13 ms·
US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry
- dogemaster2028 10mo ago[flagged]
- lurk2 10mo agoYour comment history is very odd. You talk about America as though you are a citizen but several of your comments have grammatical errors that indicate you are a foreigner.
- jamwil 10mo agoThey are a troll with an 10-day old account.
- dogemaster2032 10mo ago[dead]
- dogemaster2032 10mo agoYour comment history is very odd. Your grammar is always perfect as though you are well-reasoned, but this very comment of yours shows you committing an ad hominem fallacy, shifting attention from the argument to something irrelevant about the person, indicating that you are a Pedantic ad hominem attacker.
- lurk2 10mo agoI don’t even disagree with you, I just find it weird that someone who benefitted from the immigration system would be so fixated on nativism.
- dogemaster2028 10mo agoYou are speculating wildly. You don’t have to be racist. Even British can be bad spellers. And non native English speakers can be perfect English grammarians. In America, foreigners can be citizens. In certain polls, not all legal immigrants want America to become their shitty country they came from. Maybe that’s why they came in the first place? What statement of mine is “fixated on nativism”? American engineers can be bad grammarians too.
- TavsiE9s 10mo agoThe worldcup next year is going to be interesting.
- rjsw 10mo agoSome changes in tourism numbers should be visible from US ski resorts before then.
- testing22321 10mo agoGo have a look at Vegas right now. It’s a ghost down. Tourism across the US is down to the tune of tens of billions.
- SirFatty 10mo agoAll is ok now that Trump received the FIFA Peace Prize trophy and wearable medallion.
- exasperaited 10mo agoFIFA's comical attempt to bribe him with a bauble might be a lot about them trying to persuade him not to do this, among other things that will mean nobody will want to attend games.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoConsidering the amount of people who always go to the World Cup yet is skipping the US-specific events of 2026, I'm not sure it'll be so interesting after all. Will more or less be like how Las Vegas seems to be today, a former shadow of itself.
- rayiner 10mo agoThe what now? Is that like the superbowl?
- andsoitis 10mo agoSoccer, just the biggest sport on earth. North America will host the FIFA World Cup 2026 with events in the US, Mexico, and Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup
- poulpy123 10mo agono thanks
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago"Officers were instructed to screen for those "who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security; or who perpetrate unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence"." Okay, that's your job then. It's not mine or anyone else's job to just hand everything over.
- mothballed 10mo agoSure but they'll make your day extremely unpleasant before deporting you or if a USC letting you in. A few things that's happened to me as a citizen after invoking right to remain silent to CBP 1) Told I could not enter the country. Held up for 3-24 hours in holding areas. Officials come in and claim they will revoke my passport under "national security"-esque grounds. Lots of bluffing and huffing and puffing. Diesel therapy of being made to go back and forth to interrogating officers and then constantly prodded to be deprived of sleep. After a few shift rotations no one is left that know why you were being fucked with so you then [hopefully] get let go. 2) Dogs constantly come in, none of them alert. Eventually they get tired of finding nothing and write up a fraudulent affadavit for a warrant claiming one alerted anyway. Strip searched, hands cuffed and feet chained, imprisoned in a holding cell with people you can't speak the language of, diesel therapy again in prisoner van driven all over the state. Taken to two different private hospitals where CBP officers claim there is drugs up my ass. Cursed and touched without consent by private hospital staff (oh you can complain to the board as I did, lol, the state board just claims since CBP told them to their license isn't in jeopardy). Hospital staff rack up bills, which are sent to me privately and go to collections. Medical records state nothing was found but they "Think I'm packing drugs" anyway despite absolutely no medical evidence. Have fun!
- saxenaabhi 10mo agoWait what did I just read? This sounds horrible and pure evil and not worthy of america. My sympathies are with you!
- andsoitis 10mo ago
- Artoooooor 10mo ago>citing national security as a key reason Yes, "national security", "terrorists" or "protecting the children" and you can push any law.
- flotzam 10mo agoWhat happens if you declare that you don't have any social media accounts? There are already forms that ask for social media info, e.g. student visa applications. Surely some of the applicants just don't have any social media profiles. Maybe some of them are reading this. I'm curious about their experiences.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoThen they'll do a quick lookup to confirm if you actually don't have any accounts, and if they find any, they'll reject you because you lied. US agencies already are keeping track of what individuals have what online accounts, so they're asking to confirm, not to learn. If you truly don't have social media, their search won't show any hits, and there isn't much you can do about it. Just make sure you're actually answering the question truthfully.
