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New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles
- infotainment 1y agoThe country of free speech, everyone! You are free to say whatever you like, as long as your words do not contradict Official Party Ideology.
- qwe----3 1y ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 1y agoAnd a right to bear arms, until you need MANPADs to fight the feds. https://www.twz.com/air/department-of-homeland-security-q-9-reaper-drones-are-orbiting-over-los-angeles https://www.twz.com/air/department-of-homeland-security-q-9-...
- erpellan 1y agoUnless you want to cross state lines to get an abortion
- mlindner 1y agoThe courts haven't ruled on that yet but interstate commerce clause is pretty explicit about this kind of thing. A state can't criminalize someone going to another state to do something as that is something reserved to the federal government. So no, there is no restriction on going to another state to get an abortion.
- em-bee 1y agoseveral states are trying to change that. laws are being proposed to ban travel, and although they are being challenged, as you said, the last word on this is not spoken yet. and even if legal, people having an out-of-state abortion are being sued. that alone is a big restriction, because what good is a right if you don't have the means to defend yourself when that right is being challenged.
- nielsbot 1y agoWhat is coming in illegally?
- nathanaldensr 1y agoSome of this goes beyond party. "Anti-semitism" is an AIPAC carve-out and AIPAC owns both parties.
- lcfcjs6 1y ago[dead]
- frollogaston 1y agoReminds me of https://www.germany-visa.org/news/germany-will-include-12-new-questions-related-to-judaism-israel-on-its-citizenship-test/ https://www.germany-visa.org/news/germany-will-include-12-ne...
- fallingknife 1y agoRights don't apply when you are entering another country. Americans have the right to bear arms too, but good luck with that argument when get caught at the border with weapons.
- nielsbot 1y agoAre you ok denying visas to students based on the contents of their social media profiles?
- Mountain_Skies 1y ago>Gays are vile and should not be allowed to exist. Would you be ok with that social media poster being granted entry into the country?
- vkou 1y agoI wouldn't exactly be jumping for joy over it, but that's a juice that's not worth the squeeze.
- kennywinker 1y agoThey’d be welcomed with open arms in ~30% of the country. Screening for thought crimes isn’t a slippery slope, it’s a frictionless plane.
- ilya_m 1y agoDo I think it's the best use of taxpayers' dollars (ie, mine) to screen for objectionable content on social media? No. Do I trust the government to police opinions? No, especially when there's no accountability and appeals process. Do I believe the overall benefits that harassment-free international travel brings to this country outweigh the costs of letting in some visitors whose views I disagree with? Yes.
- frollogaston 1y agoYes
- deleted 1y ago
- throw0101c 1y ago> You are free to say whatever you like, as long as your words do not contradict Official Party Ideology. “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Idi Amin
- FabHK 1y agoPeople in the US are free to say whatever they want. But not everyone can just come to the US, and looking at what they've said is part of deciding whether they can.
- duxup 1y agoThought police.
- justahuman74 1y agoI guess students will have to delete all social media before applying?
- kergonath 1y agoUntil an empty account is seen as a red flag. The thing is, they do not need a reason to reject visa applications. This will just provide more pretexts and more power trips for border control agents and embassy bureaucrats.
- frollogaston 1y agoThis is why I made an unused Facebook account filled with normal stuff before applying to college, back when that was the popular thing.
- theendisney 1y agoOhh thats a whole new dystopian formula! We all thought instagram was optional but soon it Will be required to show off your beach body. While drinking the correct drink. Enhance with the right ai and catefully edit out your chinese Mexican and african friends. The gaming quality on yt and twitch can be measured with ai to check if you are not pretending. The immigration interview full of questions about grand theft auto. HN born as a place for founders to pretend to be civilized and knowledgable can extend to cover everyone. I mean, I wouldnt give a visum to the guy writing this comment.
- morkalork 1y agoDon't blur your friend's faces, that's suspicious. But if you leave the in their profiles will be matched up and checked too. You think the House Un-American Activities Committee was bad? The future will be 1000x more intense.
- ASinclair 1y agoSimple, just use AI tools to generate fake profiles that seem normal enough to pass inspection by some random State Department employee.
- linotype 1y agoYou’re naive if you think they’ll stop with foreign students.
- princealiiiii 1y agoIt's all done to chill free speech, especially "antisemetic" protests of Israel.
- duxup 1y agoThey already asked Harvard to monitor students for “viewpoint diversity” and make adjustments to admissions based on a government selected third party’s instructions. When they refused Trump started trying to force the to comply. They're already trying to reach the same thought police type activity with American students.
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoTrue. After seeing how the tech companies, media, and Biden administration acted during the pandemic, you should be worried about how quickly this can spin out of control.
- rsingel 1y agoLol. The Biden administration who simply asked platforms to enforce their own terms of service? Maybe you're better example is the Trump administration saying it's going to withhold transportation funding from cities because citizens their dared to protest him, issued presidential orders against law firms that represented people suing him, pulled the security clearances of people who dared to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, and threatened trees and charges against a former DHS official who wrote an unflattering op-ed in the Washington Post. One of these is not like the other
- frollogaston 1y agoI think the other comment is referring to Biden administration coercing social media companies on covid19 content ranking until a judge stopped it. Idk if this was related, but YouTube had covid19 vaccine videos promoted to a special place on its front page for over a year.
