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

81–90 of 226 posts

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

#81

Post by throwawayffffas »

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 have leverage over everyone, and to occasionally execute overt performative acts for the media, like refusing entry to famous ideological opponents.

Vote for clowns, live in a circus.

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

#82

Post by msgodel »

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 vaccine mandates were far more oppressive, and I'd argue the individual healthcare federal mandate was also far more oppressive. this only affects non-citizens.

If the federal government were going around asking for citizens social media I'd be more inclined to agree with you. That's not what they're doing though.

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

#84

Post by littlestymaar »

bentt wrote: post #17

It's infuriating that we're slamming the door on legal immigration because we couldn't fix illegal immigration.

Illegal immigration has always been a pretext. The real motivation is racism/white supremacism, they don't care about whether or not the immigrants are legal or not (hence the lack of trial/due process to expel people to Salvador) they just don't want more non-white (whatever that means) people in the US.

Yet another page from the alt-right playbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBJIkp7qIg

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

#85

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

> 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.

That would only be true if the per capita advantage to the US of doing it is at least as large as the per capita disadvantage of having it done to US citizens. Which it isn't. The value of doing it is negligible and the cost of having it done to you is significant.

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

#86

Post by anal_reactor »

The government is doing exactly what it promised. "Less foreigners" was one of the selling points of Mr Trump. Sure, it means a bit less of soft power and international startups, but that's a cost the electorate was prepared for. Oh, and a slight dip in tourism. I don't understand what's so shocking about this.

BTW I don't think anyone has ever done a true risk-benefit analysis of such a move, so while it's baseless to say it'll bring any good, it's also baseless to say it'll bring bad. Because realistically, many people going to the US simply don't have an alternative. It'll take decades before Europe decides to hold a meeting to schedule a conversation about improving innovation.

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

#87

Post by mbirth »

reedf1 wrote: post #42
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…

"Anything to declare?" "Yes, 40kg of trinitrotoluene"

“Trinitro-something. That’s this heart attack drug, right? And what are those units? 40 … grain? You must have a serious heart condition then. Well, all fine, you’re good to go, Sir.”

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

#88

Post by mrtksn »

msgodel wrote: post #82
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 vaccine mandates were far more oppressive, and I'd argue the individual healthcare federal mandate was also far more oppressive. this only affects non-citizens. If the federal government were going around asking for citizens social media I'd be more inclined to agree with you. That's not what they're doing though.

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?

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

#89

Post by neallindsay »

JimDabell wrote: post #33
bonoboTP wrote: post #9

I remember that there was such a text box even on ESTA applications several years ago, but it was optional. This article uses the word "required" but it doesn't give a direct quote saying that it truly is mandatory, it reads a bit waffly.

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.

I guess they expect you to set all your repos to public before applying for a visa now. Maybe your Venmo history as well?
Post reply on HN