Live data from Hacker News

US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

thejournal.ie

41–50 of 226 posts

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#41
post #7

People are already being denied entry based on social media posts. Censorship? Anyone? Scary times.

This has been policy since the Obama admin, where have you been? e: they downvoted him because they hated the truth.

You sure you mean Barrack Obama, the 44th president of the USA? He's on record for disallowing this explicitly. The Republicans got quite a knot in their panties over it, too [1].

[1] https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/terrorism/pol...

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#42

It seems to me one of the methods of control in oppressive States is to have a multitude of rules, which are impractical to actually adhere to, where failure to adhere provides leverage to State - a "justification" for State to then do whatever it is it decides to do with you (such as deportation without due process).

Play the devil's advocate with me for a bit. Say you let someone in who suicide bombs himself and takes out several Americans. Then a reporter asks the DHS spokesperson how they let someone in the country that had "Death to America" posts all over their social media out in the open for everyone to see but they didn't. Nobody would forgive the government for such a grave oversight. At the airport you already let them…

"Anything to declare?"

"Yes, 40kg of trinitrotoluene"

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#43

This is only possible of you ignore decent security precautions and rarely use different user names. They are literally saying that only those who lie or have garbage security practices can get Visas.

If you say don't have one, especially as a middle to young age adult, that's already a flag :).

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#45
post #13

Haven't these guys heard of the "reciprocity principle"? When I went to Brazil a few years ago, the basic price for a tourist visa was like $25 and could be done online. But, if you were a US citizen, it cost $150 and you had to schedule an attend an interview in person -- because , those were the costs and burdens placed on Brazilian citizens to apply for a US visa. Does the US want other countries inspecting our ci…

I don't understand what these things are good for.

If you want to enter the country illegally, overstay your visa, or perform some sort of attack, then it's trivial to lie on the forms.

It's just making it inconvenient for honest, harmless travellers. Is that the goal?

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#46
post #7

People are already being denied entry based on social media posts. Censorship? Anyone? Scary times.

This has been policy since the Obama admin, where have you been? e: they downvoted him because they hated the truth.

Obama was against this, what are you talking about ?

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#47
> Omitting social media information could lead to “visa denial and ineligibility” for future visas, the embassy added.

Honest question, how would they detect missing info? If they already knew all my social media profiles, they wouldn't need to ask for it. If I wrote some credible threads on any platform, I assume those would have been detected by someone anyway. Also, I surely wouldn't voluntarily disclose the account I used to publish those.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#48
post #31

Scary stuff. I don't have social media, but from time to time I would create and delete Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts. Never posted anything. Just used them for auth/developer/Marketplace...etc. But I don't know all the logins I used in the past... So if I fail to provide a login to an empty profile, do I get permabanned from the US?

Could you share the definition of social media the excludes HN ?

Probably artificial cybernetics (other than voting) + insists on using real name.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#49
post #13

Haven't these guys heard of the "reciprocity principle"? When I went to Brazil a few years ago, the basic price for a tourist visa was like $25 and could be done online. But, if you were a US citizen, it cost $150 and you had to schedule an attend an interview in person -- because , those were the costs and burdens placed on Brazilian citizens to apply for a US visa. Does the US want other countries inspecting our ci…

I don't think the current US administration cares about this. Most people who voted for it probably don't care about travelling abroad either.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#50
post #8

> The embassy also wants people to set their social media profiles to public. Good thing I have no interest in visiting the land of the "free" anytime soon.

Well I had a plan to do some museum/nature trip there and slowly gathered resources for it. But I don’t know if I want full visa+border control experience. I guess Iceland and Adriatic Sea countries will get my vacation budget instead.
Post reply on HN