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.
WatchDog · 2h ago
Wow these are incredibly broad, in particular:
> Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
There are plenty of dual citizens that would proudly admit that their first loyalty is to Israel.
Other examples from the document use the term "Jews as a people", whereas this example seems to apply to accusing any individual.
Although perhaps a generous interpretation of the example, is that it excludes Israeli dual citizens, because Israel would be one of "their own nations"
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> There are plenty of dual citizens that would proudly admit that their first loyalty is to Israel
This is legitimately debatable. If your allegiance is first to a foreign state, in my view, you should have to relinquish your American citizenship.
mathieuh · 53m ago
> How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Mashimo · 19m ago
> If your allegiance is first to a foreign state, in my view, you should have to relinquish your American citizenship.
I have one or two friends in that situations, and they want to do that. But it also cost a $2,350 fee to give up your US of A citizenship.
ses1984 · 14m ago
If that's your view then the only logical conclusion is to not allow dual citizenship at all.
peterlada · 1h ago
Totally disagree.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Totally disagree
Hence debatable.
Let me escalate: I think such a bill would find bipartisan support. Right now might be a good time to attempt it.
I hate the idea of revoking citizenship. But a question about swearing, on naturalisation, that your supreme allegiance is to America should be incredibly popular to secure.
WastedCucumber · 44m ago
Hate to break it to you, but you'd have to find support from the IRS / Ways and Means Committee first. For these institutions, the primary characteristic of US Citizenship is filing your taxes, no matter where to live or if you've ever even lived in the country. This puts the USA in the same odd category as Eritrea, Hungary, and I believe one other country.
And despite the difficulty of revoking US citizenship, the rate of revocations has increased over the last decade or two. If there was such a simple way to toss out that old rag, I'm sure there would be many more (and a little less tax revenue).
So I'm afraid* the USA is much more transactional than you think, at least regarding citizenship.
*I must admit this is sarcasm. Thank god the US is transactional rather than so stubbornly patriotic about citizenship.
birn559 · 1h ago
That would have the consequence that naturalized citizen would be second class. Because they have to watch out for what to say, otherwise somebody might denounce them and they have to fight against their live being destroyed.
JumpCrisscross · 50m ago
> would have the consequence that naturalized citizen would be second class
I know more born citizens with a second nationality than naturalised ones who gave up their first.
birn559 · 37m ago
The same argument still applies.
exe34 · 43m ago
Could you say a few words on why you think the words you have written justify the words you have quoted?
adastra22 · 1h ago
You are conflating naturalization with born citizens.
simondotau · 11m ago
Revoking citizenship for any reason (other than for abject fraud) means that citizenship means nothing.
Also, to be pedantic, you don’t have to have citizenship of a foreign country in order to have a greater allegiance to it.
slg · 2h ago
That is a strange one to call out as too broad because it is literally an ancient form of antisemitism going back to the Romans.
The point is that is may be admitedly true on the part of the one accused.
In general, you should be wary of "forms of antisemitism" (or similar "forms of x-ism/x-phobia/etc"). Such things usually consists of the defensible but vacuous notion that "doing X in an antisemetic way is antisemetic", while attempting to imply that doing X is antisemetic in general, regardless how it's done, or at the least that doing X is suspect. But the only proof that has been provided in such cases is that X has ocassionally been done in an antisemetic way, which you could say for just about anything. Since X in these cases is not per se anti semetic, it is more helpful to identify what antisemetic thing has often been done alongside it, and be on the lookout for that, instead of for X.
slg · 1h ago
What is a context in which it is acceptable to say that an American's loyalty to this country can't be trusted because of their ethnicity/religion? Some of these definitions are too broad, but this is not the example to use in that argument. Accusations of dual loyalty are widely recognized as antisemitism.
DangitBobby · 1h ago
> because of their ethnicity/religion
You specified that. The excerpt did not.
slg · 31m ago
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are calling attention to the phrasing of the excerpt rather than insinuating that Jews collectively are more loyal to Israel than the US.
I admit the phrasing of the excerpt does look vague out of context, but it is about the collective of Jewish people. That is suggested by the except saying "Jewish citizens" rather than "a Jewish citizen". It should also become more clear if you click through to the original and see all the other examples are about the Jewish people as a collective too. So yes, this text is specifically about the "because of" even if the excerpt doesn't make that explicit. It is not saying that any accusation of disloyalty is inherently antisemitism. For example, if a Jewish American citizen was arrested with real evidence of them being an Israeli spy, there would not be a serious discussion of whether the arrest was an act of antisemitism.
