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.
“To 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 ‘public’”, the official said.
The party who loves to scream about social credit scores in China is essentially implementing... A social credit score, where only government approved speech is allowed.
Talked to police guy once for something unrelated. The moment I mentioned I don't have a telephone number all alarm bells went off in this man and you could tell the police guy was suddenly suspicions.
I have vague but genuine concerns about that. I legitimately don't have any social media accounts. Does HN count? Well, none that can be casually associated to the name on my passport.
Social media is where one shares ones social life (it's in the name!). Technical discussion forums are something entirely different.
Naturally, there is sometimes crossover (I'm thinking of a motorbike forum I frequent), but to suggest the likes of HN is social media is demonstrably false.
Thats some semantic pedantic gymnastics. Even if you could persuade me to agree with you (and I very much do not) it does not matter. The only definition that matters here is the governments, and they LOVE overreach.
This is really not a convincing argument. Plenty of people put social information in their profile on this forum; there is clearly some social aspect to commenting and I’d argue the social aspect is the reason to comment and read comments. There are comments that are automatically more interesting to read because of the name in front of it.
> demonstrably false
Surely not “demonstrably” false. How would you demonstrate it? You may believe that it’s not social media but there’s no reason for you to think I should not believe it is social media.
Under your definition Reddit and Twitter/X aren't social media either, since you're mostly interacting with strangers. I believe your definition doesn't reflect how the term is used.
Now that we are there, deleting social media presence for privacy concerns, you will need to keep a "Stub" account to access the parts of life that require social media accounts: marketplace, local groups, immigration.
I killed my accounts with fire some time back and have yet to come across a single instance where I've felt that I've needed some kind of "stub" account. YMMV, however.
Not at all, many friends have at least tried to cancel FB account, even when those assholes are making it a very lengthy and painful process. We talk about doctors and surgeons here in their 30s and 40s, wife is a doctor who waits for second year to get her FB account deleted so these are our social circles.
Its sort of a mark of upper class (or just having a class) in more developed societies these days.
Sidenote - all folks here working for meta - shame on you. I get the greed part, but then you define what sort of human being you are and what your legacy is.
Not having social media is itself considered suspicious in these same guidelines. Or at least that's what I read in the news when they started talking about this recently.
Wouldn’t that be likely to be taken as identical to having a locked one? I don’t use traditional social media, and never have, and have always assumed that would cause me to “fail” a test like this.
(Sorry, I mean this to read as a question, not an assertion.)
Nobody is illegally entering the country and then beginning graduate studies at Harvard, so if you understand this as an attack on universities and an attempt to essentially “close” the country then it makes perfect sense. That JD Vance interview where he went on about “we didn’t need immigrants to get to the moon” is probably the clearest statement of their outlook.
Or create two accounts for each. One with your full name, where you only share kitten videos, another one pseudonymous that you will actually use. Unlock the official one for the officers.
Much of the world is against LBGTQ+ rights. If an immigrant has social media posts expressing open hatred and even calls for violence against people with sexual orientations not approved of in their home culture, will you still have an open mind about welcoming them in the US with open arms?
This isn't theoretical. Both China and India, the two countries that supply the most students to the US, prohibit marriage equality. Both have extensive discrimination throughout their societies, both at the government and cultural levels.
Your comparison of Muslims and American evangelicals has self selecting bias. There are places where non straight orientation is punishable by law or extrajudicially. Maybe they call you homophobic slurs but you might not walk to tell the tale. None of those places are Catholic as far as I know. One or two of them bordering Israel. In Russia if it's not done by Muslim extremists than by fascists/activists or by government classifying LGBT as extremism. (This is not anti Russian propaganda, it's in the laws. I lived in Russia for most of my life and I met let me count... zero gay people that I know of. But I know some forever unmarried people, I wonder what's going on;)
> There are places where non straight orientation is punishable by law or extrajudicially
I didn’t mean to suggest the comparison was exhaustive. Just that both those groups, if they had control of a state, would do exactly this. (And when they have had such control, they have. See American evangelical effects on liberty in their African missions.)