- huhtenberg 10mo agoHow exactly are they going to link accounts with no real names, personal info or identifiable emails to a person?
- embedding-shape 10mo agoLiterally all data coming in/out of the US (lots of it, even between other countries sometimes routes in-between US network transit points) is kept, and considering the possibilities that just private companies have today by dealing with data brokers and others offering "social media protection" (or whatever they call it today), it's hard to even imagine what the government and its agencies can do. Did we really forgot about what happened back in 2013 so quickly? Did people assume all these agencies suddenly stopped doing what they've been doing for decades? Nothing you do on the internet with regular network connections are hidden to these entities, don't live falsely under the impression that you can.
- andsoitis 10mo agoThe answer to that question doesn’t change the sage advice to not lie.
- bilekas 10mo agoI'm going to assume it's then going to be considered suspicious if you don't happen to have any social media for at least the last 5 years ?
- OccamsMirror 10mo agoI wonder if they'll accept "all I have is a Hacker News account".
- dmd 10mo agoHacker? Straight to jail.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoNo no, spend three months in an untraceable maze of ICE holding facilities, then to jail, then deported to a 'shithole' country that you didn't come from in the first place.
- rayiner 10mo agoYou only get deported to a third country if you refuse to be deported to your home country.
- soco 10mo agoI think deporting you to Switzerland is no fun and won't teach you any valuable lesson.
- TimorousBestie 10mo agoThe information you would need to be able to state this categorically is not publicly available.
- akie 10mo agoMy social media is full of rants about the ongoing trend of bringing fascism to the US and the authoritarian and repressive tendencies of the current president. Am I not allowed to say that?
- rsynnott 10mo agoWell, that'll be great for the tourism industry. What, precisely, are they hoping to learn, here?
- estearum 10mo agoPrecisely speaking, they're looking to catch any critique of Israel because it'll provide a broad dragnet that will exclude a lot of Muslims and libs. (I'm not just saying this to be inflammatory. We already know the administration has been going after legal immigrants on the basis of criticisms of Israel. This is a completely reasonable connection to this social media policy.)
- kutterry 10mo ago[flagged]
- estearum 10mo agoSure, but I don't think we have any evidence the administration has a problem with you. Nor do they have a problem with anti-semitism itself. They have a problem with the people I mentioned.
- throw310822 10mo agoAnd why would they exclude muslim and liberal tourists? The reason they are creating all sort of censorship and unconstitutional rules to prevent criticism of Israel is, surprise!, to benefit Israel. It's otherwise incredible how Israel happens to be always the lucky recipient of all sorts of benefits and favours that are all intended for some other purpose. Come on.
- estearum 10mo ago> And why would they exclude muslim and liberal tourists? What? Because MAGA hates Muslims and libs, that's why. What's confusing about that? Yes a lot of the policies are designed to benefit Israel, however that's completely distinct from being designed to benefit Jews. The administration doesn't care about ant-semitism on its own merits, but it does care about protecting Israel. Do some reading on the theological love affair between American evangelicals and Israel to understand the distinction more clearly. The short version is that evangelicals need Israel to be controlled by Jews in order for their end-world prophecies to come true. Said prophecy includes all the Jews being left here on earth post-rapture to face 7 years of horror. Yes, people do literally believe this and yes, it is a significant force in American politics.
- flowerthoughts 10mo agoTying this into the Paul Krugman post about social media tech giants running the US [1], perhaps it's the US running the tech giants for mass surveilance? Especially of foreigners, of course. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204100 Edit: Krugman
- quantummagic 10mo agoOf course. And it's not just surveillance, it's censorship and narrative shaping -- doing a convenient end-run around the first amendment's prohibition on government infringing speech.
- an0malous 10mo ago[flagged]
- cess11 10mo agoIt's the other way around, the US wants Israel as an asset and is currently fighting to keep it one despite having been implicated in the accelerated genocide in Palestine, crime of aggression and so on. This is an extremely unpopular policy, and will only become more so over time as current young generations mature with the trauma of having spent years constantly exposed to graphic material from rather heinous atrocities and proud celebrations from the perpetrators. One of the few solutions to this problem that relevant US elites consider viable is to extend control over mass and social media, recently and infamously voiced by Hillary Clinton who says it outright at staged events. In this context it is important to keep in mind that the bulk of members of the zionist movement are christians from modern denominations. The unnamed "they" you mention are these people, and not to be conflated with the israeli jews or jewish zionists in general, who are a minority influence in the movement. I'm also fairly certain that the shaky old people chasing this control over communications actually believe that younger generations are more or less brainwashed by what they presumably see on screens, which is likely to be quite the psychological projection.
