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

bbc.co.uk

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

#61

Post by phantasmish »

fluidcruft wrote: post #44
mothballed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but they'll make your day extremely unpleasant before deporting you or if a USC letting you in. A few things that's happened to me as a citizen after invoking right to remain silent to CBP 1) Told I could not enter the country. Held up for 3-24 hours in holding areas. Officials come in and claim they will revoke my passport under "national security"-esque grounds. Lots of bluffing and huffing and puffing. Diesel…

To clarify: CBP is Canadian Border Patrol and you are a Canadian citizen re-entering Canada when this happened?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protec...

Probably US Customs and Border Protection.

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

#62

Post by an0malous »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #13

Tying this into the Paul Krugman post about social media tech giants running the US [1], perhaps it's the US running the tech giants for mass surveilance? Especially of foreigners, of course. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204100 Edit: Krugman

[flagged]

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

#63

Post by graemep »

s_dev wrote: post #19

[flagged]

> Even here on Hacker News. It's just not discussed. US citizens are either championing MAGA or just acting like everything is normal or they're disinterested.

That is BS. Hacker News is full of it. My FB feed is full of it. The US media I see is full of it. Anything but silence.

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

#64

Post by andsoitis »

saxenaabhi wrote: post #29
mothballed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but they'll make your day extremely unpleasant before deporting you or if a USC letting you in. A few things that's happened to me as a citizen after invoking right to remain silent to CBP 1) Told I could not enter the country. Held up for 3-24 hours in holding areas. Officials come in and claim they will revoke my passport under "national security"-esque grounds. Lots of bluffing and huffing and puffing. Diesel…

Wait what did I just read? This sounds horrible and pure evil and not worthy of america. My sympathies are with you!

Friendly reminder not to believe everything you read online.

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

#66

Post by embedding-shape »

akie wrote: post #35
bilekas wrote: post #10

I'm going to assume it's then going to be considered suspicious if you don't happen to have any social media for at least the last 5 years ?

My social media is full of rants about the ongoing trend of bringing fascism to the US and the authoritarian and repressive tendencies of the current president. Am I not allowed to say that?

Considering that fascism is the de facto political ideology of the administration and the people who elected it, being against it would definitively be seen as "Anti-American" which seems to be something that is about to become illegal, and probably labeled as "terrorism" in the near future. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...

Edit: Ah, and of course, I forgot the most obvious pointer; being against fascism in the US literally labels you as a "domestic terrorist" for some reason, although the US traditionally been against fascism up until this point. What, why and how people are accepting the whole "If you're against fascists, you're a terrorist" charade will probably forever be a mystery to me. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...

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

#67

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

cheraderama wrote: post #26

[flagged]

You seem to be one of those silly people who conflate antisemitism with disliking how the state of Israel behaves under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.

These are not equivalent concepts.

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

#68

Post by voidUpdate »

mothballed wrote: post #48
FabCH wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws are not enforced by machines, but by humans. The answer to all of those is "yes" and they will not bother to find them, they will ask you to list them. Omitting information or providing false information on your visa application is a felony. It's the same logic as behind the "Are you a terrorist?" question. Lying is itself a crime, and can be used to prosecute you in the future.

I think the point to many of those questions/requirements are to ensure absolutely everyone can be prosecuted or deported because it's basically impossible to complete the immigration process or just about any other complicated government process without doing something that could possibly be construed in the most uncharitable way as being answered incorrectly.

"You failed to tell us that you made a single post on an obscure forum 4.5 years ago that questioned if capitalism was truly a good system, have fun being deported to a random country, you communist"

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

#69

Post by mothballed »

andsoitis wrote: post #64
saxenaabhi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what did I just read? This sounds horrible and pure evil and not worthy of america. My sympathies are with you!

Friendly reminder not to believe everything you read online.

Yeah this is why I don't talk about it often. Because no one but my family believe it, and only after I showed them the warrant and medical records.

Fact is hardly anyone believes these things until it happens to them, because they don't want to believe we live in such a dystopia.

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

#70

Post by andsoitis »

huhtenberg wrote: post #27
embedding-shape wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they'll do a quick lookup to confirm if you actually don't have any accounts, and if they find any, they'll reject you because you lied. US agencies already are keeping track of what individuals have what online accounts, so they're asking to confirm, not to learn. If you truly don't have social media, their search won't show any hits, and there isn't much you can do about it. Just make sure you're actually answ…

How exactly are they going to link accounts with no real names, personal info or identifiable emails to a person?

The answer to that question doesn’t change the sage advice to not lie.
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