Zaheer · 1h ago
This isn't theoretical. There's literally cases of ICE kidnapping people off the streets for writing an innocuous op-ed in a magazine:
What did I say that made you think I support the ICE kidnappings? I was making a very specific point that you seemingly received as a much different general point.
sibhezt · 1h ago
If you dig into the details, it wasn't innocuous.
chasd00 · 6h ago
Thanks for some actual information. I’m trying to find the directive to force student social media profiles to be public but can’t find anything yet. This article mentions everything in the wsj article that I could read (no sub) but makes no mention of requiring profiles be “public”.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/social-media-screen...
ddeck · 2h ago
>I’m trying to find the directive to force student social media profiles to be public but can’t find anything yet.
It's on all the US embassy sites, although it says "are requested":
Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States under U.S. law.
> It's on all the US embassy sites, although it says "are requested"
The smart ones won’t sign to it. The dumb ones will take too long to arrest and charge.
barbazoo · 2h ago
> However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
somenameforme · 2h ago
Of course when people's applications are rejected, exactly 0 reason will be given other than that they failed the screening process. So nuances like this are, in practice, irrelevant. When the obvious motivation is to eliminate criticism of the Israel, all they're going be looking for is criticism of the Israel.
KingMob · 2h ago
...which is immediately followed by a bunch of counter-statements carving out exceptions.
hearsathought · 3h ago
Does the DHS also screen for people who post anti-chinese, anti-russian, anti-canadian, anti-mexican, etc social media posts? Why screen for anti-israel comments only? I'm guessing they are not screening for anti-palestinian or anti-muslim posts.
Imagine if DHS said they are going to ban anyone who criticizes china or russia or saudi arabia from traveling to the US? Both the republicans and democratics would be raising hell. Why the silence when it comes to israel?
What Homeland is DHS securing? The US or Israel? Why is it that so much of our political class openly and unabashedly act like agents of israel? Doesn't matter who you vote for. Republican or democrat. As soon as they are elected, they all grovel for israel. How many wars are we going to fight for israel? How many american colleges are we going to attack for israel? How many people are we going to censor for israel? Just doesn't make any sense.
nashashmi · 3h ago
It is a litmus test: Israel is the most controversial western (not middle eastern) country and if you don’t criticize it, there is a good chance you will not criticize any western nation including the US. You will be easily bullied by the US govt with a tape over your mouth.
Or this is the story line that US politicians have bought and unpacked after being hand delivered by AIPAC with a brief case of money plus a set of blackmail love letters waiting to be leaked if they don’t take it.
I am convinced that our govt never had spine to stand up for freedom unless Israel/lobbyists were behind it. They quarrel amongst themselves because of Israel and agree in large numbers because of Israel.
mahirsaid · 1h ago
Most likely the very same people that passed it are part of the lobbying of you know who ( i don't want to say the exact names or party). Any future bills in favor of that foreign country will be hard to protest against. petitioning will be heavy criticized for being anti-semitic in nature firstly, which will delay any reverse action to a bill, such as a arms deal package or some aid in war effort such what's happening right now. another way to block none align congress vote or civil pushback.
petre · 3h ago
> What Homeland is DHS securing? The US or Israel?
There are more Jewish people in the US than Israel. I guess this is what they're securing against?
Or who knows, maybe they ban Trump critics or commies from entering the US? I will definitely avoid travelling to the US due to the Trump Administration's hostility towards immigrants. These screening policies will probably remain in place under the next administration.
KingMob · 2h ago
There are more Jews in Israel than the US, but it's close. Roughly, 6mil to 7mil.
slg · 2h ago
There are also roughly 100 million Evangelical Christians in the US who are strongly in favor of political support of Israel too. It is a little silly to think the American position on this is exclusively about wooing the votes of 6 million people who will overwhelmingly vote for the Democrats anyway.
jasonfarnon · 1h ago
" exclusively about wooing the votes of 6 million people "
Surely you aren't suggesting political power is just about the numbers? That one group of 6 million people has the same political sway as any other block of 6 million?
slg · 37m ago
I wasn't comparing any two blocks of 6m people. I was comparing a specific group of 6m to a specific group of 100m. Do you think the 6m American Jews have more political power than the 100m American Evangelical Christians?
I'm unclear on why you think those links answer my question. Do you think AIPAC refuses money from non-Jews? Do you think there aren't Evangelical leaning PACs or other lobbying groups?
> There are more Jewish people in the US than Israel. I guess this is what they're securing against?