- graemep 10mo agoThey have common interests. Governments around the world criticise social media and tech giants but they still work with them because they want the concentration of power to enable surveillance.
- lawn 10mo ago> who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security; or who perpetrate unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence The regime will simple classify pro-LBQT, anti-MAGA, and anti-Trump comments as "threats to national security" or as supporting terrorism. Also funny how anti-Semitic harassment is emphasized, while other forms such as anti-black or anti-Latino harassment is not.
- arczyx 10mo ago> while other forms such as anti-black or anti-Latino harassment is not probably because they don't have their own AIPAC.
- jsheard 10mo ago> Also funny how anti-Semitic harassment is emphasized, while other forms such as anti-black or anti-Latino harassment is not. That's because they're using "perpetuating antisemitism" as code for "being mean to Israel". It's not really about fighting discrimination, that's just a cover framing which sells better than mandatory allegence to a foreign state.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoIt's the same as when they say "the free market". The free market is the one with the winners they've chosen. And the winner is Israel and the losers are all the other minorities. I'm not antisemitic, I'm anti-killing-in-general; I'm anti-collateral-damage; I'm anti-kidnapping-of-anyone-especially-children. I could go on. There's a lot of bad on both sides. Only acknowledging the bad on one side is a denial of reality, and denying reality is never a sustainable position.
- k_roy 10mo ago> The regime will simple classify pro-LBQT, anti-MAGA, and anti-Trump comments as "threats to national security" or as supporting terrorism. Did they not already? Antifa, which doesn't exist as a formal organization, literally means "anti-fascism" and is now a terrorist organization. Of course these are the same people who want to arrest people for treason when they said "You do not have to follow illegal orders" It's just mental gymnastics of Olympic-level proportions.
- s_dev 10mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- phantasmish 10mo agoBusiness news got weird fast. Reporting on the open corruption like it’s normal.
- nemomarx 10mo agoThe media is generally fairly complacent about it - the drama is good ratings material. And you can't link angry blue sky posts or substacks really. Occasionally someone does comment about it and get flagged, ofc? and this article is part of the news about it, just like the discussion of the WB buy out and how paramount was going to offer trump control of a news channel for the same one or etc
- TimorousBestie 10mo ago> Even here on Hacker News. It's just not discussed. US citizens are either championing MAGA or just acting like everything is normal or they're disinterested. Or their accounts were banned for being too contrarian, or they were systematically downvoted into invisibility.
- carefulfungi 10mo agoHN won't even let me comment on the parent claim that US citizens are taking the situation passively. Which is horribly untrue. But the limit is a great example of a platform's rules (whether intentional or not) causing an important public perception.
- the_pwner224 10mo agoIt's explicitly out of scope to discuss on HN. Paragraph 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Though yeah, it is a bit eerie how out in the real world it's just business as usual.
- voidUpdate 10mo agoWhat is classed as a social media? I expect they'd want to view by personal instagram, but what about my old business Xitter account that I can't even get into because something went wonky with the 2fa? What about my github? My HN account? Do they want to see my discord history? How will they find my accounts anyway? Not all of them are under the same account name, real name or email address
- FabCH 10mo agoLaws are not enforced by machines, but by humans. The answer to all of those is "yes" and they will not bother to find them, they will ask you to list them. Omitting information or providing false information on your visa application is a felony. It's the same logic as behind the "Are you a terrorist?" question. Lying is itself a crime, and can be used to prosecute you in the future.
- mothballed 10mo agoI think the point to many of those questions/requirements are to ensure absolutely everyone can be prosecuted or deported because it's basically impossible to complete the immigration process or just about any other complicated government process without doing something that could possibly be construed in the most uncharitable way as being answered incorrectly.
- voidUpdate 10mo ago"You failed to tell us that you made a single post on an obscure forum 4.5 years ago that questioned if capitalism was truly a good system, have fun being deported to a random country, you communist"
- vidarh 10mo agoI've quoted Marx on HN on more than one occasion. I'm not sure they'd like my social media profile, despite having also been consistent in arguing for liberal freedoms that the US used to like to claim to favour. I've visited the US many times, but I have no intention of going back under the current regime. I transited through China earlier this year, and I frankly felt less concerned doing that - despite having criticised the Chinese government online many times over the years - than I would feel about entering the US at this point.
- fjghajkhdfgjlk 10mo ago[flagged]
- echelon_musk 10mo agoPeople who don't want to die before taking a holiday.
