
What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter - varmais
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/magazine/what-my-landlord-learned-about-me-from-twitter.html
======
vkb
The author writes, "Before I started looking for an apartment, I never gave
much thought to the cumulative identity I had been presenting, or even
performing, on the Internet. "

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...](http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2014/01/the-snarling-crowd-in-the-shadows-
watching-us/)

~~~
qyv
It is actually extremely simple: Don't act online how you would not act in
person.

~~~
gmarx
I disagree. Online posts express tone poorly. It's much less dangerous to
discuss controversial topics in person.

~~~
qyv
Yes, that is true, which is why wording is important. However, this article is
not talking about a single post being taken out of context, it is about a
systematic online persona that is affecting real life.

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pluma
How the hell do these people think that kind of behaviour is even remotely
appropriate?

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.

~~~
TodPunk
"I don't like X unenforceable thing" is the mark of our generation. Every
tweet is public, and if anyone thinks they've protected them somehow, that is
both unlikely to be true in all cases and definitely is missing the point that
making your tweets private is a different statement entirely.

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.

~~~
pluma
Except this kind of behaviour is very likely to be illegal in Germany. Sure,
violation is hard to prove if it isn't blatant but this kind of regulation
prevents the behaviour from becoming socially acceptable.

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.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_lost on the generation that made "doxing" and revenge porn a thing_

Ostensibly, "revenge porn" dates back at least to some of Hustler's columns in
the 1980s. The practice of spreading pornographic images without the model's
consent is doubtlessly much older.

"Doxing" is simply leaking one's personal information over the Internet. It's
not like public outings have never been done before, only the medium is
different this time. Doxing but only leaking to a client is basically the
entire job of a private investigator, since the 19th century.

Basic decency and common courtesy were lost long before us Millennials, I'm
afraid.

------
ianstallings
I've sanitized all of my social media because, as a startup founder, the
magnifying glass of "due diligence" is hovering over me at all times. The last
thing I need is a problem because of something trivial.

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.

~~~
leereeves
I find it worrying that the only people who feel safe speaking publicly on so
many issues are people who profit from controversy and people with nothing to
lose.

~~~
VLM
Its the soft dictatorship concept. If you want to eliminate free speech you
can do with with secret police and firing squads, but a more advanced,
civilized, and more importantly, cheaper, way to do it is implement intensive
self censorship. Sure, you can say anything you want, as long as it offends no
one on the entire internet. What little is left is no threat to those in
power. How bout the weather out there?

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.

------
DanAndersen
It's a shame to see the actual outcome of the false promises of social media.
So much talking about how social networks would bring people together and help
people connect and interact and give people a voice, but in the end it seems
that the biggest results are that large companies have a new outlet to get
eyeballs on their PR, online troughs for people to get their feed, and people
have to build up even more false layers of "personal branding" around
themselves, curating their eternal public record to avoid hurting their future
career prospects.

~~~
drcross
Or just leave your phone at home and go outside, in which case you don't need
to worry about it at all.

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a3n
Would anyone believe me if I said I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account?
(Actually I think I have three Twitter accounts, never used, and no idea what
their names are.)

Or might they believe me, and think I'm too odd-stream to rent their apartment
or work in their office?

~~~
throwaway12309
I have no twitter, no fb, no reddit, no g+, Github, and my account here is a
throwaway which I regularly abandon and create a new one.

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.

~~~
personlurking
And how are you getting on? Any problems, ie not being invited to friends'
events because they're only announced on FB?

~~~
throwaway12309
No problems to be honest.

I use email/phone if I want to do something with someone (mostly phone). There
may be events like a house warming party that only gets posted to FB, but
somehow that tends to reach me through someone, and if they don't, well.. not
much is lost to be honest.

To be fair, most of the people I hang out with aren't that into Facebook/other
or even if they are, they know I'm not there so they reach out to me/my wife
over the phone.

I'm in my early 30's if it it counts for anything.

~~~
a3n
Sorta me too, except I'm in my late 50s. I'm not really friends with "a
group." I'm friends with individuals, many of whom know each other or don't,
and they contact me.

It's a solved problem, since before the web, and even before the internet.

~~~
throwaway12309
Yeah, I think that may be the main difference from folks that feel
disconnected when they are off FB. I have relationships with individuals (or
sometimes couples), but never with 'groups'. Probably the most group thing I
do is people that play tennis where I do, but again, I have their phones and
whenever I want a pick up game, I just do a few calls. I love leaving my
laptop/smartphone behind and just go enjoy doing something without the fear of
missing something.

------
jqm
Cycling twitter posts at top of article were very annoying and not at all what
I wanted to see early in the morning. My brain is still trying to recover two
minutes later. Horrible.

~~~
coldcode
I thought my browser was screwing up for about a minute before I realized it
was a stupid animation.

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tjsix
While it seems, at least through what the author reveals, that they were in
fact requesting her twitter handle for background info purposes, requests like
these may not always be what they appear to be. As an example, my wife and I
recently enrolled our son into an early start program. One of the initial
questions in the parent info section was twitter handle. As it struck me as
quite odd that a publicly funded program would request this info, I asked why
and for what purpose they would need this info for. I was surprised at their
response - it's their primary means of notifying parents in the event of a
closure, emergency, schedule change, etc. and for misc communications. They
request the parents twitter handle and follow those who have children actively
enrolled (via opt-in) to enable DM's.

~~~
lentil_soup
Why not a phone number or an email? It's way simpler ...

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r3bl
The title is highly misleading. It says nothing about what her landlord
actually learned from her Twitter feed.

It should be titled something like this: What I learned about myself when my
landlord asked me for my Twitter account

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imgabe
Unfortunately supply and demand in a place like NY is such that people will
probably have to put up with nonsense like this. In other areas there would
probably be a market opportunity for landlords who are only going to focus on
things that are actually relevant to whether someone is going to be a good
tenant or not.

~~~
pluma
Frankly I don't see what asking for someone's Twitter handle adds except for a
high risk of (intentional or un) discrimination.

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".

~~~
VLM
I've noticed the theme of "twitter as customer support" and I suspect that
would be incredibly unappealing to a landlord. Being known as "that landlord
on twitter with the dripping faucet" is probably not a major career goal for
most landlords.

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)

~~~
imgabe
It _might_ help weed out some terminally stupid people who post pictures of
themselves destroying their apartment, but that's hardly a guarantee that it
won't get damaged. Puke on carpets happens. People put holes in walls to hang
things. This is all normal stuff that every landlord should expect to have to
deal with and trying to find the perfect tenant that will result in zero
maintenance is a waste of time.

For the pet issue, yeah if you don't uniformly enforce the rules you have,
you're going to have a bad time. That should be common sense. If pets aren't
allowed, then don't allow pets. That's pretty simple. There are plenty of
places that might allow small pets but not a large sheepdog and that's
perfectly fine as long as its clearly spelled out in the lease.

------
wil421
I dont think a lot of millennials understand the implications of posting
personal thoughts or information on _public_ websites.

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!

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MarketingJason
Unless I missed something, it doesn't seem like the landlords were demanding
this information. Is the worry that they might not consider you if you don't
answer every question?

