Outside of just wanting privacy for its own sake, there are many, many reasons to keep social media profiles private: health privacy, sexual orientation privacy, relationship privacy, location privacy, financial privacy, etc.
āTo facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M and J non-immigrant visas will be asked to adjust the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to āpublicāā, the official said.
My desire to visit the US just went sub zero.
The worst part is this has the possibility to spread to other countries (that the US can twist the arm of) because they want to extend their policies further.
also, "lack of a social media profile could prompt US visa denial"
source https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/now-lack-of-a...
This one isn't as bad as some other things that have already happened in the space, but I've been wondering...
If I was a non-US person, who previously wanted to visit or move the US -- as a student, industry engineer/scientist, academic researcher, teacher, doctor/nurse, investor/founder, conference attendee, or tourist -- recent news events would've already had me put that wish on hold, indefinitely.
Even though those all are people that the US wants coming, they are being discouraged.
So, who has the US already started missing out on, what are the situations of people who are still coming, and how soon will even they stop?
I will spend this weekend creating burner social media accounts for my kids as a precaution. Each one will be crafted to look like they've never had a controversial thought in their lives.
Just lasagna pics, birthday cakes, kittens, golden retrievers, baby goats, maybe an artsy photo of a leaf with #blessed.
Everything I can do so that an AI running immigration background checks might match my kids to the profile of a low threat, emotionally well-regulated, consumer-minded citizen material.
Absolutely no pictures of Winnie the Pooh to keep China travel option open too.
I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.
Congratulations not one, but _multiple_ Gestapos.
DHS, ICE, ... all doing whatever they are told from the new "above the law".
Free speech for me but not for thee.
America holds immense leverage when it comes to education, and now it seeks to use that leverage to export control of people's speech, thoughts, and movements abroad.
At least when China does this kinda thing there's not so strong a stench of hypocrisy.
A Greek friend of mine who applied for a visa to do a PhD in US about a month ago, was required to unlock their social media profile by the US embassy, this is already happening.
Does anyone think this is about anything other than stamping out criticism of Israel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHRA_definition_of_antisemitis... Assume the IHRA definition of antisemitism has been the justification of all this - a reasonable document, and then a bunch of clauses explicitly to prevent criticism of Israel. Written before they started ethnic cleansing Gaza.
I donāt use social media. Is the assumption that everyone does use social media?
I have no social media associated with my real identity.
That should've always been the norm, yet unfortunately it isn't.
So, aside from the first Amendment no longer applying to anyone in the U.S (not just citizens mind you) as has always been its interpretation, the government has given itself the right to explicitly, wholesale, normalize the total invasion of anyone's private "papers" (translate that to the modern era) in the name of bullshit entry security theater.
This is pretty stupid, especially this will affect the smarter people who don't even make social media profiles to begin with! They'll get accused of lying for not having one, but they're really just smart enough to stay off facebook and twitter..
Thought police in action. Very nice.
Choose the Kolmogorov option
This is a gross violation of some of our most sacred principles.
I am curious from someone in the higher education field. Is the quality of American universities still enough to offset their fascist government? More concrete, do you expect that smart people abroad will still choose to study in the US despite these insane policies? Or do you expect they'll divert to universities in other countries?
Well that's one way to end run around searches you're not legally allowed to perform.
I'm wondering how the officials are planning to verify which social media accounts an applicant holds. Apparently the idea of creating a 'clean' account for inspection is novel to them.
Also, pleasantly surprised to see this not immediately flagged off the front page. Of late, the flagging has been particularly trigger happy.
In this situation, in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, all social media platforms should and must display a prominent warning: You have the right to remain silent on this website. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
I guess students will have to delete all social media before applying?
Be aware that any comment here or anywhere on the internet or in private messages or spoken in private near a device with a microphone might also be used against you by the US government (yay freedom). You might think it's fine. At some point your personal views too will be at odds with the government.
This must've been what it was like to watch the Roman empire crumble (but at 200x speed). Or, heh, Venezuela at 2x speed. It only took them 13 years to go from a rich country, to collapse in democratic confidence, to total economic implosion & dictatorship.
Vetting by using social medias seems completely bonkers.
For instance I don't have any current instagram, facebook, or tiktok account and my old accounts including the google ones I have used sporadically have always been using generated names[1] but there are a fair number of other people having my real name , how would the US government know I am not hiding by keeping one of those profiles private?
Bottom line: I will never apply for a US Visa and by losing all atractivity to foreign talents and only accept keeping its interbreed assholes this country is completely doomed.
[1] it is quite funny to have whole families from Iceland or Tanzania trying to connect to you because your has their last name.
For invasive data brokers that link people to their pseudonymous social media accounts, getting the contents of a private feed seems like it'd be routine.
Then they include in the violation bundle they sell to State.
Welcome to the beginning of the US social credit score system.
Today - visa interviews, tomorrow - citizens in the US.
Went to a No Kings rally? Ooops, -2000 points, now you canāt board a plane.
And now I canāt get a visa :(
This might be against the ToS of the social media account.
In the Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz interview yesterday.
