[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.

[vinceguidry]

> "I don't like X unenforceable thing" is the mark of our generation.

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.

[mc32]

What civil right would the lessor be violating, I'm curious. I would be taken aback by being asked for social media identities, but I can't imagine what civil right asking for that would violate.

I imagine it'd be similar to banning asking for phone number or social media handles of someone you're trying to chat up for fear it could lead to harassment.

Badness can only happen with what they do with the information, not the information itself.

[vinceguidry]

> What civil right would the lessor be violating, I'm curious.

Privacy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

[mc32]

Can it be claimed information published on the www for everyone to see as "private"?

It's like saying my name is private. Moreover, when they do background checks they get private information on me which I would actually have to pay for even when the information is about me. I don't think its as clear cut as you make it out to be.

[vinceguidry]

There's a difference between searching for someone's name online and figuring out what's public, and asking for identifying information so that you can do a targeted search, failure to furnish means you will be refused a place to live.

Though I don't think in this case not having a Twitter account would cause you to be unable to rent in NYC. She could have simply said she didn't have one. Not sure if that would make you legally culpable or not.

> I don't think its as clear cut as you make it out to be.

I don't mean to be rude, but these kinds of questions are exactly what the judicial system and the body of civil rights law and precedent are aimed at answering. We pass the law, then it's the judicial system's job to work out the particulars by adjudicating individual cases. It's the whole reason they exist.

[pluma]

Aw, spoilsport. How is the Valley meant to disrupt markets if they have to respect basic rights like these?

[vinceguidry]

It's not the Valley that has to respect rights, it's landlords.

[akgerber]

I don't think the people requesting her information are landlords so much as leaseholders whose home she would be subletting, and they are concerned about subletting to someone who would destroy all of their property.

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.

[brixon]

Agreed, renting an apartment is a business (most of the time), but subletting is a personal transaction. A business cannot discriminate outside of ability to pay the requested cost for the service/product. An individual can discriminate all day long. Where I used to live you were not a business if you had 3 or fewer rentals, but you were a business with 4+ rentals.

[wdewind]

As someone looking for an apartment in NYC right now, who has lived here for edit: the entire time social media has existed, this has never happened to me or anyone I know. I don't think it's a "thing," as the article implies.

Edit: 26 years -> the entire time social media has existed, to please the pedantry.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "who has lived here for 26 years"

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 :)

[wil421]

What you were never asked for your AOL username when you were trying to rent a house or get a job?

[qyv]

Anyone who posts anything online using their real identity or anything associated to their real identity, needs to understand that it is now potentially publicly tied to them indefinitely. Do you think that when you apply for a job your employer doesn't look at your social media? The private sector uses social media data extensively when making judgment calls on individuals, and the scope of this is only getting larger.

[roel_v]

? Do you think people who are handing you the keys to at least 100k worth of property, with 2 months rent as a deposit if that, do not want to know who they're renting to?

[pluma]

Because trawling your social media profiles is the only way to find out the relevant bits of information to base such a decision on? I wonder how landlords have dealt with this problem all that time before we had social media.

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.

[coldpie]

You're going too far in the opposite direction. It's simply another datapoint.

> I wonder how landlords have dealt with this problem all that time before we had social media.

They would ask for your previous landlords, and possibly call them for references. Maybe there was just more damage done back in those days, which is now preventable. I don't think they pay people to stalk social media for fun, there's probably a legitimate business practice behind it. Whether that improvement in their business performance is worth the loss of privacy is an open question and worth debate.

> By your logic landlords are just handing contracts out at random if they can't stalk you online.

What? They didn't say that. Don't put words into the parent's mouth. Strawmen are really poor argument opponents.

[roel_v]

No not the only, but an accessible and easy one. And yes I've turned down prospective renters over what I found out about them online, which I wouldn't have found out 10 years ago.

[Retric]

Insurance... it's a thing.

[roel_v]

No it's not, there is no economically sensible insurance against bad renters (in most of Europe that I know about).

[Retric]

Usually the property owner requires someone to have renters insurance in the US which covers dammage to an apartment.

UK has the same thing and I assume so does the rest of Europe. http://homelet.co.uk/tenants

Includes cover for accidental damage to your landlord’s property or furniture

I'd you mean failure to pay then that's a seperate issue, but does not risk 100+k property.

[roel_v]

'Accidental' damage is the least of my worries; most of that is insured 2 or 3 times over. A fire can happen to all sorts of people. What I worry about when selecting tenants is

  - will these people keep 15 cats, despite the contract saying they can't, who will piss all over the place requiring new carpeting after they move out, or a rottweiler who will chew up all my door stiles (and good luck suing for and collecting damages from someone who doesn't have a regular income or even regular place of residence);

  - will this person come home drunk, loudly, at 2am three times a week, causing the neighbors (who pay in time and never give trouble) to move out, leaving me with the vacant property for some time and the work to find another tenant;

  - will this person pay in time, or will I have to call 3 times every month and even then only get paid in chunks most of the time;

  - will this person stay for a while or want to move out after 4 months, despite having signed a one year lease, leaving me with the trouble and time investment.

(all of these, and more that are too specific to mention publicly, actually happened to me)

Renting out property is not a high-margin business. 'Inefficiencies' like a unit being vacant for 2 months out of the year are the difference between 'better return than savings account' and 'I should have stuffed the money in a sock under my mattress'; and that's not even counting the work you have to put into it (advertising, showing people around, chasing payment, fixing things, court sessions, ...) (OK the last few years savings accounts yield 0, I'm talking about longer terms)

What I'm trying to say is - most renters think of their landlords as fat cats to whom they have to hand over 1/3rd of their monthly income for doing nothing. The reality is much more nuanced - yes it's a business, like any other, but a highly competitive one at that (in most markets); if I was 'rich' as most of them seem to assume, I sure as hell wouldn't be dealing with the hassle of being a landlord.

[Retric]

That really falls under cost of doing business. With some effort you can mitigate those issues, but they really don't end up costing you close to full property value the way a fire / flood might.

PS: IMO, it's important to separate the value of a property from the income stream it generates. Someone that's 3 weeks late every month in paying their rent you 250$/year in interest and some aggravation, but that's almost meaningless in the end just toss in a late fee and it tends to average out in the end.