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US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

bbc.co.uk

261–270 of 304 posts

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom to not let people in with other opinions Yeah, that's more or less what it means to have a border. > and freedom to force your opinion onto other countries. Really great. They are free to reject it, as we have theirs. You should be happy USAID was shut down.

Crazy how china became the good guys here. Well played.

Yeah, turns out the government taking a strong-arm approach to managing private industry and enforcing cultural cohesion is not necessarily a bad thing.

Half things people criticize the current administration for enforcing wouldn't fly in China either (and more), but the real and final blackpill is we really should be copying them in more ways than one.

And we don't even have things like hidden police officers stalking influencers that conveniently drop by to check on them when they show something problematic on stream. (See: Hasan's recent trip to China, where officers surrounded him to check his phone within 30 seconds of him showing a Xi Jinping meme to his stream)

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#262
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your 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.

I 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.

You 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.

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like their comment is satirizing those people...

Plenty of people express that position without irony or sarcasm, so I'm going to push back against it when I see it.

Yeah, 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?"

"..."

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You know what I meant.

I genuinely don’t. The French are famously xenophobic. Even Americans who are xenophobic in principle are not so in practice (which is why the so-called American “far right” is full of immigrants, and why anti-immigration Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens in 2024). Meanwhile, the French are not xenophobic in principle but are very much so in practice.

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Tourism is like 3% gdp for USA. That’s like hundreds of billions of annual dollars. Losing that would hurt. https://apps.bea.gov/scb/issues/2025/02-february/0225-travel...

1: I'm guessing it's mostly in blue states? 2: I think there's a real desire to sort of go hard on eliminating globalization in all ways. "America is for Americans" and all that. I think the ideology trumps economics considerations.

Florida hasn't been voting blue recently. Tourism accounts for 8% of their Gross State Product versus 3% for California.

California does bring in more tourism money, but it's still less percentage wise.

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect from them? Unless saxenaabhi is code for "US CBP Commissioner" or some position of an equivalent power, there is very little that an HN user can do about it at this point.

"What can I do alone?!", said 100m+ people.

I'm not an American, but I'm doubtful there's 100 millions Americans out there who think this is wrong, let alone to an extent where they would be willing to do anything about it. If you look at it in terms of scenarios that can actually happen, the US has already decided about a year ago - now they and the rest of the world are along for the ride. Something truly momentous would have to happen now for an agency as powerful as the CBP to change course, barring an unlikely sudden mood change from up top.

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, it's pro-democratic. In a healthy democracy, people should be able to vote to create the kind of society they want. That includes being able to exclude, through their government, outsiders who don't share their values.

Most people don't want someone hauled off to a blacksite for posting a JD Vance meme

[deleted]

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect those who find it chilling also perceive a weak distinction between citizens and visitors. For people who see that difference as foundational, differing treatment of those two groups is not chilling.

Well, yes people who believe in "universal human rights" probably are less okay with "highly contingent rights conferred by a government".

Rights can be inalienable but not universal. These rights are conferred by the government, but arise by virtue of membership in a body politic. For example, the right to vote isn’t universal but the government can’t take it away. Free speech arises out of America’s Anglo history and tradition and was viewed by the founders as a political right that protects democracy. There is nothing inconsistent about saying that this right is inalienable for citizens, but doesn’t extend to visitors who aren’t members of our body politic and aren’t entitled to participate in our democracy anyway.

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#269
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What of those who have virtually no footprint? Those people wouldn't want to travel to a police state anyway.

Some people have to travel for work. For Canadians, lots of international flights connect through the US (especially if you're flying on the cheapest routes), and there's no way to transit through without "properly" entering the country. While the thing in the post doesn't yet apply to Canada (due to us not requiring an ESTA), it very well could become a thing soon. That would be pretty awful for everyone.

Does any country require you to have entry rights for a layover?

Re: US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

#270
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then 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.

> 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…

No it’s meant to make sure you don’t say mean things about people Trump likes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/state-department-vi...

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