- fallingknife 1y ago[flagged]
- lolc 1y agoHow would you like to be probed by your host country today?
- lmz 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kristjansson 1y agoNonetheless one can be dismayed at seeing what those we've placed in power decide to do with that privilege.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Bilal_io 1y agoThe issue is that the US claims to be a free speech absolutist and even tries to apply this morality outside its borders using criticism and sometimes force.
- duxup 1y agoNext up is "you don't have a right to go to college" right? Trump administration has already made demands to monitor US students for "viewpoint diversity" and adjust admissions accordingly ...
- fallingknife 1y agoThat's correct, you don't. Colleges can and will deny you admissions if you express certain unpopular opinions.
- bufferoverflow 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoWe don't want crude flamebait on Hacker News either, so please don't post it. Edit: ok, that's enough. We've banned the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254450 (June 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44253910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44253910 (June 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801306 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27656479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27656479 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21908459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21908459 (Dec 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19477912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19477912 (March 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471419 (March 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127248 (Oct 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892645 (Sept 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958487 (Dec 2017) Pity to lose such a great username, but not destroying the community is more important.
- testfoobar 1y agoOutside of just wanting privacy for its own sake, there are many, many reasons to keep social media profiles private: health privacy, sexual orientation privacy, relationship privacy, location privacy, financial privacy, etc. “To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M and J non-immigrant visas will be asked to adjust the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to ‘public’”, the official said.
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoMuch of the world is against LBGTQ+ rights. If an immigrant has social media posts expressing open hatred and even calls for violence against people with sexual orientations not approved of in their home culture, will you still have an open mind about welcoming them in the US with open arms? This isn't theoretical. Both China and India, the two countries that supply the most students to the US, prohibit marriage equality. Both have extensive discrimination throughout their societies, both at the government and cultural levels.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- digianarchist 1y agoRight. That’s what these new powers will be used for. To defend LGBT folks in the United States. /s
- derektank 1y agoObviously not by this administration, but if we are creating new powers, the question of the principle is relevant and its potential use by a Democratic administration is also relevant. I, personally, don't see a problem with creating an ideological test for certain kinds of visa holders or permanent residents. As Karl Popper noted in outlining the paradox of tolerance, unlimited tolerance can lead to the destruction of tolerance itself. I think it's worth exploring ways for the government to prevent enemies of liberalism from entering the country, even if we already face illiberalism at home. That being said, I think this specific proposal threatens personal privacy far too much to be justified.
- __loam 1y agoThis is a gross violation of some of our most sacred principles.
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- throwawayq3423 1y agoYep, and all by the "free speech" crowd.
- belorn 1y agoThe only crowd that is consistently in favor of free speech and privacy is the opposition. As soon there is a new crowd in power people change tune and then it is about freedom of speech but not freedom from consequences of speech. Over time people in power may use different criteria when speech should be punished, and by whom, but the differences are only in the fine details. No one in power has ever supported free speech (in modern time) if that free speech may harm their position of power or their voters interests.
- buckle8017 1y agoCan you be specific which principles this violates? Historically visas could and were denied for completely arbitrary reasons.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Can you be specific which principles this violates? The right to free speech. Even in its restrictive First Amendment form.
- lesuorac 1y agoI'm not sure 1FA applies to non-US individuals on non-US soil. Once they're in the country, sure. ---- Not that I think it's been demonstrated that this policy will improve US security or etc. Wonder if the APA applies here.
- angst 1y agoalso, "lack of a social media profile could prompt US visa denial" source https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/now-lack-of-a-social-media-profile-could-prompt-us-visa-denial/articleshow/121561981.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/now-lack-of-a...
- koakuma-chan 1y agoWhat? And which social medias am I required to have a profile on?
- Havoc 1y ago[flagged]
- koakuma-chan 1y ago> this is too insane to be reality Is reality supposed to be less insane than this? Is this even insane in the first place?
- krapp 1y agoYes, and yes.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoWell, the guy was elected democratically, and democracy is supposed to work, right? Where did things go wrong? Why do people elect someone and then complain the person is bad? How do people choose who to vote for? What is even the point of complaining, what are you going to do? Elect someone else next time, so that the same thing happens? Revolt? Good luck with that. What makes you think the world has ever been sane? Tell me what I'm missing, please.
- mcphage 1y ago
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoFor invasive data brokers that link people to their pseudonymous social media accounts, getting the contents of a private feed seems like it'd be routine. Then they include in the violation bundle they sell to State.
- exiguus 1y ago[flagged]
- nyanpasu64 1y agoWhy do half of your comments (most of the ones in uppercase) sound like they're written by AI?
- exiguus 1y agoEnglish is not my native language
- dang 1y agoJust for clarity, we'd rather have your own words than words processed through an LLM. (I'm not saying you used an LLM—just explaining the principle. LLMs are amazing but we don't want HN conversations to be mediated by them.) Non-native English speakers are not only welcome on HN, we're in awe of how good their English is. Most of us only wish we had any French, German, Hindi, etc. at all. So please feel free to write as you write, in your own voice.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoHow many foreigners, illegal or not, are committing crimes? And how much could be found out from social media? This seems extremely paranoid. On the other hand, maybe this will lead to people putting less stuff on social media. This would probably be a net positive.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lucubratory 1y agoIt's not intended to detect crimes, it's intended to detect pro-Palestinian political sentiment & deny entry to anyone who has posted that way.
