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

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

#101

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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.

Everything is partisan now.

If something bad happens, every media outlet will blame the party they don't like for it somehow. It doesn't matter what that party actually did, therefore there is no value in doing harmful stuff for CYA purposes because deploying the CYA tactics will not stop you from being blamed for it by the outlets that don't like you, and also will not stop the outlets that do you like you from blaming the other party instead of you.

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

#102

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #19

Yeah, nobody's going to be doing this. Depending on their definition of 'social media', this could be hundreds of usernames for some of us, many of which have been long forgotten.

That's the point. It's not possible to comply with this so if you upset the administration they have a valid reason to arrest, deport, and ban you because you lied on an immigration form.

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

#103

Post by mrtksn »

msgodel wrote: post #92
mrtksn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how the vaccine mandates were enforced in US but two wrongs don't make it right. Why do you think that it affects only non-citizens?

1) You said this was "the most oppressive policy." I gave two examples of more oppressive polices. 2) The vaccine mandates were enforced by having employers fire you for failure to comply with it. It was actually pretty terrible. 3) Visa holders are non-citizens by definition.

You'll remember those as the good old days when you get fired for sanitary reasons. America has begun ideological checks at the gates, this will spread to weed out the enemy within. They don't have a PCR test for this, the test is your speech history. You will have to think the right way, they will need to be sure that you are not infected with a mindvirus. Today's pathogen is the woke mindvirus but maybe in near future other viruses will be discovered.

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

#104

Post by mrtksn »

potato3732842 wrote: post #93
mrtksn wrote: post #79

Amazing. Do you people understand that this is the most oppressive policy ever among any country? In American movies dictatorships are portrayed as regimes that are able to control every aspect of their citizen's lives but in real life dictators don't do that. This is why there's the myth among the alt-right about how free Russia is. In real life, only the relevant people are bothered and the rest do whatever they wa…

The problem is that people don't actually do enough stuff that puts them in adversarial contact with the government to realize how terrible it all is.

That's also the default mode in countries like Russia, Turkey etc. No one bothers you %99.9 of the times, these countries don't have the capacity to enforce total control. With the spread of the internet, things changed a bit and people had realized that they must watch what they say online but it's still based on incidents, i.e. if your tweets go viral you go to jail. Otherwise, no one cares. carry on.

US wants total control, they don't want to be in full know. It's in line with their intelligence gathering practices, it's the American way apparently.

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

#105

Post by mihaaly »

nullfield wrote: post #2

I don’t even know that I could come up with such a list. Setting everything to “public”, likewise, has potential implications far beyond a visa, since scraping can happen real fast. Then, things on the Internet live like… more than forever, potentially resurfacing later. That could be a potential employer, romantic interest, etc.—and just consider how things from 10-20 years ago have already resurfaced for some high-…

I recall in 2014 when we sought travel authorization/visa with my later wife it asked about social media accounts. Well, my memory can fool me, my recollection could be wrong. Anyhow, I had this thought around then, related or unrelated, while already starting to pull back social media presence, not necessarily for the security concerns less serious than today, but for the negative security potentials and also due to the increadible noise and low quality flow of inflated self promotion started to repelled me, so I had this thought then that not having the 'normal' online presence could be disadvantageous in applying to state bodies for some favour or permission. Should I pretend something? Should I have a twitter account and broadcast each and every opinion of mine for the space of the internet? Otherwise I could be the freak, the unusual, the weird, who does not fit the normal profile and becomes suspicious? 'What is he hiding?!', could be the thought if I do not have the right amount of online presence expected?

That time we did not have to worry about setting everything public, we figured US officials will have access regardless, if they really want to. ;)

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

mbirth wrote: post #99
JimDabell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I last visited the USA in 2019, and my ESTA application included fields to list social media usernames. I thought it was interesting that GitHub was listed as a social media site.

Usernames only? There’s someone living in the US not being able to write their own gmail address correctly. Thus, I sometimes get things like confirmations of hotel bookings they did. What if you get flagged because someone else used your username to post stupid things? Will you even be informed of the offending posts and have opportunity to defend yourself? This requirement doesn’t make any sense.

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by AnonC »

For anyone who hasn’t read the article but wants to comment, this is (currently) for F (non-immigrant student visa), M (non-immigrant vocational student visa) and J (exchange visitors participating in cultural exchange programs).

This does not (currently) apply to other non-immigrant or immigrant visas. E.g. If you want to visit as a tourist or for a business meeting (B2 or B1 visa), this is not asked for.

On the topic of scanning social media accounts, it is ripe for abuse by either party in this process. The ones who really want to hide their tracks would already have alt handles that are not connected to their real identities and take precautions to avoid having that happen. Meanwhile, innocent people who just expressed a hot take that was long forgotten may be excluded by knee jerk reactions (who has time for nuance?).

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

#108

Post by FirmwareBurner »

lifeformed wrote: post #26
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would a suicide bomber provide the government links to their death to America posts?

Why do thieves post pics of themselves on Facebook with the stuff they stole? Because some criminals will always be stupid.

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

crote wrote: post #69
jjcob wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by zczc »

The requirement to list social accounts has been present since 2018, and the FAQ [1] says: Visa applicants who have never used social media will not be refused on the basis of failing to provide a social media identifier, and the form does allow the applicant to respond with "None."

https://ie.usembassy.gov gives 504 so I can't check the primary source, but it seems like the new part is a requirement to make accounts public and applies only to F, M, and J student and exchange visas.

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin...

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