The litigation phase of Twitter has begun, and it scares me on a couple of levels.
Number one: I tend to get pissy when things don’t work the way they are supposed to. Twitter has given me another opportunity to vent, and tell a couple companies in particular that I think their product or service sucks ass. I don’t know why I do this. I guess it is the lure of feeling like millions of people are going to hear your gripe and commiserate and somehow make you feel better. And yes, I usually do feel a little better, plus usually someone has had the same problem and ‘tweets’ you a solution.
Number two: This scares me because I fear sneaky, creepy lawyers are going to start trolling Twitter, looking for libelous tweets, and tweeters to squash, the way some of them used to chase ambulances. Eventually, this will lead to changes in the way it operates that will ultimately spell the downfall of Twitter as we know it.
Now if at this point you are wondering what I am even talking about, I am talking about a Chicago woman who is being sued by her landlord over something she “said” in a tweet.
Her tweet basically said this:
“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
Horizon, her landlord, saw that and is suing the woman for $50,000 for defamation. Why would they do that? Well, Horizon president Jeffrey Michael says:
“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,” he said, noting that the company manages 1,500 apartments in Chicago and has a good reputation it wants to preserve.
Interesting. There is no indication yet on whether this tenant took her complaint to the landlord before making the tweet. But either way, they may want to rethink that policy and become an “ask questions first” kind of an organization, because if they had they may have asked how many followers the woman had, and then they would have found out the answer was 20.
Twenty people that may or may not have even seen the original tweet. But now, since they “sued first” the whole world is being presented the headline that they sued a tenant for $50,000 over a tweet. Even if those twenty people told 4 or 5 people never to rent from Horizon, and all those people told 4 or 5 more people, they are in Chicago, that is not even a drop in the bucket of potential tenants. And that would never happen.
Oh well, like I said…here we go.
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