- SuperNinKenDo 1y agoFree speech for me but not for thee. America holds immense leverage when it comes to education, and now it seeks to use that leverage to export control of people's speech, thoughts, and movements abroad. At least when China does this kinda thing there's not so strong a stench of hypocrisy.
- olalonde 1y agoEven China doesn't do this. I've crossed the border hundreds of times and was never asked to hand over electronic devices - in fact, they barely asked any questions at all. In contrast, my few experiences crossing the U.S. and Canadian borders were much more invasive (I'm Canadian).
- forgotoldacc 1y agoYeah. They basically just ask if you're a journalist when applying for a visa there, and if you're not, they don't care. You're basically auto-approved so long as you pay the fee. I shittalked the government for a long time and got caught up in the various memes against the country before I decided to visit. I was afraid I'd be rejected (or worse, approved and arrested) and upon googling for similar experiences saw countless people freaking out about the same thing before going there. Turns out they either don't check at all, or do check but aren't nearly as stringent as the US. This ignores edge cases of popular Youtubers who lived there for years, made a career out of complaining, then were surprised when the government asked them to leave. Which still beats an El Salvador prison.
- hollerith 1y agoWinston Sterzel, who is probably one of the "edge cases of popular Youtubers who lived there for years" you refer to, has a deep love for China and the Chinese people. He does not say that much, but I think I can see it in his videos, e.g., of daily life on the Chinese street. He learned the language, bought a house there, got married, and did not want to leave.
- 1y ago
- sega_sai 1y agoThought police in action. Very nice.
- Spivak 1y agoWell that's one way to end run around searches you're not legally allowed to perform.
- tempodox 1y agoI wasn't aware that this administration gives a shit about legality. Edit: Even if it weren't for that, non-citizens do not have any rights and are not protected by the constitution or anything else.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[dead]
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- felineflock 1y agoI will spend this weekend creating burner social media accounts for my kids as a precaution. Each one will be crafted to look like they've never had a controversial thought in their lives. Just lasagna pics, birthday cakes, kittens, golden retrievers, baby goats, maybe an artsy photo of a leaf with #blessed. Everything I can do so that an AI running immigration background checks might match my kids to the profile of a low threat, emotionally well-regulated, consumer-minded citizen material. Absolutely no pictures of Winnie the Pooh to keep China travel option open too. I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.
- DigitallyFidget 1y agoMy only tip isn't really useful. Just avoid going to that hostile country for now. Unless there's a specific necessity. And if that's the case, then change all your social media accounts info, change the name, change birthdates, missmatch as much info as possible. Delete photos of yourself/family. Then for 'burner' accounts, make them on a different social network, like bluesky, myspace (they're still around), and then use an AI to generate ideas for posts and just make those as posts for the next while. The problem will be making a realistic timeline/history for new accounts. Alternatively "your kids aren't allowed to use social media", and that clears up a lot of work. But honestly just avoid the risk of traveling there in the first place, is it worth the risk of being detained?
- somenameforme 1y agoPRISM [1] says hello. He may have fallen out of the news cycle, but he's not only still around but bigger, badder, and more invasive than ever. That phone you used to set up 2FA online with? Well that conveniently ties your real name, address, and more right to specific accounts. And he's collected it and passed it along for storage, in perpetuity. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
- tenpies 1y agoWhat method are you using to predict what future governments won't find offensive/illegal? Short of time travel, this seems impossible.
- betaby 1y agoLike it is today in Russia and Belarus.
- bhouston 1y agoIt will get so much worse. The Palantir project will likely evolve to suck data directly from Meta, Gmail, X, Reddit and the systems of other US companies to create profiles based on non-public data (likes, DMs, deleted posts, comments, etc.) This will be feed to LLMs to create a whole personality profile, including political leanings.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoI've never seen self-reported principles be more quickly abandoned than then self-styled "free speech" crowd once they got power.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- arresin 1y agoThere’s just one political leaning they care about. Weirdly it’s about one country (that recently massacred, by firing machine guns into a crowd, 60 civilians collecting international food aid).
- energywut 1y agoIf you openly criticize genocide and settler colonialism by Israel, you are probably the kind of person who might openly criticize the imperial efforts of the US. Especially once they become even more oppressive. They know exactly what they are doing.
- vixen99 1y agoAccepting this and purely as a logistic problem, how would you deal with Hamas who have in their basic charter made clear they don't want Israel to exist? Should they get the chance, their intention to repeat October 7th has been clearly stated - it's in their charter. What does anyone do under those circumstances? For those who argue that Israel is an illegitimate State, I guess the practical question is where should the 9.5 million colonialist Israelis move to? And who would accept them? "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity". https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
- _dke7 1y agoOriginal DHS Announcement on Social Media Screening: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-screening-aliens-social-media-activity-for-antisemitism https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-sc... State Dept on what is considered Antisemitism: https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/ https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/ These definitions are intentionally broad and designed to censor criticism of Israel. You have more freedom to criticize the US Government than to criticize a foreign country.
