What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
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Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#2Would 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?
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#3Would 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?
> Would anyone believe me if I said I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account?
I'm in a similar situation. The only social media I have is a private Twitter account that I used for about 2 days and posted basically nothing to. People in general seem to understand my choice, though that might just be my social circle. I haven't yet been in a position where I've been asked to provide social media accounts for someone to check my credibility.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#4I'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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#5How 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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#6Would 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?
Probably depends on your age and other characteristics. If you can be called a millennial, a 2013 study (http://www.emarketer.com/Articles/Print.aspx?R=1009748) found that there's over an 80% chance you use social media. That goes down each previous generation, so a baby-boomer should be expected NOT to have such things.
Also, other factors are probably relevant. "No twitter" is very different from "No twitter, because I'm married with twins."
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#7How 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.
"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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#8Unfortunately 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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#9It'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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#10The 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