Slashdot Mirror
Apartment In US Asks Tenants To 'Like' Facebook Page Or Face Action (business-standard.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Business Standard: An apartment building in Salt Lake City has told tenants living in the complex to "like" its Facebook page or they will be in breach of their lease. Tenants of the City Park Apartments said they found a "Facebook addendum" taped to their doors last weekend, asking them to "like" the City Park Apartments Facebook page. The contract says that if tenants do not specifically "friend" City Park Apartments on Facebook within five days, they will be found in breach of the rental agreement. In addition, the contract includes a release allowing the business to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on the Facebook page. Currently, the apartment building has a 1.1 star rating on its Facebook page.
please do, a business who lets "unauthorized people" put random crap in a lease or otherwise burden tenants with nonsense must pay the price.
there are laws about this kind of thing
Actually, businesses do need society's permission. Hell, it's built right into our federal and state constitutions here in the US. The mechanism is called a business license, and those are issued in order to both tax and regulate businesses, making sure workers and customers are safe. I'd agree that government regulations occasionally go too far, but on the other hand, landlords like this are *exactly* why such regulations tend to get put into place in the first place.
The landlord/tenant relationship especially is one that demands respect on both sides, or else it goes to hell pretty quickly. I can't see how this could be viewed as anything but a dick move, especially when it could have been so easily handled much better. How about they give their tenants $20 off their next month's rent if they give a like on Facebook instead of threatening them with fines or eviction (which is what breach of contract essentially boils down to)? I'll bet a bunch of people would have happily done just that.
I'm a far from a "statist" as you'll find, but arguing that the society (aka the government) can't regulate commerce is just silly.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
In most sane jurisdictions thats not allowed. Im a landlord and there are definite restrictions around this I have to comply with. Cannot alter the lease agreement before it is up without tennants consent. Cannot evict anybody without a court order (so a judge can check fair play) cant market the property for sale until the last 2 months of the lease.
And as a landlord I call these things the restrictions of a sane system. As a decent human being I would never do any less anyway but it evens the playing field by forcing the evil types to do what a decent human being would never consider not doing.
Keeping evil people from getting higher profit margines by acting evil to those less well off is something many here would call an intrusion on liberty. Maybe but I for obe consider it a justified and valid one since liberty should not be restricted to those rich enough to own multiple properties.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Screw ToS violations, I think we're looking at LEGAL violations here...