Until 2015 gay marriage was illegal in many states. Plenty here hold pretty nasty anti lgbtq beliefs. This is a bad argument for screening visa applicants for beliefs, and not what this new rule will be used for. It will be used to deny anyone critical of israeli genocide, people who think we shouldn’t destroy the planet’s climate, and people who think women should control their own bodies.
If it's an armed conflict then it started a long time before that. Otherwise Israel wouldn't have built the hilariously named "Freedom Wall".
It's incredibly depressing that the Jewish people have basically done unto others as was done to them. Even if we don't consider it a genocide, then it's definitely a pogrom and Gaza and the West Bank are ghettos. I would have hoped that at least one people might have learned that this kind of stuff is wrong based on their own history.
But i guess all that we learn from history is that no-one learns from history.
“Curate” away the 4k footage of children, doctors, refugee camps being bombed, aid blockades starving people? Must be nice to have your head in the sand like that. Quibble over the word genocide all you want - it is very clearly a genocide unfolding in front of us.
It might not be what the US is screening for, but if you're forced to make your account public, not just to the US, then your own government would also know.
Many Americans have never seriously looked at a map before. Should they be categorically denied entry to foreign countries for their stereotypical ignorance?
Here in America, you can't put someone on trial for a crime they haven't committed. Even if you think they're from a suspicious country. That's called racial profiling, and it's forbidden by civil rights laws for a reason; nobody should have to tolerate the indignation of their peer's stupidity.
> Here in America, you can't put someone on trial for a crime they haven't committed
Actually in the US you can - it's why there's stories of innocent men and women being released from jail after other evidence proves their innocence (eg: DNA).
That's exactly why they're being released, though. If you manufacture a bogus case or plant evidence against someone, that's not probable cause. You're not acting within the acceptable norms of a just society, and the rectification of these cases is proof. Oftentimes the falsely persecuted will countersue, especially if they get an early injunction.
> > Should they be categorically denied entry to foreign countries for their stereotypical ignorance?
You missed this bit that parent said:
"If an immigrant has social media posts expressing open hatred and even calls for violence against people with sexual orientations not approved of in their home culture, will you still have an open mind about welcoming them in the US with open arms?"
I mean, given the current political climate, I think someone with posts like that would be welcomed easily, and people who are pro LGBT, especially pro-trans, would be denied outright
Well, to me, it sounds as if the ban on LGBT folks joining the armed forces is a kind of protection of LGBT folks, especially given the world seems to be moving towards an inevitable near-future in which US forces will be deployed to Canada, Greenland, Panama, Iran, Russia (to protect it from invasion by Ukraine and/or Europe), Gaza (to protect the construction of Trump's Oasis on the Mediterranean), Taiwan.
Obviously not by this administration, but if we are creating new powers, the question of the principle is relevant and its potential use by a Democratic administration is also relevant.
I, personally, don't see a problem with creating an ideological test for certain kinds of visa holders or permanent residents. As Karl Popper noted in outlining the paradox of tolerance, unlimited tolerance can lead to the destruction of tolerance itself. I think it's worth exploring ways for the government to prevent enemies of liberalism from entering the country, even if we already face illiberalism at home.
That being said, I think this specific proposal threatens personal privacy far too much to be justified.
I dunno, I think it's not super great that I might not be able to pass an ideological test to get into my own damn country. Why do they get to say that what I believe isn't "American".
Like, I'm "Texas from Texas"- my anglo ancestors go back before the 1836 revolution.
But I'm not a racist so I have often been told that I'm "not really from Texas".
It's the same vibe here. I'm way more worried about the fact that they wouldn't let me back into the country if I had to pass an ideological litmus test than I am worried that someone with illiberal beliefs is going to join the other theocrats in Texas.
To add some nuance to Popper's argument, the implication is that intolerance means violence against others.
People can believe whatever they like as long as they don't become a movement dedicated to murdering those they don't like.
Historically, observably, and objectively, the US right has much more of a history with political murder than the left does.
This isn't some ideological purity test about "liberalism". This is about maintaining a culture that supports a broad spectrum of views in a peaceful way.
When the state itself crosses that line the state itself becomes oppressive, and would-be residents should be asking themselves whether that's the kind of state they want to live in, or visit.
“To 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 ‘public’”, the official said.