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U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

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Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#361

Post by dragonwriter »

downandout wrote: post #355
dragonwriter wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it always the case that the President has "disapproval" ratings around 50% though? No, it's not. From the source cited upthread, here's what other Presidents had at the same point in their Presidency as Trump's current 53.6% disapproval: Obama: 45.3% Bush 43: 17.6% Clinton: 40.2% Bush 41: 15.3% Reagan: 45.0% Carter: 34.5% Ford: 38.6% Nixon: 31.4% Johnson: 15.1% Kennedy: 12.0% Eisenhower: 22.2% Truman: 45.1%

Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good and still within the range of Obama’s after Obamacare began hitting people’s wallets. That’s either scary or good, depending on your political leanings I suppose.

> Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good

That's true in the sense that it's true that Nixon's outgoing numbers were pretty good given the time of the media coverage at the time; there's not a lot of evidence, though, that measuring support relative to media coverage produces any kind of useful information.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#362

Post by grzm »

downandout wrote: post #351
pjc50 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claimed cheating in the wake of his election You're forgetting the birthirism, the claim that Obama was ineligible for the presidency because he was born abroad, complete with theatrical demands for his birth certificate.

That was a relatively small number of extreme right wingers, and they were quickly branded by the media as nutjobs (and rightly so, as long as Obama had his papers in order). That movement wasn’t mainstream, unlike the Trump cheating/collusion claims.

> "a relatively small number of extreme right wingers"

Like the sitting US President:

* https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-b...

* https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/10/opinions/why-trump-clings-to-...

* http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/time-donald-trump-talked-birt...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-b...

* https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-proud-birt...

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#363

Post by downandout »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #360
downandout wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t take my assessment of the numbers as a defense of Trump. I didn’t vote for him or Hillary, and I think he is both way off in the weeds on many issues and making us look bad on the world stage. But that doesn’t mean that we should go painting things as being worse than they are, embracing hypocrisy, or misinterpreting facts like the media does.

We also shouldn't go making up facts in order to paint Trump's approval ratings as better than they are.

And I’m not. But I think even you would agree that the overwhelmingly negative press coverage - almost all of it opinion based - has some effect on the disapproval ratings. 50% was going to be built in from the start. Somebody should do the math to figure out the correlation between the ratio of positive to negative press stories and the disapproval ratings for both Trump and Obama. I think you’d find that if you normalize that ratio for both of these guys, Trump actually wins that race.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#364

Post by downandout »

dragonwriter wrote: post #361
downandout wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good and still within the range of Obama’s after Obamacare began hitting people’s wallets. That’s either scary or good, depending on your political leanings I suppose.

> Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good That's true in the sense that it's true that Nixon's outgoing numbers were pretty good given the time of the media coverage at the time; there's not a lot of evidence, though, that measuring support relative to media coverage produces any kind of useful information.

there's not a lot of evidence, though, that measuring support relative to media coverage produces any kind of useful information.

There are studies proving that the media does in fact have an effect on overall opinion. So if you believe those studies, then you have to also believe that the overwhelmingly negative media attention received by Trump would have an effect on his disapproval ratings.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#365

Post by paganel »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #259
briandear wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a visa for France, I had to provide my full financial details -- bank statements, information on investments, etc. I also had to provide an FBI background check. To get a visa for China, you can be denied for content of social media posts. In Thailand, you can be arrested upon arrival if you've ever written a blog post critical of the king. The UK can bar entry based on the prior speech of applicants: rapper T…

"bank statements, information on investments, etc" There is nothing personal in bank statements compared to social media profiles.

I think that letting a foreign entity know about your financial status is pretty "personal", at least for a guy like me it is. Back to the article on point, I remember criticizing the US's need to ask for fingertips from potential visa applicants 12 years ago, in a discussion with my former co-workers. Since then things have gotten worse and worse in terms of privacy (this being just the latest example).

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#366

Post by alephu5 »

The USA is a joke when it comes to security. They've got all this stupid and expensive beauracracy for coming in and out of the country that does nothing but irritate people.

