[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.