Salt Lake City Apartment Complex Requires Residents To Like Their Facebook Page, Angers The Internet With Predictable Results

A Salt Lake City apartment complex has instituted a rather odd new set of rules for tenants regarding Facebook; most notably, tenants must “Friend” their page or be in violation of their rental agreements.

According to a report from ABC News, residents came home late last week to find notices on their doors of a contractual add-on requiring them to “Friend” the City Park Apartments page on Facebook, or be found in violation. In addition, as KSL reports, the “Facebook Addendum ” includes a release allowing City Park Apartments to post pictures of both tenants and their guests on Facebook, and that residents agree not to post anything negative about City Park Apartments anywhere online.

“Resident further agrees not to post on any public forum or page negative comments relating to the community.”

City Park tenant Jason Ring said that this is the final straw; he’s moving out at the end of the month.

“I don’t want to be forced to be someone’s friend and be threatened to break my lease because of that. It’s outrageous as far as I’m concerned.

It’s a violation of my privacy.”

Ring’s not wrong, and he’s barely scratching the surface – attempts to control public perception of a business through force rarely end well. Cases like this one have come up before; perhaps most notable is the Union Street Guest House, as reported by CNN. In 2014, the Union Street Guest House gained notoriety when it threatened wedding parties with a $500 fine for any negative reviews posted by any member of the party. Per review.

According to the hotel, guests “may not understand what we offer,” and it is the paying party’s responsibility to “explain it to them.”

When it came to light, it prompted a wave of news reports, a Cracked article (featuring a list of companies that “went totally insane when criticized”) and the internet’s favorite response to, well, anything they don’t approve of — but in this case it has a particular irony. The company’s Yelp page was flooded with thousands of negative reviews, and their reputation utterly trashed.

And, predictably, that same response has been brought upon the City Park Apartments Facebook page.

Since the story broke, City Park Apartments has sprouted literally hundreds of one-star Facebook reviews, and according to at least one commenter, has been compelled to create another page — where reviewers are being urged to leave a second review.

Among the various reviews, the owners are being called “Nazi’s (sic),” “dictators,” “sadistic and weird.” Others are saying that “you just ruined your business.”

And, perhaps most tellingly of all, some reviewers are actual tenants who had never felt compelled to leave a review before — but they do now, and they’re not happy.

Meanwhile, lawyers are arguing that the Facebook policy may be illegal on the grounds of discrimination, although the argument seems a little flawed. Attorney Zachary Myers, who specializes in tenant rights for Hepworth, Murray & Associates in Bountiful, suggests that the policy discriminates against those who don’t have or are unable to create Facebook accounts in the first place.

“The biggest issue that I have with it is that it seems to be discriminatory against elderly individuals and disabled individuals who are unable to utilize an online presence such as Facebook.”

Myers added that tenants may not be required to sign a late add-on in the first place, and that any add-on a tenant is uncomfortable with shouldn’t be signed because, once signed, the tenant is bound to comply.