- chasd00 1y agoThanks for some actual information. I’m trying to find the directive to force student social media profiles to be public but can’t find anything yet. This article mentions everything in the wsj article that I could read (no sub) but makes no mention of requiring profiles be “public”. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/social-media-screening-student-visas-00413160 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/social-media-screen...
- ddeck 1y ago>I’m trying to find the directive to force student social media profiles to be public but can’t find anything yet. It's on all the US embassy sites, although it says "are requested": Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States under U.S. law. https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/ https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/ https://ca.usembassy.gov/visas/ https://ca.usembassy.gov/visas/ https://in.usembassy.gov/visas/ https://in.usembassy.gov/visas/ etc.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> It's on all the US embassy sites, although it says "are requested" The smart ones won’t sign to it. The dumb ones will take too long to arrest and charge.
- Simulacra 1y agoI don't understand why the social media companies are not fighting this? This is ridiculous.
- acdha 1y agoThey’re telling everyone that you need to use their services to be allowed into the United States. Some managers are going to be so excited about those engagement numbers!
- maeil 1y agoI'm not sure how to phrase this within the rules of HN, but I don't understand how anyone on HN 1. can not understand why Meta and Microsoft aren't fighting this 2. can still be remotely surprised by any of this 3. can act this has a single thing to do with security or even with Israel - neither of which remotely factor into the reason behind this policy. Genuinely, have people been living in Bikini Bottom? I'm so tired of this cognitive dissonance, not wanting to face the reality. As tired as I am of these developments themselves, really. I'm too tired to still be nice. I thought people here were bright.
- King-Aaron 1y agoI'm impressed at both how quickly the United States is falling into blatant authoritarianism, and also at how many people seem to make excuses for it.
- energywut 1y agoQuickly? This has been the path we have been on for at least 30 years, probably longer. Plenty of folks have been calling this out for longer. When you have two parties in control, and they are both staunchly pro-capital, anti-worker parties, one party will push conservative and the other will ensure "nothing fundamentally changes". Obama, Biden, Bush, and Clinton all had parts to play in empowering the executive, normalizing political violence, demonizing and silencing the left (the actual left -- socialists, workers parties, anarchists, etc.), and ramping up the militarization of the police. This isn't some sudden moment, it might be the first time it's affected people you know, but this has been happening for awhile now.
- Herring 1y agoI think it's actually kind of a miracle it didn't happen earlier. This country has been all about getting rich since slavery. Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg lobbying, campaign finance, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few.
- energywut 1y agoI think too many people are too enamored with their "team" to really dig into the policy proposals of presidents and senators. Like, for so many people being a Democrat is purely about being Not A Republican (or vice versa). I want more people out here who are willing to vote (or withold their vote) for a candidate based on the policy positions. This "Vote Blue No Matter Who" (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) mindset leads to candidates who don't have to hold coherent positions or perform their duties. They simply need to not be the other guy. While being "not the other guy" they will get courted by capital interests, because they need that money to run their campaigns. It's really not hard to connect the dots between these politicians and the donors who buy them and mysteriously get policies that make regulatory capture and capital concentration easier. It's not even conspiratorial -- it's pretty much out in the open these days. I'm so tired of hearing, "But not the democrats" or "but not the republicans" -- my friends, stop treating the people you vote for like part of your identity. Expect more from the people who represent you, be harshly critical of your own party to help it grow.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoWhat does this mean for China? You should be sharing your WeChat messages not just with your friends and family, but also with Donald Trump? Its not like you have a facebook page, and Wechat doesn't really work like Facebook (it isn't really suited to wide spread sharing, although some people try to do that).
- lmm 1y agoWeChat still has user profile pages (and probably public posts on there?), even if most people don't use them much. Probably a case of making that public.
- FabHK 1y agoYour WeChat is already shared with the Chinese government, so you're just sharing with one more.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoBut the American government doesn’t have a special account, they want it to be “public.”
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sys_64738 1y agoThis might be against the ToS of the social media account.
- userbinator 1y agoI have no social media associated with my real identity. That should've always been the norm, yet unfortunately it isn't.
- tim333 1y ago>... required to unlock their social media profiles ... Those who fail to do so will be suspected of hiding that activity from US officials.
- stormfather 1y agoDoes anyone think this is about anything other than stamping out criticism of Israel?
- Arubis 1y agoOf course it’s for more than that. It’s a fabulously oppressive tool that’ll get used for whatever the hell power-hungry folks want. That’s not to say it won’t be used for your proposed purpose! Just gotta think bigger.
- mattnewton 1y agoThat’s the trial balloon.
- AIorNot 1y agoSocial media screening - so America is policing people’s opinions on a large scale Just like Turkey huh? Love that America is still called the “land of the free” https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/20/turkiye-detains-37-people-over-social-media-posts-about-istanbul-mayor https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/20/turkiye-detains...
- herbst 1y agoNobody calls it that other than themselfs
- neilv 1y agoThis one isn't as bad as some other things that have already happened in the space, but I've been wondering... If I was a non-US person, who previously wanted to visit or move the US -- as a student, industry engineer/scientist, academic researcher, teacher, doctor/nurse, investor/founder, conference attendee, or tourist -- recent news events would've already had me put that wish on hold, indefinitely. Even though those all are people that the US wants coming, they are being discouraged. So, who has the US already started missing out on, what are the situations of people who are still coming, and how soon will even they stop?