Cruz stated similar to "I was taught at a young age that the bible says whoever helps Israel will be blessed by God and those that don't anger god".
Tucker, a Christian, asked where in the bible it said this as he had no recollection of such. Cruz didn't know.
Turns out it doesn't even say as such in the bible.
This is brainwashing at a very young age that has been going on for decades.
The internal Israeli left / opposition themselves are much more free to speak and have a more robust debate than permitted in the USA.
Won't be too long before people will have scrubbed profiles under their real names and use temporary alts for private group chats.
The article title is weird. The article body and quote from the US official says the visa process merely requires social media accounts to be publicly visible. "Unlocking" implies handing over credentials...
Great to hear that the US visa process is now even more privacy-invasive than travelling to China.
How many foreigners, illegal or not, are committing crimes? And how much could be found out from social media? This seems extremely paranoid.
On the other hand, maybe this will lead to people putting less stuff on social media. This would probably be a net positive.
I guess I would not be allowed entry (the only social media site I use is hn).
Also, wouldn't this just incentivize desperate people to buy fake online accounts that were built over a long period just for this purpose?
Feels a bit much to ask students to open up all their social media just to study in the US. People post things without thinking too much, and now that could hurt their future. Not sure this is the kind of message we want to send.
Why does anyone still want to study in the US? I don't even want to visit it anymore. Besides, as LGBT advocate I'm sure they will not even let me in anymore :)
Sorry, I know there's still good people there too.
I'm pretty sure that they future queen of Belgium, studying at Harvard, will be exempted for this. It will be used when DHS, ICE or any "officer" wants something against you.
Ceterum Censeo the right to Secrecy of Correspondence should be made to apply to modern digital media. Including at borders. Especially between western nations.
Else it becomes impractical to travel securely!
Social media screening - so America is policing peopleās opinions on a large scale
Just like Turkey huh? Love that America is still called the āland of the freeā
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/20/turkiye-detains...
Youāre naive if you think theyāll stop with foreign students.
Land of the Free, home of the Brave.
I hope we can finally let all that propaganda of 'freedom' and 'free speech' go to rest now.
The US really wants to inspect your mind and social media is the closest it can get to a snapshot of your mind.
Thought police.
Like it is today in Russia and Belarus.
I don't understand why the social media companies are not fighting this? This is ridiculous.
Fighting fire with fire, I guess. Seems very... Chinese for Vespucciland.
I've hypothesized that for as much as I'll always resist it, authoritarianism is an inevitable, predictable result of social complexity and volatility, two factors that are unprecedentedly shaping humanity.
Elites just want it, lowbrow bureaucrats know no other way, and the ever divided plebs, unwilling or unable to actively engage in intelligent mitigation themselves, will either collectively touch their toes or wake up one day to a new and improved boardgame with very strict and uncomfortable rules.
Something many seem to slough off, is the extreme, manifold volatility underlying society, from environmental factors to technological, political, economic, social, epic crisis, etc, and even the remaining mysteries of the human id. All scarcely prepared for and recreationally sneezed at.
I don't see how it's not abundantly clear that as myriad people of influence scramble for their own brands of order, or a single one in this thinly veiled bedlam we call society, that severe constriction isn't imminent. Regardless of Red or Blue; Independent being inconceivable presumably for reasons of exceedingly advanced rationale.
I think an ephemeral golden age (for those who've been on the better scented end of the stick) is ending with an exponential tempo.
Grim but pragmatic.
I support Israel, but this is crazy and completely against Free Speech.
What does this mean for China? You should be sharing your WeChat messages not just with your friends and family, but also with Donald Trump? Its not like you have a facebook page, and Wechat doesn't really work like Facebook (it isn't really suited to wide spread sharing, although some people try to do that).
what if their smart and have their social media under a alias?
So delete them
It will get so much worse.
The Palantir project will likely evolve to suck data directly from Meta, Gmail, X, Reddit and the systems of other US companies to create profiles based on non-public data (likes, DMs, deleted posts, comments, etc.)
This will be feed to LLMs to create a whole personality profile, including political leanings.
All of that crap for tiny terrorist state in middle east.
I'm impressed at both how quickly the United States is falling into blatant authoritarianism, and also at how many people seem to make excuses for it.
how is that not Stasi like?
"home of the brave . "
Principles such as... slavery, white supremacy, bigotry, genocide, tyranny..
The country of free speech, everyone!
You are free to say whatever you like, as long as your words do not contradict Official Party Ideology.
Damn, I guess I shouldn't have asked for that jet from the single biggest supporter of anti-Israeli protests.
I'm very split on this. On one hand it sucks from a privacy perspective, but on the other, it makes complete sense for the US to not allow anti-Americans there.
I don't understand why so many people who hate the US to it's core want to live there. E.g., Ilhan Omar: "the US is one of the worst countries".
Original DHS Announcement on Social Media Screening: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-sc...
State Dept on what is considered Antisemitism: https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/
These definitions are intentionally broad and designed to censor criticism of Israel. You have more freedom to criticize the US Government than to criticize a foreign country.