I recently flew through the US on a connection flight from the UK and needed to give details of my employment history and my birth place amongst other things. In Tampa I got interrogated for looking nervous, which I was because we had landed late and I had very little time to catch my connection. My phone was searched, my WhatsApp messages were read, and they asked me all sorts of personal questions such as my girlfriend's birthday and the names of her cats.

After all this nonsense and their military-checkpoint style TSA procedures, I was able to continue on my journey (after the almost 20 hour delay).

So if they ask for social media profiles and phone numbers it's just a minor addition to the existing useless questions. If I wanted to hide something I could easily lie and they'd have absolutely no way of checking. Quite honestly I hope I never have to go anywhere near the US border ever again, I would rather pay an extra £200 for an alternative flight.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#367

Post by downandout »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #352
downandout wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were Obama’s disapproval ratings not always in the 40-55% range, which are right where Trump’s are? The data suggests they were. Considering how laughably biased the media has been against Trump, relative to the exact opposite treatment that Obama had, he’s actually doing amazingly well in this regard. I think Trump has made a tremendous number of mistakes, but just going by the numbers, he seems to holding better th…

The data says that Trump's disapproval ratings are already averaging over 50, which is unusual, and so far his highest disapproval rating has been 58%. The exact range for Trump so far has been 44-58, whereas for Obama's presidency his range was 19-56. Only the most partisan analysis can pretend that those look the same. At this point in his presidency, Obama was at his highest disapproval level so far, and it was 46…

I also want to point out that it's pretty facile to assert that if Republicans had disapproved of Obama more strongly, he would have been more strongly disapproved of.

I think even the most hardcore Democrat would agree that the vast majority of media outlets are liberal leaning. So their disapproval has a stronger effect on their opposition simply because they are louder and more people listen to them.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#368

Post by paganel »

sneak wrote: post #92
fipple wrote: post #65

So "Nobody forced you to give Facebook all that data" will no longer be true. If you don't have your data on Facebook, and it doesn't match your government records, you'll be marked as Suspicious by the secret police.

Pretty sure we have that in place already now, based on the leaked XKeyscore rules we saw.

> based on the leaked XKeyscore rules we saw.

Link for the lazy: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret....

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#369

Post by downandout »

grzm wrote: post #362
downandout wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a relatively small number of extreme right wingers, and they were quickly branded by the media as nutjobs (and rightly so, as long as Obama had his papers in order). That movement wasn’t mainstream, unlike the Trump cheating/collusion claims.

> "a relatively small number of extreme right wingers" Like the sitting US President: * https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-b... * https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/10/opinions/why-trump-clings-to-... * http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/time-donald-trump-talked-birt... * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-b... * https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-proud-birt...

Don’t bother posting HuffPo links as references. I hope nobody is taking anything they read there as fact these days. If they are, we are in bigger trouble as a country than I thought. I’d say the politics section of CNN falls in the same category. With regard to the rest of your comment...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714508

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#370

Post by grzm »

downandout wrote: post #369
grzm wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "a relatively small number of extreme right wingers" Like the sitting US President: * https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-b... * https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/10/opinions/why-trump-clings-to-... * http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/time-donald-trump-talked-birt... * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-b... * https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-proud-birt...

Don’t bother posting HuffPo links as references. I hope nobody is taking anything they read there as fact these days. If they are, we are in bigger trouble as a country than I thought. I’d say the politics section of CNN falls in the same category. With regard to the rest of your comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714508

I didn’t reference them for the editorial or analysis: None of these are sources I generally read but they were among the top that came up when searching. Take a look at the quotes in the pieces. If you dispute them as inaccurate or out of context, please do point them out.

Edit to add: You say birtherism as being fringe and rightly dismissed as nutjobs. My response is to show that it’s not fringe as it was supported by the current president. Part of the disapproval you’re trying to dismiss can be attributed to people frustrated with things like this.

There are legitimate reasons regardless of the hype you’re trying to use to dismiss the high disapproval ratings. There are well-known Republican/conservative voices that are speaking out against Trump as well. We’re also no longer in a period where people are necessarily comparing Trump and Clinton, choosing the lesser of two bad options.

Anyway, I’m out. Have a good $timeOfDay.

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