- TZubiri 1y agoPersonally, no. The stance of the US on illegal inmigration has always been clear, and the process for requesting a B1B2 visa is like a rite of entry where it is made even clearer (interviews, seriousness). My father explained it to me when I was young, I must have thought the process was a bit too harsh, "going to their country is like going to somebody else's home, you need to follow their rules, and it's a privilege not a right, to enter". From what I read, the rules haven't changed, rather they are being enforced. My perspective as an outsider is that the people that complain are mostly leftist extremist from one of the most left leaning and inmigrant heavy states (CA). I know a lot of people from my country that consider breaking rules and laws as part of natural life and they see visa rules as some other rule to be broken, lots of people that overstay visitor and business visas to work and live in the states or other countries. I see these changes in enforcement as positive to me, as they do not restrict me in any way except in false positives, as I was already complying with the law and my visa terms. If anything, I am benefitted, as the benefits that are given to law abiding people are becoming exclusive to those that abide the law, instead of also those that disregard it. It reminds me of this scene from mad men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4FC1VU_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4FC1VU_uO4
- foogazi 1y ago> I see these changes in enforcement as positive to me, as they do not restrict me in any way except in false positives, as I was already complying with the law and my visa terms. The bootlicker ethos thoroughly explained
- irrational 1y agoI don’t use social media. Is the assumption that everyone does use social media?
- lurk2 1y agoYou’ve been posting here for nearly 10 years.
- mahkeiro 1y agoBut HN is not a social media, you don’t publish and are not linked to anyone (I cannot subscribe to your comment) on this site. Your definition of social media is almost equivalent of the internet.
- lurk2 1y agoI know I’m being pedantic here but take a look at Wikipedia: > Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks. Forums satisfy all of these requirements. The key factor is not what kind of content users can post but that users can post, and more importantly that they post with the primary intention of interacting with other users. This covers Hacker News and other forums but excludes guest books and contact forms.
- grep_name 1y agoEh. Your argument keeps coming back to that same snippet from Wikipedia, which is unconvincing. Wikipedia isn't the end-all-be-all arbiter of language. "Social media" is a useful term for discussing a lot of specific phenomena that have come out of sites like facebook, instagram, twitter, etc which all rely on metrics of social graphing to track popularity and guide content exposure and interaction. (Due to the nature of your argument I feel compelled to say that I'm not trying to formalize a complete airtight definition here) There is a distinct experience and ecosystem that arises from those types of sites that we all recognize, which didn't exist in the same way before the advent of social media sites. And it warrants discussion. When you try to say "actually, technically, ALL human communication is social media!" and won't let it go, you derail a conversation in a way that benefits nobody and is functionally (if not literally at this point) untrue for anyone who's experienced the internet over the last 20 years.
- blotfaba 1y agoPrinciples such as... slavery, white supremacy, bigotry, genocide, tyranny..
- skybrian 1y agoWon't be too long before people will have scrubbed profiles under their real names and use temporary alts for private group chats.
- zenonu 1y ago... and then there's a falling out in your friends circle, and someone is reported.
- 0dhhhhd9 1y agoDamn, I guess I shouldn't have asked for that jet from the single biggest supporter of anti-Israeli protests.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoThis must've been what it was like to watch the Roman empire crumble (but at 200x speed). Or, heh, Venezuela at 2x speed. It only took them 13 years to go from a rich country, to collapse in democratic confidence, to total economic implosion & dictatorship.
- TZubiri 1y ago[flagged]
- eesmith 1y ago"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." (Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu; disputed.) The more information given, the more likely there will be a false positive. "You say you didn't visit the US but here's a picture of you in Vegas." "That's the Eiffel Tower. In Paris." "No, it's Las Vegas - I saw it last month. Entry rejected."
- TZubiri 1y agoI know you are being rhetorical and exaggerating. But being executed for writing something is something that has happened during political instability in my country and not a rhetorical risk. It really puts things into perspective. no I don't consider US border officers to be a risk in my threat model. I'm more concerned about dying from what I post, whether by a junta or kidnapping thieves. I personally wouln't care much other than perhaps suing for a refund of the flight . If I'm denied entry because of something I said, it's not the end of the world, I would at most sue for a flight refund.
- eesmith 1y agoI'm being jocular, yes. But don't let that hide the hard reality behind it. The more information the government (or anyone else with power over you) has, the higher the chance of false positives and of confusing correlation with causation. It's not like they will have a crack team of auditors review everything. If you are arrested and conveyed to a foreign torture jail because an AI scanning your social media posts hallucinated that you are an international gang member, then it's also not the end of the world.
- foogazi 1y agoGood dog!
- 1y ago
- ulfw 1y agoLand of the Free, home of the Brave. I hope we can finally let all that propaganda of 'freedom' and 'free speech' go to rest now.