- _menelaus 10mo agoPeople that don't spend too much time on the internet
- decremental 10mo ago[dead]
- a-saleh 10mo agoOn one hand, you are clearly exaggerating. On the other hand, the actual conversations I hear my friends having about business-trips to US are more stressed than conversation my dad used to have with my mom when he was traveling to do business for banks in India, Pakistan or Russia decade or two ago.
- watwut 10mo agoI would not be afraid to go to Russia two decades ago. It was fairly safe, unless you did something stupid. Going there now would be profoundly stupid. My friends travelled to India two decades ago as tourists, it was fairly normal thing to do.
- cess11 10mo agoWhere would the exaggeration be? In that they're not 'aryanising' corporations and hence it's not an apt comparison?
- bananalychee 10mo agoI suspect that much of the hysteria surrounding the tightening of border controls is a result of selective reporting. We weren't bombarded with articles about people being sent to secondary inspection or denied entry prior to this year. I travel internationally a fair bit and was also nervous traveling into the US this year, but having gone through multiple times now, I haven't seen any change in the process aside from the supporting documentation for my (rather uncommon) visa being looked at more systematically than before. That said, this change in entry requirements sounds like a substantial step up.
- cheraderama 10mo ago[flagged]
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo agoYou seem to be one of those silly people who conflate antisemitism with disliking how the state of Israel behaves under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. These are not equivalent concepts.
- fer 10mo agoCan't disagree, but zionism likes to conflate them, and US policy goes in that general direction. P.S. Hi to the border guard reading this!
- DaSHacka 10mo agoAlmost like their comment is satirizing those people...
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo agoPlenty of people express that position without irony or sarcasm, so I'm going to push back against it when I see it.
- DaSHacka 10mo agoYeah, they're brainwashed, but good luck getting them to acknowledge anything to the contrary. "Israel is our greatest ally!" "Oh, what have they done for us?" "..." --- "It's antisemetic to appose Israel's cultural expansion!" "How so?" "..."
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo agoIf we let the fascists (or those already consumed by the fascists' propaganda) go unchecked, we are acquiescing to their goals. Even if that person's mind can't be changed, it is still important to visibly call out and resist fascist propaganda. They want people to give up and think resistance is pointless. That's part of the strategy.
- rckt 10mo agoThis whole thing worldwide will lead to division in the society and to people having secret social media accounts. Only the most lazy and stupid ones will be handing over their private data to any gov security forces.
- yolo3000 10mo agoWith so much browser fingerprinting and the biggest social networks being US companies, I wouldn't be surprised if already a company like Palanti has a dataset with all your history
- morkalork 10mo agoThey don't need fingerprinting, all the American social media has probably already been given a sealed FISA order to hand over account lists with ip access logs. I feel like it's the same as the "I am not a terrorist" declaration check-box. You know your socials, they know your socials. They want to see if you lie.
- Gud 10mo agoWhat do you mean, secret? Your every action online is stored in massive data centres either operated by the US government or American mega corporations. I can’t believe people STILL believe there is anonymity left online! Unless you take some “enemy of the state”(great movie btw) level actions, they know everything worth knowing about you.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoWhat of those who have virtually no footprint? Almost the only thing I have is LinkedIn, which is always only as up to date as the last time I changed jobs, which I don't do often. No Facebook, insta, snap, twitter, tiktok. I subscribe to maybe five channels on YouTube. My HN account isn't linked to my main 'identity' email address so I could hide it just by having a clean phone (which I do for international travel anyway). I feel like I'd be suspicious due to the lack of traceability. I've had work colleagues say that they couldn't find a trace of me online (although that was a while ago now, and not colleagues who are adept at online sleuthing). My age may be just enough to be believably not terminally online.
- rayiner 10mo agoThen just say that. Customs has some list that's automatically generated based on a Google search or something like that, and all they're doing is trying to catch you lying. Like the TSA, this screening is done by the lowest common denominator of government employee to catch the lowest common denominator of terrorist or foreign subversive.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago> to catch the lowest common denominator of terrorist or foreign subversive My guess from the outside, is that none of these actions are actually meant to "capture" or even "detect" any of those things, the methods are likely to inefficient and small to be able to do so. What they're trying to do, is make those people not even consider going to the US in the first place, because they're scared of getting caught. Same as a lot of the ICE actions and other things going on. They're not meant to be efficiently solving some concrete issue with their action, they're meant to scare the rest of the populace into being docile and accepting more and more control over time.
