Maybe it's just German privacy laws speaking, but I find the idea of a landlord asking for your Twitter handle (or stalking you on Facebook) appalling.
This isn't even anything new. We used to ask for references, and we'd follow up further if the stakes were high enough. I got interviewed by a police officer from another city because my neighbor had applied to the department. Said neighbor didn't know that everyone in his life they could get a hold of would be asked questions about him, but it makes sense.
Privacy is so rarely what we think it is, and the new generations (of which I'm a part) have so very little shared understanding of the consequences of doing something publically in a world where all of it is likely recorded and shared in a nicely indexed format. The answer to this is not regulation or other bullshit feel-good answers. The answer, as it so often is, is education. I realize that is going to help very few people, but then again, regulation on something as ambiguous as this will help 0.
Case in point: try asking an employee in Germany to give you a urine sample. There are very few jobs where a legal case can be made for mandatory drug testing and even fewer where the employer is allowed to receive medical information.
It is my understanding that in the US photos on resumes are generally frowned upon and often sufficient grounds for rejection because of the high risk of anti-discrimination litigation. How can it then be acceptable for a landlord to take your social media accounts into consideration before making a decision?
Yes, public social media content is public, but the same argument can be made about anything you do in public. Yet nobody would think it acceptable to follow you around in public and take careful note of everything you do or say in the open. That the Internet makes the digital equivalent of this behaviour easier doesn't mean it becomes more appropriate.
But such ideas of basic decency and common courtesy appear to be lost on the generation that made "doxing" and revenge porn a thing.
A ban of this sort of thing could easily be enforced. They already prohibit discrimination, and there's already a body of precedent to help adjudicate grey areas. Make it a civil rights violation for landlords to ask for social media handles in applications. Then anyone who wants this kind of anonymity can simply avoid tying their real name to the service.
As social media posts could be used to glean protected information, I don't think it's even be that hard politically to get such a law passed in many states.
Standard New York landlords who are leasing empty apartments as a business just run a credit check— they'd probably exposing themselves to problems under fair housing laws if they asked for much more.
Edit: 26 years -> the entire time social media has existed, to please the pedantry.
I don't think that part matters too much considering social media in its current form wasn't really around for most of that time :)
The words "false dichotomy" come to my mind. By your logic landlords are just handing contracts out at random if they can't stalk you online.
This is completely the opposite of my (also a millennial) experience. I blog on a regular basis, post things on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you. The amount of thought that goes into each post ("could this be misconstrued by an employer?" "if I post this, will it offend one of my friends?" "Could this retweet become viral?") is paralyzing and exhausting, but not sharing is just as hard.
I've written a post about this feeling [1], but I don't have any solution. As someone who enjoys sharing ideas through writing and meeting people online, but is also very aware of how mob-happy our online civic society has become, it is a hard position to be in.
[1] http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2014/01/the-snarling-crowd-in-th...
Shared feeling and thought process here. Sharing in this way has been a big part of my life.
My only 'solution' has been to scrutinize every word choice to ensure maximum sharing without allowing too much exposure. It is draining but, at least for me, has becomes second nature.
In-person communication is rife with unspoken, yet understood, shared knowledge: body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, information about social standing between two individuals, etc.
Whereas we're still sorting out how to properly interact online, having only been doing it (at scale) for ~20 years.
Or might they believe me, and think I'm too odd-stream to rent their apartment or work in their office?
They are legitimately my accounts, I just don't use their services. I have a paper list somewhere with over 220 accounts, many defunct of course. Most accounts across the entire internet are, of course, unused or empty, its not going to be unusual.
I was never asked for any of this (well, except github on job applications in the past which never been a problem when I explain them I don't have one) and if in the future I am, I probably will drop the deal (whatever it is) on the spot.
I'm in a similar situation. The only social media I have is a private Twitter account that I used for about 2 days and posted basically nothing to. People in general seem to understand my choice, though that might just be my social circle. I haven't yet been in a position where I've been asked to provide social media accounts for someone to check my credibility.
Also, other factors are probably relevant. "No twitter" is very different from "No twitter, because I'm married with twins."
We like to conflate large percentages as "practically 100%" but even ".1%" just means "1 in 1000". For large groups even low percentages can represent a significant quantity.
In fact, regarding twitter, my policy is to never use it except to link to other things or retweet someone else's post. Because a 140 character statement on a complex topic is a recipe for disaster.
Its like the old problem of how does an aristocracy keep itself in power? Well the expensive, crude, and unreliable method is lots of soldiers and aggressive top down force, but a more advanced, cheaper, reliable method is to propose two identical figurehead leaders with wildly varying PR campaigns and convince the public that selecting between the identical figureheads is the definition of freedom.
Who are you trying to filter out? Credit checks are likely already required so you already know their financial situation. If they're lying about anything critical, the contract likely already has that covered.
If anything, it's a tone-deaf sociopathic attempt to "get to know each other".
Then there's people who post pictures of property damage "So drunk I puked all over the carpet last night", perhaps with an attached pix of vodka and blue kool aide, is not going to sell well to a guy who just paid for new carpet in his rental.
And then there's pets, cat owners can't avoid posting cat pix, although "in the olden days" a quiet although banned pet might have been tolerated under a "no problem for me, no problem for you" doctrine but if half your posts are cat pix its kind of hard to consider that "keeping quiet". At the complex I lived in during my bachelor years there was some variation between what corporate thought one onsite manager would do and enforce, and what one onsite manager physically could do and enforce, and given 200 hours of theoretical work per week the manager was very libertarian WRT no complaints = not a high priority for him. But he can't CYA with corporate if some tenant insists on posting daily (banned) cat pictures. Not to mention if it came to eviction time having to explain to a judge why documented misbehavior was tolerated for months or only enforced against some pet owners (here's three twitter accounts of kittens, why is my hyperactive Shetland Sheepdog the only pet the rule is enforced against, surely its because I'm a minority)
It should be titled something like this: What I learned about myself when my landlord asked me for my Twitter account
I've never had any known repercussions from my posts but I know of 3 instances where people I knew have. Perhaps I dont know of an instance where I was looked over because of Social Media.
One was a person failed a class for saying "the final was so easy it was like I cheated."
Another person was denied a house to rent because they told the Landlord they didnt have dogs. Landlord checked their facebook and saw pics of his two large pitbulls.
The last person had a pic of them uploaded on Instagram while they were eating at work in uniform with their middle finger up (we worked at a restaurant). There was an investigation and person was suspended until it was finished. Luckily he didnt loose his job and was allowed to come back.
Be care what you post for!
