[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.