I’ve had four housemates in three years. And I’m not the problem.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is doing away with the company’s fact-checkers at the very time we need them most – to verify applications for the role of roommate.

Gen Z likes to claim Facebook is their parents’ domain, but there’s one thing they do use it for: tracking down a place to live. Penry Buckley reported this week that the popular “Inner East & West housemates” group, where Sydneysiders can find or fill a spare room, boasts more than 55,000 members.

“Lovely sunroom”: Meg Kanofski at home in her inner Sydney flat.

I once shunned the sharehouse speed-dating game, handing over a high school recommendation letter to secure a private rental with a friend of a friend. But a few months after our first anniversary came the talk: no, it’s not you, it’s Woollahra. She’d found the Sydney holy grail, a cheaper room in a more expensive suburb. With parking.

Then came a period of coworker cohabitation, before my Canberra-bound colleague ditched the harbour for Lake Burley Griffin.

I resigned myself to Zuckerberg’s housing service. Long-time lurker, first-time........

© The Sydney Morning Herald