5 ms·

> "Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as

> "Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it" Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM.

b112 10mo ago
"If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible" If that sentence from the article is accurate, the parent poster's response makes complete and perfect sense. You don't have to like the current administration, to like a specific thing they are doing. Now is this actually what is happening? I don't know. And of course, that's a different conversation, and not what the parent poster was talking about.
- kylehotchkiss 10mo ago
  Is this the foreign service officers or USCIS? iirc foreign service officers have pretty wide latitude on visa approval (whose really making sure they’re checking deeply?) and have 100 other more important factors to evaluate so if that’s the case; will this really amount to many denials?
  - stephenhuey 10mo ago
    Except they're under pressure to not exercise such wide latitude. A few months ago, many who had already passed the exam and were just awaiting placement found out they would have to retake the exam, a different one more to the liking of the current administration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979 98% of current foreign service officers who responded to a survey said morale is lower, plus the administration is laying off 1300 of them: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/state-department-morale-survey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/state-departm...
- mullingitover 10mo ago
  The problem is that this administration and their ilk have incompetently misinterpreted 'censorship' to mean 'not letting random strangers use your private property to publish things you don't want them to.' The only way "an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship in the United States" would be if they were an employee of the US government and they somehow violated US law to enact censorship. To review: censorship is when the government doesn't allow you to say things with your printing press. Censorship is not when private parties don't let you use their printing press.
  - mitthrowaway2 10mo ago
    If I was on a telephone call which selectively declined to transmit certain words or topics to the receiving party, I would consider that a form of censorship, even if it wasn't the government doing it.
    - richrichardsson 10mo ago
      Just use a different system that didn't do that, it's your choice.
      - mitthrowaway2 10mo ago
        To that extent, government censorship isn't really censorship either then? You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you.
        mullingitover 10mo ago
        > You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you. The 'Network State' fascist bros (Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, et al) are the powers behind the throne of the current regime. They want to dismantle the United States and create modern-day fiefdoms where your corporate overlords dictate your rights. They are serious about doing it. "You can vote with your feet and leave our fiefdom if you don't like the lack of rights" is literally their stance.
- RRWagner 10mo ago
  Displaying Nazi symbols is allowed (protected) in the United States, but prohibited in Germany. Does that mean that any German person involved in enforcing pr even tangentially acting on that restriction would be ineligible for a U.S visa?
  - herbst 10mo ago
    Obviously that is what the great leader wants for the greatest and most free country on all the earth
  - account42 10mo ago
    Hopefully, yes. The free speech situation in Germany is ... not good. Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good.
    - sofixa 10mo ago
      > Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good. You do know why these laws exist, right? And they are not useless. Many terrible things happened, and tens of millions died, because an extremely hateful ideology was allowed to take hold by assaulting civil society and democracy. Banning anything related to that ideology is not only needed, not only common sense, but I'd argue the moral duty of the German people. And everyone else who witnessed it (so everyone). And for what it's worth, most developed countries have banned Nazi-related things. The US is an outlier in thinking that Nazi opinions matter, and allowing murderous types to express their desire to murder others is somehow a virtue. And to be clear, yes, National Socialism is extremely agressive and murderous. One of its core tenets, probably its main one, is violent antisemitism and "master race"-ism, with their solution being exterminating "lower" "races". Nothing useful, nothing good, nothing redeeming. Just pure hatred and genocide. Nothing good can come out of "debating" a Nazi in the "marketplace of ideas". Goebbels himself said so back in the 1930s, that they do not intend to play by the rules of democracy, but if democracy wants to give them the tools to spread their ideology, they'll happily use it. The world saw this happen and saw the results. Nazis have no place in any civilised society, and anyone espousing Nazi ideology or sporting their insignia deserves to ostracised at least.
throwaway290 10mo ago
> Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of CSAM. I mean... This is HN... You should see people's reaction when Apple decided to do something about it...
- throwaway173738 10mo ago
  Apple wanted to scan pictures stored on our phones using a perceptual diff algorithm and compare them by similarity to known CSAM. So basically there’s a world out there where the baby bath pics your wife took will get flagged and she’ll have to prove she’s not a predator.
- pjc50 10mo ago
  What the "something" is actually matters.
  - throwaway290 10mo ago
    I guess the how the government cracks down mattered to somebody too
defen 10mo ago
Those things are not protected expression in the US.
- aprilthird2021 10mo ago
  Then why is the state department telling to deny visas to people who worked on Trust & Safety at social media cos? (Answer: they don't care about protected expression or pesky laws, they are lawless and reward other lawless types like themselves)
inglor_cz 10mo ago
"Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM." Such self-descriptions are not necessarily accurate and honest. We have had quite a few debates around Chat Control here. It is sold as a tool to prevent propagation of CSAM as well.