- akmarinov 1y agoWelcome to the beginning of the US social credit score system. Today - visa interviews, tomorrow - citizens in the US. Went to a No Kings rally? Ooops, -2000 points, now you can’t board a plane. And now I can’t get a visa :(
- herbst 1y agoYou have credit score and a society that builds on it. The concept is far from new, it's just being extended. (The way your credit score is designed is nether common nor normal outside of the US. And is a strange concept to anyone else as well. It's not much off an social score for the poor as it looks from the outside)
- arunabha 1y ago> The concept is far from new, it's just being extended. Maybe, but it's a bit like extending the concept of a grenade to a nuclear bomb. The amount of the 'concept' applied matters substantially.
- GuestFAUniverse 1y agoCongratulations not one, but _multiple_ Gestapos. DHS, ICE, ... all doing whatever they are told from the new "above the law".
- 0n0n0m0uz 1y agoSo delete them
- 0n0n0m0uz 1y agoThe internal Israeli left / opposition themselves are much more free to speak and have a more robust debate than permitted in the USA.
- nandomrumber 1y agoChoose the Kolmogorov option https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3376 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3376
- octo888 1y agoMy desire to visit the US just went sub zero. The worst part is this has the possibility to spread to other countries (that the US can twist the arm of) because they want to extend their policies further.
- franczesko 1y agoUSA is a beautiful place to visit and people are very hositable. I think that there's a big difference between what people do and what the state does. I do agree however, that what is happening in this country right now is deeply concerning.
- showsover 1y agoAs can be said about Afganistan and its people. That doesn't mean it's not risky going there or that people are queueing to enter.
- jeroenhd 1y agoThe same can be said about just about any country. Based on the way Americans vote, I don't think that hospitality is there for the majority of Americans. I know the way the American system of politics has shifted to a binary choice doesn't leave much room for nuance when it comes to specific policies, but when Americans were faced with a choice between a racist, misogynist, fraudulent, insurrectionist sex offender and anyone else, they showed their values. Plus, the country's leader announced he was considering invading a close ally, that kind of threat cannot be ignored either, though it's only one of the more recent threats to world peace that only happens to hit close to home for me. I'm sure people in the Middle East and Central or South America will have heard this kind of talk before. In the same vein, I hope people judge my country for the fact that right extremists that have held a significant amount of power for years now. There are hospitable, kind people in every street in every town, but I won't pretend the average person will be like that; voter demographics have definitely been a continuous source of disappointment for me. Perhaps that's one of the downsides of democracy: the people of a country show their true colours quite publicly, and can't hide behind "that's just what the regime thinks". You're right about the beauty, though. America is a very pretty place.
- te_chris 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHRA_definition_of_antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHRA_definition_of_antisemitis... Assume the IHRA definition of antisemitism has been the justification of all this - a reasonable document, and then a bunch of clauses explicitly to prevent criticism of Israel. Written before they started ethnic cleansing Gaza.
- LightHugger 1y agoThis is pretty stupid, especially this will affect the smarter people who don't even make social media profiles to begin with! They'll get accused of lying for not having one, but they're really just smart enough to stay off facebook and twitter..
- southernplaces7 1y agoSo, aside from the first Amendment no longer applying to anyone in the U.S (not just citizens mind you) as has always been its interpretation, the government has given itself the right to explicitly, wholesale, normalize the total invasion of anyone's private "papers" (translate that to the modern era) in the name of bullshit entry security theater.
- godelski 1y agoJust an FYI for anyone reading, according to the constitution, the first amendment applies to everyone, not just citizens. It specifically says "the people" rather than "citizens". Courts have ruled time and time again that citizen rights are specifically those with the verbiage "citizens" and rights like these apply to everyone. Not that that exactly matters to this administration, who is happy to act first and let the courts figure it out never
- southernplaces7 1y agoJust to add to that: the same logic is supposed to apply to the fourth amendment too since it also doesn't specify citizens. It's of course also being violated wholesale here (and has been for a long time, since before the Trump Administration). While that particular ship has sailed since long ago, it's worrisome and sad to now see the same prying and winnowing down being applied to the 1st too, which has probably been the best defended of the 10 main amendments. This is how normalization of deviance works on a bureaucratic administrative legal scale. One administration, with just a mildly lackadaisical attitude about staying within the bounds of things like rights, laws, legality and so forth, stretches what's legally allowed or normal just a bit, here and there, only to be followed by another more or less reasonable administration that does it a bit more. Then however, you might get a less common but not extremely rare administration that simply doesn't give a tin shit about anything resembling legality insofar as it thinks it can get away with it, and all those previous deviations are aggressively pried into and expanded as much as possible. This is why it's important to fight deviations of respect for individual legal rights and constitutional boundaries even when they're small, committed by administrations you otherwise largely respect. You simply don't know who will come along later, or how much political tendencies will change over time having been already given ever more free rein to do so illegally. Then on the other hand, there is also that large subset of the population that, as long as a particular administration shares its ideological fixations, simply doesn't care about legality or deviations from constitutional responsibility. On the contrary, they'll actively bark for their new leaders to break the rules as much as possible against anything they don't like. They're idiots for doing this of course, because it can very easily bite them right back in the ass later, but try explaining that when rational discourse goes down the drain in favor of dogmas.
- xdennis 1y agoI'm very split on this. On one hand it sucks from a privacy perspective, but on the other, it makes complete sense for the US to not allow anti-Americans there. I don't understand why so many people who hate the US to it's core want to live there. E.g., Ilhan Omar: "the US is one of the worst countries".
