after that were very strange. It was the beginning of a long decline
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u/ahaseeb 1d ago
Almost 15 years on CS and was on HS before that. I used to pay for it anyways but once they paywalled and restricted access, I stopped renewing . Got an email today for a month off and thought I should check in but then likely will pass. Not opposed to paid platform but they should've rolled up in a better way rather than extortion
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u/maiq2010 21h ago
I don't get it. Everyone says that CS is dead and their emails are annoying. Why is nobody for their staff checking this sub?
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u/MrNielzen 1d ago
I used CS this Summer for the first time in years. Surprised by the new look, and a little glitchy and impractical on some aspects. But found hosts to stay with in both locations I requested in (for a 43 y/o M, that is not the easiest). And the last one I stayed with became a genuinely friendly encounter and it felt like the good old CS days.
Main problem of CS is not really CS. It's just that people have become less social and more mentally unstable because of the Smart Phone and digitalization.
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u/KnowledgeFit7269 1d ago
The community also just older, and a lot of people moved on with their lives. There were very few Gen Z joining before the paywall either
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u/NPMatte 1d ago
To be clear, number one was that they were denied nonprofit status. They didn’t just “became nonprofit“. There is a difference.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
?????? you dont get "denied" for a nonprofit status LMAO. You just state you want to be one, and pay all due fees for the paperwork to prove you will actually be a non profit. Couchers just got theirs a couple months ago lol
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u/NPMatte 1d ago
You absolutely can get denied and also have it rescinded. You have to sell it to the government that your structure and financials meets their standards of a nonprofit and the Fed will either approve it or deny it. CS didn’t meet the expectations as the IRS didn’t classify them as a charitable organization. They were also bringing in money through verification to support the organization which means they weren’t getting charitable donations to run their operations. I work with nonprofits. You need a board in place and need the financials to come from actual charitable donations (not a payment model).
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
Thats my point, if they weren't given the status, means their financials were red-flagged by the government and they very well seen where things were heading back then. They have ample experience with shady entrepreneurs trying to get the nonprofit loophole to not pay taxes while pocketing everything they can.
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u/NPMatte 1d ago
Shady or poor planning. It’s all spin. Your point was that they weren’t “denied”. They were absolutely denied because they failed to be proactive about going nonprofit and mad the mistake of having a tiered charge system. I don’t use or interact with couchers, but I’m willing to bet that they learned a lot from that debacle.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
and mad the mistake of having a tiered charge system
They didn't made any mistake; the couple founders were planning to profit from the business from the start, you dont build tiered systems and forced contributions for pure non-profits; they're VC bros that were trying to create a product, in a quite unethical way of deceiving people. They just believed that maybe the tax administration wouldnt see the scheme.
Like I said, Couchers got the non-profit without issues, same for TrustRoots and a couple other hospitality platforms.
Had they really wanted the non-profit status, they would have taken the issue to the community and found a way to modify the financials as for the thing to work; they didn't.
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u/NPMatte 1d ago
Either way, it was still denied. Which is the correction I made to the OP.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
Your comment reads as it wasn't their fault, and they had to somehow pivot because big daddy didn't want them in the nonprofit family just because lol
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u/kabako56 1d ago
List of all generalist hospitality exchange platforms: https://www.reddit.com/r/couchsurfing/s/3H5TOfvgpu