There are more chinese in the US than jews. So is DHS going to ban anyone who makes anti-china posts? We have a lot of arabs and palestinians. Why isn't DHS protecting them? Shouldn't DHS check every israeli's social media for anti-palestinian comments?
> Or who knows, maybe they ban Trump critics or commies from entering the US.
What does that have to do with israel and "antisemitism"?
petre · 3h ago
> Why isn't DHS protecting them?
I'm not sure the DHS is protecting anyone other than the Trump Administration's narratives at this point.
huevosabio · 1h ago
> Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
> Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor
> Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
> Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
...
Many of the examples make sense, but these four above are absurd.
dlubarov · 1h ago
How so? Double standards for the only Jewish state seems like a pretty clear example of antisemitism, at least.
(It's usually difficult to decisively prove that someone is applying a double standard, but I think here we're assuming that was somehow firmly established.)
huevosabio · 1h ago
On that one (and many of the Israel-related ones) I think the problem is that it implicitly assumes that because you do, you do it because of antisemitism.
But I could have double standards for all type of countries! I tend to hold the US at a higher standard than most countries for almost anything, and I think everyone holds Germany to a much higher standards with respect to minority rights (particularly, Jews) than other countries.
I think people overindex on Israel as "the only Jewish state", and less as "just another country". I wish we could entirely separate the identity of the Jewish people and the state of Israel at least in the discourse. It would make everything healthier.
birn559 · 39m ago
All of the mentioned bullet points could be applied to other countries.
While I think there's quite a lot of antisemitism out there, I find it questionable trying to deduce antisemitism. Explicitly expressed antisemitism itself is something else. I also find it very questionable to redefine the term that it includes deductions.
keernan · 4h ago
>>You have more freedom to criticize the US Government than to criticize a foreign country.
I doubt that. I would honestly be shocked if anyone with anti-Trump posts would 'pass' DHS screening.
TimorousBestie · 3h ago
The IHRA definition of antisemitism is so vague that it includes otherwise innocuous and/or factual statements.
> “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
In IHRA’s defense, this definition was never intended for legal use. But here we are.
timr · 2h ago
They go on to discuss more than a page of examples, all of which sound completely reasonable to me. Or perhaps you could just quote the very next paragraph, which is pretty specific:
> Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
somenameforme · 2h ago
A key issue in this is that the screening process is completely opaque. I have acquaintances who have tried to get visas to the US, and it usually takes several attempts - with nothing really changing in between. It mostly comes down to the exact immigration officer working somebody's application, and the waxing and waning of the moon.
The reasons given are extremely broad, so it makes nuances like this largely irrelevant. If an immigration officer perceives their duty (or maybe it's just their own personal opinion) to be to reject applications which are critical of Israel, then that's exactly what they're going to do. And you have no ability to appeal decisions, not that you'd even know what caused those decisions.
FWIW the people I'm referencing were also completely upstanding, educated individuals with high competence in English. It's a great way to make one loathe the double standard given to people who just illegally cross the border. Even moreso when you consider that each of these applications costs hundreds of dollars in places where that's often a rather substantial sum of money (just as it would be in most places in e.g. South America).
KingMob · 2h ago
Many are reasonable, but several are not.
> Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
One does not entail the other. You can support our right to self-determination while not supporting Israel's apartheid-style policies, but this sentence conflates them.
> Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
This is pure whataboutism. Israel is actually given incredible leeway by America, and I usually see this trotted out to shut down legitimate criticism. There's a good discussion to be had about why we don't criticize China, or why we ignore atrocities in African countries, but none of that absolves Israel from its misdeeds.
> Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Call it "sparkling ethnic cleansing" then. Ironically, actual genocide scholars have pointed out that when the Shoah is your metric, then almost nothing can compare, rendering the word useless.
georgeburdell · 3h ago
The criticism of Israel thing is not what you think it’s for.
lurk2 · 3h ago
What do you think it is for?
georgeburdell · 2h ago
It’s Trump’s latest incarnation of a “Muslim ban”. As a side bonus, it also targets the Left
lurk2 · 2h ago
I think that’s what most people thought it was for.
somenameforme · 2h ago
This is nonsense. At this point in time anybody who isn't of a very specific political persuasion is going to be criticizing Israel, including most Israelis!
KingMob · 2h ago
> including most Israelis!
Not quite. Don't confuse criticism of Netanyahu with criticism of Israel. Many dislike Netanyahu for various reasons, but are still broadly supportive of Israeli policies.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Many dislike Netanyahu for various reasons, but are still broadly supportive of Israeli policies
More importantly, most Americans don’t care about foreign policy.
