The author already claims he has access to professional spamming tools. All he has to do is spam people on craigslist pretending to be AirBnB in a way that can't be traceable to AirBnB. Then he writes an article complaining about AirBnB and asks "why would they hide behind shady tactics?"
You get maximum impact if you wait two years and post when your competitor gets really big so everything is forgotten and really untraceable.
Your comment is ridiculous. Can you really imagine someone making a two and a half year plan to set a competitor up like that? And in the meantime you're giving the competitor customers like crazy? Pull the other one.
Sorry, I didn't mean to go all conspiracy theory here. I just felt a sleazy linkbait vibe from the article and wanted to provide my "fair and balanced" opinion.
With all your suspicion, did you bother to check out any listings on mimbeo.com? I've opened about 20 from various states and they were all listed in 2009. The site is not current.
You get maximum impact if you wait two years and post when your competitor gets really big so everything is forgotten and really untraceable.