- creata 1y agoDid Ilhan Omar actually say "the US is one of the worst countries"? The only quote I'm finding[0] is one in which she says it's turning into one of the worst countries. In the same sentence she calls the US a "beacon of hope". [0]: https://youtu.be/7CSD5UbE77w?t=28 https://youtu.be/7CSD5UbE77w?t=28
- ingohelpinger 1y agohow is that not Stasi like?
- fxtentacle 1y agoGreat to hear that the US visa process is now even more privacy-invasive than travelling to China.
- W0lfEagle 1y agoBe aware that any comment here or anywhere on the internet or in private messages or spoken in private near a device with a microphone might also be used against you by the US government (yay freedom). You might think it's fine. At some point your personal views too will be at odds with the government.
- cpburns2009 1y agoThis has been the case at least since 2007 with PRISM. That's what Snowden leaked in 2013 which confirmed the long time conspiracy theory that the NSA recorded all communications on the internet.
- tianqi 1y agoIn this situation, in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, all social media platforms should and must display a prominent warning: You have the right to remain silent on this website. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
- jeroenhd 1y agoI'm pretty sure an empty social media account is more suspicious than no social media at all. Remaining silent may not be your best option. Also, as a foreigner, it doesn't really matter what rights you may or may not have when people at the border have broad power to reject your attempted entry. Unless you're willing to try a legal battle, you'll be forever marked as "refused entry" in the US government systems, which is one of the many flags you need to clear to even get a VISA. I wouldn't trust the country that deports legal immigrants or just plain citizens without due process to care much about your right to remain silent. I think it's been pretty well-known that the US government will track your social media activity by any means it can anyway. Setting everything to public makes it easier for the courts (after all, no need to admit to secret spying when everything is set to public) but I think it'd be an illusion to think the government doesn't have access to this data anyway. Or perhaps this is just a grift so more private companies can start scraping social media as a business model around immigration control. The most interesting change here is that they're targeting people criticizing Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians specifically.
- nlitened 1y agoMight as well tattoo that on newborns' forearms, but will it help?
- leokennis 1y agoI am curious from someone in the higher education field. Is the quality of American universities still enough to offset their fascist government? More concrete, do you expect that smart people abroad will still choose to study in the US despite these insane policies? Or do you expect they'll divert to universities in other countries?
- getcrunk 1y agoIm not an academic but went to fairly prestigious science university (not ivy league or MIT or something like top top tier). I don’t have any experiences to compare it to because I didn’t go to school in other countries. But haven been through the system and being an American my whole life and understanding America, I would say no I didn’t see anything special about my education. nothing particularly note worthy and in fact, I have a long list of criticisms. especially tenured professors, professors that don’t speak English very well, and then actually just horrible professors. Curriculum wise, yes many universities can have fairly cutting edge curriculums but that’s not something we have a monopoly over. And let’s not talk about the price. Also, I had quite a few foreign exchange students that I’ve interacted with through throughout the years, whether at school or other places. And more often than not in the cs majors, I would say that they were ahead.
- wkat4242 1y agoWhy does anyone still want to study in the US? I don't even want to visit it anymore. Besides, as LGBT advocate I'm sure they will not even let me in anymore :) Sorry, I know there's still good people there too.
- tim333 1y agoTrump is a bit of a blip. This too shall pass.
- wkat4242 1y agoYou're underestimating how much the reputation of and trust in the US has fallen in Europe. Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. It will take many good administrations to get that trust back. Especially the tariff attacks on US allies basically told us anyone can be elected at any time and throw a wrench in global trade. The amount of decoupling that's started here is huge. These things take time to materialise so it's not obvious yet. But once the EU has alternatives for things it needs the US for (eg big cloud) why ever switch back? Also the "buy European" movement sprung up out of nowhere and grew massively. Trump will hopefully be a blip but the waves will be felt for years to come.
- ykonstant 1y agoTrump will pass; the legacy will not. Think about the lasting effects of the Patriot Act, among many many other "temporary measures".
- Tadpole9181 1y agoHe was elected twice. We don't get to play this "it isn't us" shit now.
- Kiyo-Lynn 1y agoFeels a bit much to ask students to open up all their social media just to study in the US. People post things without thinking too much, and now that could hurt their future. Not sure this is the kind of message we want to send.
- prmoustache 1y agoVetting by using social medias seems completely bonkers. For instance I don't have any current instagram, facebook, or tiktok account and my old accounts including the google ones I have used sporadically have always been using generated names[1] but there are a fair number of other people having my real name , how would the US government know I am not hiding by keeping one of those profiles private? Bottom line: I will never apply for a US Visa and by losing all atractivity to foreign talents and only accept keeping its interbreed assholes this country is completely doomed. [1] it is quite funny to have whole families from Iceland or Tanzania trying to connect to you because your has their last name.
- arunabha 1y agoI'm wondering how the officials are planning to verify which social media accounts an applicant holds. Apparently the idea of creating a 'clean' account for inspection is novel to them. Also, pleasantly surprised to see this not immediately flagged off the front page. Of late, the flagging has been particularly trigger happy.
