Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thejournal.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 226 posts

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

#61

Post by Daneel_ »

sorokod wrote: post #31
giacomoforte wrote: post #11

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 ?

To me social media platforms are primarily for sharing updates about the lives of people and remaining connected to either friends or followers.

HN is primarily a news site that allows discussions - I wouldn't classify it as social media. Heck, Reddit barely qualifies as social media for me.

My internal definition is probably two decades out of date, however.

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

#62

Post by stby »

giacomoforte wrote: post #11

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?

HN is social media. Messenger apps are almost certainly social media. GitHub or similar platforms might be social media. There might be some people out there without any social media accounts, but they wouldn't be able to post about it on the internet.

Other than that, your example of using temporary accounts for some secondary platform functionality is yet another reason why this policy is terrible.

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

#63

Post by Cthulhu_ »

chii wrote: post #30
gwd wrote: 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…

to play the devil's advocate, if more people wanted to visit the US than the other way around, then it's not "disadvantageous" for the US to do this.

Why's that? Doesn't tourism and business coming into the US benefit the country?

Take student visas. Sure, you could have a student come to the US, finish their education, and go back to their home country, "stealing" knowledge from the US to benefit their own country. Or they could find a job in the US and/or start the next trillion dollar company since the opportunities in the US are better. Satya Nadella traveled to the US for a university degree and ended up at Microsoft, where he led business units bringing in tens of billions, and under his CEO-ness he increased the value of the MS stock from around $40 when he became CEO in 2014 to $477 today, making it one of the first trillion dollar companies in the US.

But that wouldn't have happened if he didn't get a visa. Neither would Tesla (Elon Musk, migrated from South Africa on a student visa), netiher would Google (Sergey Brin migrated in from Russia, Sundar Pichai migrated on a student visa from India), etc.

I just don't understand it.

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

#64

Post by regularfry »

jjcob wrote: post #45
gwd wrote: 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?

Not exactly - they're guaranteeing that if you do lie on the form then they've got a nailed-on route to expel you even if nothing else sticks, because lying on an immigration form is an offence.

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

#65

Post by Canada »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #21
casenmgreen wrote: post #5

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…

It's materially different in my opinion.

I will submit to inspection of the things I bring into a country, but I will not submit to a review of everything I've written that I haven't made public.

It's like asking me to bring decades of letters and personal journals to be judged by. It's unreasonable. If this required of me I won't go.

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

#66

Post by selcuka »

_l219 wrote: post #20

> Omitting social media information could lead to “visa denial and ineligibility” for future visas, the embassy added. The state capture by big tech is getting insane. No national ID because privacy and government overreach but sure force everyone to register an account with a private entity that specifically profits by selling your personal information. I am curious if they'll reject me for not having any active mai…

> Might make a few accounts to automate with LLMs and Stable Diffusion with pro-Trump content just in case when I get time on the weekends.

I don't know. The next president might not like that and deny your visa.

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

#67

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #21
casenmgreen wrote: post #5

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…

How many of those are there really? How much are you willing to sacrifice to prevent this hypothetical? Because there is no end to this sort of argument. Why should it stop with foreigners, wouldn't a suicide bomb by a local cause just as much damage? "We have to monitor every web page and every email, text, and word spoken of every person at all times to 'prevent a tragedy'" You want to prevent a tragedy don't you? You don't have anything to hide right? The fact that these kinds of powers have always been abused by those who have them is not something you should be concerned about. It won't happen to you. They will only go after the bad guys, and you're good, right? Now show us your papers.

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

#68

Post by hypeatei »

slackfan wrote: post #7
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #6

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.

No, I think the downvotes are because of the "both sides"-ism which is used as a deflection tactic to make it seem like it's just an overreaction. As someone else pointed out, what was stated isn't even true.

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

#69

Post by crote »

jjcob wrote: post #45
gwd wrote: 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?

The goal is to provide an excuse.

Very few people will be able to provide a list of 100% of the accounts they used. This means every visitor will technically be lying on their forms.

You're more than happy to visit - until you do something the regime doesn't like, like criticizing the recent attack on Iran, or making fun of the military parade. Then they have a ready-made reason to deport and ban you.

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

#70

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63
chii wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to play the devil's advocate, if more people wanted to visit the US than the other way around, then it's not "disadvantageous" for the US to do this.

Why's that? Doesn't tourism and business coming into the US benefit the country? Take student visas. Sure, you could have a student come to the US, finish their education, and go back to their home country, "stealing" knowledge from the US to benefit their own country. Or they could find a job in the US and/or start the next trillion dollar company since the opportunities in the US are better. Satya Nadella traveled…

Stocks going up doesn't actually improve things for anyone. To use Microsoft as a specific example: that stock price increase corresponds directly to a reduction in quality of life for many people.

This is, of course, immaterial to your main point: we can point to many actual contributions from migrants, such as maintaining infrastructure, providing food and education, and technological advancements.

Post reply on HN