The decades-long failure by the American left has been projecting Vietnam-era protests against the draft to modern foreign policy.
somenameforme · 1h ago
This is definitely not true. For instance 69% of Israelis support(ed) ending the Gaza 'war' after a hostage exchange. [1] Only 21% opposed.
It's going to be impossible to get reliable polling on Iran right now because Israel's going extremely authoritarian with domestic 'information warfare.' But it's fairly certain that most Israelis will oppose what's happening, once they can speak again. For instance in early 2024 Israeli decided to destroy the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing multiple generals amongst others. This led to a largely performative counter-strike by Iran. And here 74% of Israelis opposed continued escalation if it harmed security alliances. [2]
And the Israeli government decided to carry out the recent invasion when global support for Israel is already at record lows, which means it is obviously going to hurt security alliances, especially in the mid-term (double entendre intended). Search my post history and you'll find I've been notably favorable towards most Trump policies. If an election was held tomorrow I'd happily vote against him (and anybody else who supports this stupidity), a million times over, if he drags us into another forever war. And I think that corresponds to a sizable chunk of his support. People think "we" wanted out of Ukraine out of preference to Russia. In reality "we" just want the US to stop getting involved, and wasting money (to say nothing of lives), in stupid wars all around the world, period.
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.
testfoobar · 7h ago
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.
dashundchen · 2h ago
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.
tempodox · 1h ago
I can already see it transform from “must not be critical” to “must be pro-American propaganda”.
One you see that extortion works, you tighten the screws to see how much you can get out of it before it flops.
sneak · 3h ago
Another of the thousand reasons people should delete their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
emodendroket · 20m ago
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.
irjustin · 3h ago
Question: Does this create more problems?
i.e. "I don't have a social media"; "Sureeeee buddy"; "I really don't, I deleted it"; "We'll wait here until you do"
Some scary variation above.
herbst · 1m ago
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.
BLKNSLVR · 2h ago
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.
sneak · 3h ago
This is only the case today because it makes you an outlier.
When it’s common to have deleted your accounts due to widespread privacy impacts, it won’t be such a showstopper.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
catlikesshrimp · 2h ago
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.
jmye · 3h ago
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.)
Liquix · 1h ago
if having an instagram/tiktok/facebook/etc is a hard requirement for entering the country, we've truly reached peak clown world
emodendroket · 16m ago
Being unreasonable seems like half the point.
Mountain_Skies · 7h ago
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.
UncleMeat · 5h ago
The only students who've ever called me a homophobic slur were born in the US.
eddythompson80 · 3h ago
Man, I'm sorry to tell you. But you must not have been around the world much.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> you must not have been around the world much
Gay man here. Multi-ethnic, world travelled.
American evangelicals are up there with the mullahs in opposing both free society and everything Christ preached.
dullcrisp · 4h ago
I’m sure we can still deport them to El Salvador.
kennywinker · 6h ago
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.
andsoitis · 3h ago
> This is a bad argument for screening visa applicants for beliefs, and not what this new rule will be used for.
And do you think permanent residency or citizen applicants should be screened for their beliefs?
why it should be different for more serious things like residence or citizenship?
sibhezt · 1h ago
> israeli genocide
Not happening, never happened. Please curate your social media feeds more wisely and try not to swallow the antisemitic propaganda.
disgruntledphd2 · 27m ago
What do you call what's happening in Gaza then?
sibhezt · 2m ago
A war, an armed conflict. Started by Hamas and other Palestianian militant groups against Israel, on October 7th 2023.
kennywinker · 22m ago
“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.
sundaeofshock · 6h ago
Yes. I wouldn’t be happy they hold those views, but I don’t support basing a person’s entry into the US on how the feel about Donald Trump.
Of course, your scenario is a big ol’ straw person, as those beliefs are not what they are screening for.
dmoy · 6h ago
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.
mahirsaid · 1h ago
They will most likely force FAANG to disclose this anyway. Some of which already have contracts with that country that is at war.
thfuran · 4h ago
Yes, that's part of why it's a bad idea.
bastardoperator · 6h ago
This isn't a screening process, it's a deterrent.
digianarchist · 6h ago
Right. That’s what these new powers will be used for. To defend LGBT folks in the United States. /s
BLKNSLVR · 2h ago
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.
Non-LGBT front line.
derektank · 6h ago
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.
scarecrowbob · 3h ago
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.
riffraff · 2h ago
Are you really advocating for 1984's thoughtpolice?
