Cycling twitter posts at top of article were very annoying and not at all what I wanted to see early in the morning. My brain is still trying to recover two minutes later. Horrible.
What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
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Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#12Cycling twitter posts at top of article were very annoying and not at all what I wanted to see early in the morning. My brain is still trying to recover two minutes later. Horrible.
It's the third animation like this I've seen today, with text cycling far too fast to read. I hope it's not a new trend.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#13I'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.
I find it worrying that the only people who feel safe speaking publicly on so many issues are people who profit from controversy and people with nothing to lose.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#14Would 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?
I have no twitter, no fb, no reddit, no g+, Github, and my account here is a throwaway which I regularly abandon and create a new one.
I was never asked for any of this (well, except github on job applications in the past which never been a problem when I explain them I don't have one) and if in the future I am, I probably will drop the deal (whatever it is) on the spot.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#15Unless I missed something, it doesn't seem like the landlords were demanding this information. Is the worry that they might not consider you if you don't answer every question?
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#16Cycling twitter posts at top of article were very annoying and not at all what I wanted to see early in the morning. My brain is still trying to recover two minutes later. Horrible.
I thought my browser was screwing up for about a minute before I realized it was a stupid animation.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#17The author writes, "Before I started looking for an apartment, I never gave much thought to the cumulative identity I had been presenting, or even performing, on the Internet. "
This is completely the opposite of my (also a millennial) experience. I blog on a regular basis, post things on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you. The amount of thought that goes into each post ("could this be misconstrued by an employer?" "if I post this, will it offend one of my friends?" "Could this retweet become viral?") is paralyzing and exhausting, but not sharing is just as hard.
I've written a post about this feeling [1], but I don't have any solution. As someone who enjoys sharing ideas through writing and meeting people online, but is also very aware of how mob-happy our online civic society has become, it is a hard position to be in.
[1] http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2014/01/the-snarling-crowd-in-th...
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#18Would 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?
Make some dead accounts. I have FB, twitter, linkedin, haven't logged into any of them in months, maybe years now. I've made three tweets in my life, all employer acceptable, one in Sept 2008 stating this is pretty boring, another a year or so ago reporting a software bug (seriously WTF this is how they accept reports?) and one more recently verifying my keybase key. The growth rate seems to be accelerating over the past seven years. It never fails to amaze me I have 11 followers none of whom I can identify (spammers I think).
They are legitimately my accounts, I just don't use their services. I have a paper list somewhere with over 220 accounts, many defunct of course. Most accounts across the entire internet are, of course, unused or empty, its not going to be unusual.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#19How 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 i…
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.
Re: What My Landlord Learned About Me from Twitter
#20Would 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, bec…
It's important to remember that "80% chance you do X" also means "20% chance you DON'T do X". And "20%" means "1 in 5".
We like to conflate large percentages as "practically 100%" but even ".1%" just means "1 in 1000". For large groups even low percentages can represent a significant quantity.