[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.

[pluma]

In Germany cats are considered small pets and it is illegal for a landlord to prohibit keeping small pets in an apartment (within reason -- there is case law to help out with edge cases). It's often found in contracts but the clause is unenforceable and legally void. Dog owners always have to get explicit permission. In either case the right is null and void if the pets grossly misbehave (damage to the apartment or unacceptable noise levels that disturb the neighbours).

Due diligence aside, documented evidence only comes into play if you become aware of it. If your tenant is posting pics of a pet they're not allowed to keep in the apartment but you're not aware of the pics, no problem. If you pre-emptively ask for their social media details and then neglect to act on the information you find, sure, all blame on you.

There's an important difference between being made aware of information and actively seeking it out. Morally there's no difference between a landlord denying you an apartment because they've been shown a tweet of you bragging about doing property damage or because they were actually there and saw you do it. But there's a world of difference between either of those and intentionally rummaging through a candidate's social media presence to actively look for grounds of denial.