b112 10mo ago

"If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible" If that sentence from the article is accurate, the parent poster's response makes complete and perfect sense. You don't have to like the current administration, to like a specific thing they are doing. Now is this actually what is happening? I don't know. And of course, that's a different conversation, and not what the parent poster was talking about.

kylehotchkiss 10mo ago
Is this the foreign service officers or USCIS? iirc foreign service officers have pretty wide latitude on visa approval (whose really making sure they’re checking deeply?) and have 100 other more important factors to evaluate so if that’s the case; will this really amount to many denials?
- stephenhuey 10mo ago
  Except they're under pressure to not exercise such wide latitude. A few months ago, many who had already passed the exam and were just awaiting placement found out they would have to retake the exam, a different one more to the liking of the current administration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979 98% of current foreign service officers who responded to a survey said morale is lower, plus the administration is laying off 1300 of them: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/state-department-morale-survey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/state-departm...
mullingitover 10mo ago
The problem is that this administration and their ilk have incompetently misinterpreted 'censorship' to mean 'not letting random strangers use your private property to publish things you don't want them to.' The only way "an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship in the United States" would be if they were an employee of the US government and they somehow violated US law to enact censorship. To review: censorship is when the government doesn't allow you to say things with your printing press. Censorship is not when private parties don't let you use their printing press.
- mitthrowaway2 10mo ago
  If I was on a telephone call which selectively declined to transmit certain words or topics to the receiving party, I would consider that a form of censorship, even if it wasn't the government doing it.
  - richrichardsson 10mo ago
    Just use a different system that didn't do that, it's your choice.
    - mitthrowaway2 10mo ago
      To that extent, government censorship isn't really censorship either then? You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you.
      - mullingitover 10mo ago
        > You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you. The 'Network State' fascist bros (Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, et al) are the powers behind the throne of the current regime. They want to dismantle the United States and create modern-day fiefdoms where your corporate overlords dictate your rights. They are serious about doing it. "You can vote with your feet and leave our fiefdom if you don't like the lack of rights" is literally their stance.
RRWagner 10mo ago
Displaying Nazi symbols is allowed (protected) in the United States, but prohibited in Germany. Does that mean that any German person involved in enforcing pr even tangentially acting on that restriction would be ineligible for a U.S visa?
- herbst 10mo ago
  Obviously that is what the great leader wants for the greatest and most free country on all the earth
- account42 10mo ago
  Hopefully, yes. The free speech situation in Germany is ... not good. Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good.
  - sofixa 10mo ago
    > Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good. You do know why these laws exist, right? And they are not useless. Many terrible things happened, and tens of millions died, because an extremely hateful ideology was allowed to take hold by assaulting civil society and democracy. Banning anything related to that ideology is not only needed, not only common sense, but I'd argue the moral duty of the German people. And everyone else who witnessed it (so everyone). And for what it's worth, most developed countries have banned Nazi-related things. The US is an outlier in thinking that Nazi opinions matter, and allowing murderous types to express their desire to murder others is somehow a virtue. And to be clear, yes, National Socialism is extremely agressive and murderous. One of its core tenets, probably its main one, is violent antisemitism and "master race"-ism, with their solution being exterminating "lower" "races". Nothing useful, nothing good, nothing redeeming. Just pure hatred and genocide. Nothing good can come out of "debating" a Nazi in the "marketplace of ideas". Goebbels himself said so back in the 1930s, that they do not intend to play by the rules of democracy, but if democracy wants to give them the tools to spread their ideology, they'll happily use it. The world saw this happen and saw the results. Nazis have no place in any civilised society, and anyone espousing Nazi ideology or sporting their insignia deserves to ostracised at least.

throwaway290 10mo ago

> Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of CSAM. I mean... This is HN... You should see people's reaction when Apple decided to do something about it...

throwaway173738 10mo ago
Apple wanted to scan pictures stored on our phones using a perceptual diff algorithm and compare them by similarity to known CSAM. So basically there’s a world out there where the baby bath pics your wife took will get flagged and she’ll have to prove she’s not a predator.
pjc50 10mo ago
What the "something" is actually matters.
- throwaway290 10mo ago
  I guess the how the government cracks down mattered to somebody too

defen 10mo ago

Those things are not protected expression in the US.

aprilthird2021 10mo ago
Then why is the state department telling to deny visas to people who worked on Trust & Safety at social media cos? (Answer: they don't care about protected expression or pesky laws, they are lawless and reward other lawless types like themselves)

inglor_cz 10mo ago

"Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM." Such self-descriptions are not necessarily accurate and honest. We have had quite a few debates around Chat Control here. It is sold as a tool to prevent propagation of CSAM as well.