- haxiomic 1y agoThis is what Palantir is for. It's already being actively used to gather data and turn away journalists (speculative) https://bsky.app/profile/alistairkitchen.bsky.social/post/3lrjsdev7mc2x https://bsky.app/profile/alistairkitchen.bsky.social/post/3l...
- GardenLetter27 1y agoI support Israel, but this is crazy and completely against Free Speech.
- kavouras 1y agoA Greek friend of mine who applied for a visa to do a PhD in US about a month ago, was required to unlock their social media profile by the US embassy, this is already happening.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoWhenever getting a US visa you were also getting your palm fingerprinted, also at the entry in the airport. Weird that people somehow are making more fuss about showing your social media to authorities than giving away your biometrics.
- kavouras 1y agoOf course its worth making a fuss about it. My social media are private because what's getting shared in it is for close friends and family only. The US government has no right searching through it. This is a big joke and I'm afraid it's only the beginning. Personally, with how things are going, I don't think I'm pursuing a PhD in the US after graduating. What's next, sharing a backup of my private conversations? I'm afraid we're going into a weird timeline where authoritarian figures in power(not just government) are having immense amounts of data for people, and the technology to go through it without much effort. It's a good time(if it's not to late) for everyone who cares about their privacy to start getting as much as possible outside mainstream social media and centralized accounts(google etc)
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoI can fake, change or delete my social media. I can't fake, change or delete my biometrics. So it's crazy to me to see people focusing on the least worst violations of their privacy like the government seeing their vacation photos. >The US government has no right searching through it. Well they just made it a right. What are rights anyway? Rights are not a natural construct, they're whatever the government decides. So if the government decides one thing, tomorrow it can decide another thing if it wants to. It's not a US issue, every country you will go to can change their rights willy nilly based on the current boogie man: terrorists, COVID, Russia, Iran, right wing "extremists" etc In the UK or Germany you can be fined, swatted or arrested for tweets and wrong think. Why? Because government made that a right.
- serenadeineb 1y ago"home of the brave . "
- v5v3 1y agoIn the Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz interview yesterday. Cruz stated similar to "I was taught at a young age that the bible says whoever helps Israel will be blessed by God and those that don't anger god". Tucker, a Christian, asked where in the bible it said this as he had no recollection of such. Cruz didn't know. Turns out it doesn't even say as such in the bible. This is brainwashing at a very young age that has been going on for decades.
- jonfw 1y agoThis is the verse that Cruz was referring to: https://www.bible.com/bible/3034/gen.12.1-20.BSB https://www.bible.com/bible/3034/gen.12.1-20.BSB As with all things in the bible, it's meaning is subject to interpretation, and I won't attempt to argue for one interpretation vs another. Just putting it out there as some additional context.
- hearsathought 1y agoNothing to interpret. That verse is not about israel. It is about abraham. "Israel" happens well after abraham's death. Also, that verse is from the torah, not the christian bible ( new testament ). It is fundamentally meaningless to christianity as the verses in the quran are. It's hilarious how people like cruz cherry-pick passages from the old testament. The torah also has quite interesting things to say about homosexuality (death penalty by stoning), slavery (legal) and women's rights (none). What's cruz's views on these topics.
- Kim_Bruning 1y agoCeterum Censeo the right to Secrecy of Correspondence should be made to apply to modern digital media. Including at borders. Especially between western nations. Else it becomes impractical to travel securely!
- Cheer2171 1y ago[flagged]
- afroboy 1y agoAll of that crap for tiny terrorist state in middle east.
- edarchis 1y agoI'm pretty sure that they future queen of Belgium, studying at Harvard, will be exempted for this. It will be used when DHS, ICE or any "officer" wants something against you.
- eth0up 1y agoFighting fire with fire, I guess. Seems very... Chinese for Vespucciland. I've hypothesized that for as much as I'll always resist it, authoritarianism is an inevitable, predictable result of social complexity and volatility, two factors that are unprecedentedly shaping humanity. Elites just want it, lowbrow bureaucrats know no other way, and the ever divided plebs, unwilling or unable to actively engage in intelligent mitigation themselves, will either collectively touch their toes or wake up one day to a new and improved boardgame with very strict and uncomfortable rules. Something many seem to slough off, is the extreme, manifold volatility underlying society, from environmental factors to technological, political, economic, social, epic crisis, etc, and even the remaining mysteries of the human id. All scarcely prepared for and recreationally sneezed at. I don't see how it's not abundantly clear that as myriad people of influence scramble for their own brands of order, or a single one in this thinly veiled bedlam we call society, that severe constriction isn't imminent. Regardless of Red or Blue; Independent being inconceivable presumably for reasons of exceedingly advanced rationale. I think an ephemeral golden age (for those who've been on the better scented end of the stick) is ending with an exponential tempo. Grim but pragmatic.
- dubious2 1y agowhat if their smart and have their social media under a alias?
- akomtu 1y agoThe US really wants to inspect your mind and social media is the closest it can get to a snapshot of your mind.
- silverliver 1y agoI guess I would not be allowed entry (the only social media site I use is hn). Also, wouldn't this just incentivize desperate people to buy fake online accounts that were built over a long period just for this purpose?
- dismalaf 1y agoThe article title is weird. The article body and quote from the US official says the visa process merely requires social media accounts to be publicly visible. "Unlocking" implies handing over credentials...