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    FreakyHijiki Esq.Marina Galperina
    6/09/16 6:04pm

    I’m on year 10 of waiting for a compelling reason to have a social media account of any kind.

    (also: This company is a potential housing discrimination MACHINE. Free legal advice for landlords: Don’t use this company.)

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      caekislove-caekingitupFreakyHijiki Esq.
      6/09/16 6:08pm

      I deleted my Facebook when I graduated college and that was way before it was taken over by grandmas.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsFreakyHijiki Esq.
      6/09/16 6:21pm

      Do you think that there is any way to push any sort of Fair Housing Act discrimination action through to this company or a private civil suit?

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    Not2LuckyMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 5:59pm

    As a landlord, my first impression is “if you don’t want to do this, then don’t rent there”... but I see that was a cop-out before I finished reading the post. This is a bad idea, if any applicant got rejected after accepting this, they can easily start a law suit saying that the landlord got the discriminatory information and used that, not any real data to reject the applicant.

    This is a class action suit waiting to happen.

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      TartanSixNineNot2Lucky
      6/09/16 6:02pm

      Also a landlord, and of course I check applicants’ social media profiles. But I do it in a very clandestine manner. Asking for their permission up front is the dumbest idea ever, for the very reason you state.

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      DoobyOneTartanSixNine
      6/09/16 6:05pm

      Exactly. I never understood why those bigot cake makers didn’t just say they were booked up. Never let your racist flag fly when you’re running a business. How hard is it to come up with a plausible lie. Having said that, don’t be racist, y’all.

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    BulfrightMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 5:55pm

    Dammit.

    I knew I shouldn’t have named my labradoodle Jihad.

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      BlueberryphartBulfright
      6/09/16 6:01pm

      My pet breeding bud in Trashua is gonna have to stop typing “preggers”.

      And “Trashua”.

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      BCDFGBulfright
      6/09/16 6:41pm

      Dude, there’s a lot of people whose legal name is Jihad, most of whom were born way before the term ever took on the connotations it took on sometime around the 1990's, and it’s a major pain in the ass at TSA checkpoints.

      You want to see how fucked that kind of discrimination is? Here’s a totally awesome salt-of-the-earth hero in a NYC newspaper… named Jihad.

      (Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/services/hometown-heroes/bronx-bus-driver-saves-teen-gang-attack-article-1.1511937 )

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    TheEvilAttorneyMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 5:53pm

    Wouldn’t most people create fake accounts and then post things like “rich” “famous” “sexy” “Trump”?

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      State of FloridaTheEvilAttorney
      6/09/16 6:04pm

      Pretty sure they already do.

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      ForTheLoveofGlobTheEvilAttorney
      6/09/16 6:20pm

      I'm just going to hire an SEO to run my Facebook page.

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    ReburnsABurningReturnsMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 6:11pm

    My guess is that few landlords will see much value in this.

    It will provide no real protection beyond the normal credit and criminal background check they run.

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      LikelihoodParadigmReburnsABurningReturns
      6/09/16 6:26pm

      You’re right, I guess that’s why the credit bureaus don’t make any money. Nobody is interested in what they have to say.

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      bitcholaporvidaReburnsABurningReturns
      6/09/16 6:30pm

      You underestimate the number of self-righteous, patriotic, conservative landlords. I worked in property management for 14 years in Austin. At least fifteen people who’d go for this came to mind while reading this article.

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    YikesahootieMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 6:11pm

    A friend of mine once worked for a startup that would scour Facebook for data that they would sell to other companies (advertisers, I imagine. How this wasn’t against Facebook’s TOS I don’t know).

    They were shocked to discover so many middle-aged women into ketamine! The secret lives of housewives, indeed! Scandal!

    Turns out they were dieters talking about Special K. Waah-waah.

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      TotoroRecallYikesahootie
      6/10/16 1:48am

      LOLOLOL

      Also, for the longest time, my Facebook said I was a 150 year old dude.

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    LeNoceurMarina Galperina
    6/09/16 5:57pm

    I think this startup might want to do a little research on the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It seems to me that they fit the definition of “consumer reporting agency” pretty well.

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      aprilphreshMarina Galperina
      6/09/16 6:09pm

      Saying “pregnant” shouldn’t, by definition of the law, be grounds to not rent to a person. This thing should crash and burn.

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        A Media DudeMarina Galperina
        6/09/16 6:37pm

        I think the solution is stronger anti-discrimination laws. The information is out there so you can’t really do anything about that. But you can make it illegal for a landlord to reject someone on the basis of this kind of information.

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          Skipping along to our shared destructionMarina Galperina
          6/10/16 8:51am

          Lie. Just fucking lie. Someone asks, “Hey, can we look you up on Facebook?” just fucking tell them “Oh, I ain’t into that shit. It’s just designed to keep proles in their fucking place and I don’t want no part of that.” Make sure you get some nagging self-doubts planted to wake that motherfucker up at 3 one morning wondering if they really are just a mark in a giant confidence scam.

          If they call you on it, ask them what the fuck they think they’re doing cyber-stalking you and get the motherfucking law enforcement folks down at the DOJ and FBI interested in their mass private stalking scheme. At the very least, they’ll want to take notes, but last I checked there were some pretty serious cyber-stalking rules out there that they’ll have run afoul of if they go and look without your permission.

          Just fucking lie. They’re corporations, not people.

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