- vinni2 10mo agoThey have managed to scare me off at least. So I will spend my money elsewhere.
- shafyy 10mo agoSo, hypothetically, if I were to say that the Israeli government is committing genocide and Trump is a fascist, would they not let me in? Well, I don't want to travel to the US while it's reigned by a fascist government anyways, so let's go: The Israeli government is committing genocide and Trump is a fascist.
- gherkinnn 10mo agoYet another reminder that "I have nothing to hide" is a bad argument. Data remains, but the moral interpretation changes over time. And more and more data will be used against you.
- snthd 10mo agoIt's good to have real feeling behind the "abstract" incompatibility of EU data rights and US law. "EU-US Privacy Shield" and similar are a crock of shit.
- josefritzishere 10mo agoThis is excessive.
- MSFT_Edging 10mo agoThe greatest spy network in human history was built to sell us shitty subscriptions and other garbage. The amount of talent wasted on building ad-networks is mind blowing.
- cindyllm 10mo ago[dead]
- SanjayMehta 10mo agoSounds like a good plan to improve the tourism industry of other countries.
- singularity2001 10mo ago15 years ago they already interviewed me about some tweet that I made they don't need to ask tourists anything to get their data
- maxerickson 10mo agoMr. Trump, tear down this wall!
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoMy anecdote is that my wife and I are the only people who live in a large condotel (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp) in Florida mostly year round[1]. Everyone else who owns units see them as investments/second homes. When the owners got together once a year or on FB you could tell that most of them were pro-Trump and I just kept quiet to keep the peace. But now every single one of them and the management company are seeing their rental rates plummet with the drop in tourism because people from especially Canada are not coming down to Florida during the winter. But also tourism has dropped from other countries. Still none of the owners will address the elephant in the room and the property management company has to address it. But they walk on eggshells. [1] We only leave for extended periods of time during spring break and the summer when rates are high because of spring break and summer break and we travel and I work remotely anyway.
- aa_is_op 10mo ago[flagged]
- DaSHacka 10mo agothis, but unironically
- exasperaited 10mo agoWe were going to visit!? The government will be able to bury the impact of its international tourism pariah status in some sort of claim about people not wanting to fill this in. But the reality is visitor numbers are going to tank no matter what. People from the UK in particular visit the USA because it is the USA: brash, welcoming, colourful, vibrant, thriving, free, fun. It's a holiday from being reserved and quiet. Things are louder, bigger and brighter, less apologetic, more colourful. I guess it is low on the administration's priority list, but Trump is building a USA that no one from the UK in particular will want to visit. You should see the comments on the increasingly desperate attempts to advertise discount flights on Facebook. We'll go elsewhere.
- ochronus 10mo agoYet another reason to not travel there... :/
- random9749832 10mo agoIronically, anyone else face random hostility recently from American tourists? Made me not want to go there for a long while.
- saubeidl 10mo agoComing from the people that keep lecturing Europe about Free Speech: Speech-based harassment at the border. Can't make this shit up...
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoRelated: State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoA Notice by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on 12/10/2025 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/10/2025-22461/agency-information-collection-activities-revision-arrival-and-departure-record-form-i-94-and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/10/2025-22...
- HaZeust 10mo agoAnother buckwild measure for absolutely nothing. Since being directly affected by this in my real life, my resentment for these measures has grown ten-fold. These enforcement agents are costing my family friends everything in real value and real sentimental time. Because of recent anti-immigration measures in the new Administration, a great Mexican family friend of mine has a dying uncle here in the States - with only a few months to live. And with a vast majority of his relatives in Mexico, almost none of them can get visa approval to see him and say goodbye. Not even Humanitarian Parole program visas are being accepted for ANY one of the family members; and they are good, upstanding people who took the process seriously. I have absolutely nothing nice to say about the rule-writers for immigration in this Administration - and most past ones, and I have nothing mean to say about otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants in America - until the process for legal immigration becomes necessarily easier.
- oktcho 10mo agoFunny that people are mostly discussing the details of what social media would be scanned. My question is more: why would I ever want to enter US again?
- dragonwriter 10mo agoDiscouraging foreign entrants is a major part of the point.
- stego-tech 10mo agoThe proposal in question: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-22461.pdf https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-22461.pdf These timelines are dangerously close to the background investigation I had to go through to get a security clearance as a US Citizen. The fact they want this from tourists is appalling. Non-Americans: Do not come here. America is not safe. Americans: The proposal is up for public comment at the moment. The document asks for comments to be sent to CBP_PRA@cbp.dhs.gov.