If someone has "bad" ideas and they keep them to themselves by having private social media accounts, it's crazy to think it's a risk to society.
Countries already have rules to deal with hate speech, inciting riots, etc.
bigyabai · 5h ago
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.
lurk2 · 3h ago
> you can't put someone on trial for a crime they haven't committed.
What do you think happened in a trial where a not guilty verdict is reached?
recursive · 3h ago
If we know someone has committed the crime before the trial, we could really streamline the judicial process.
Freedom2 · 4h ago
> 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).
bigyabai · 4h ago
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.
andsoitis · 3h ago
> > 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?"
frollogaston · 6h ago
To answer your question, yes those people should be welcome, yes I'm ok with people coming from China and India.
vFunct · 5h ago
There’s also a lot of reasons to have a completely public social media account.
neilv · 3h ago
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?
zaptheimpaler · 47m ago
I’ve seen the tide beginning to shift among prospective students and some engineers, particularly those from India or China who could face 20+ year waits to get a green card even if they were sponsored. Doubly so with the big cuts in research funding. The last 10 years have shown how capricious the conditions for temporary immigrants are so it’s risky to be in that position unless you plan to go somewhere else after studies or have a clear and fast path to permanent residence/citizenship. As Canadians many of us have decided not to visit the US for tourism until things change. Realistically the US has a lot going for it so things will probably not change dramatically unless the administration continues to damage trust over a long time period and some compelling alternatives appear.
TriangleEdge · 2h ago
I recently migrated to the USA from Canada. I make 2x the income I made in Canada. My work is about the same as it was. I was also able to get competent medical care in the USA but in Canada I was on a waitlist for 2 years. I had to jump through a lot of hoops and the GC process was shitty, but my life is good here and I am glad I came.
I think economic freedom is a powerful motivator. Unlocking a social media account is hardly a deterrent.
intended · 1h ago
This is a great point to highlight how the current ability of America to produce outcomes like yours, is downstream of their ability to maintain institutional fitness.
These instructions are symptoms that show that the institutional fitness is degraded.
Good planning would be to come to America, take advantage of the increase in pay or opportunity, and several years later, leave once the inevitable co-morbidities become too much.
TZubiri · 2h ago
Personally, no.
The stance of the US on illegal inmigration has always been clear, and the process for requesting a B1B2 visa is like a rite of entry where it is made even clearer (interviews, seriousness). My father explained it to me when I was young, I must have thought the process was a bit too harsh, "going to their country is like going to somebody else's home, you need to follow their rules, and it's a privilege not a right, to enter".
From what I read, the rules haven't changed, rather they are being enforced. My perspective as an outsider is that the people that complain are mostly leftist extremist from one of the most left leaning and inmigrant heavy states (CA).
I know a lot of people from my country that consider breaking rules and laws as part of natural life and they see visa rules as some other rule to be broken, lots of people that overstay visitor and business visas to work and live in the states or other countries.
I see these changes in enforcement as positive to me, as they do not restrict me in any way except in false positives, as I was already complying with the law and my visa terms. If anything, I am benefitted, as the benefits that are given to law abiding people are becoming exclusive to those that abide the law, instead of also those that disregard it.
> I see these changes in enforcement as positive to me, as they do not restrict me in any way except in false positives, as I was already complying with the law and my visa terms.
The bootlicker ethos thoroughly explained
neilv · 21m ago
I think I understand your point, but isn't calling this "bootlicker ethos" a bit strong?
I think TZubiri was speaking narrowly, of specific rules. And of their personal general law-abiding view, which one can respect.
I think they weren't speaking more broadly, of all the rules, conditions, and actions that currently apply to immigrants.
For example, I imagine they'd be surprised if, obeying all the rules, as far as they knew, they were suddenly grabbed off the street. Would they feel wronged? I don't think they're addressing that in the narrow comments here.
Regarding the part about thinking of themself as a guest, it's unclear at what point they have (in their view) earned additional rights -- by following rules, and contributing to US society -- and can start to think of it as their home, with additional rights and responsibilities, rather than as still only a guest.
Of course, if someone were framing an issue disingenuously, that might rate strong terms, but I'm trying to follow HN guidelines here, of trying to use the best interpretation of what someone said.
neilv · 51m ago
(I appreciate you sharing your perspective, and I'll assume it's sincere, and I don't know why you were downvoted.)
I think that's a nice Mad Men scene in some ways. But we can agree that the writer used weak, stoned, strawman hippie characters for dramatic effect, so that Don Draper could be cool and reinforce the character. The closing line was especially smooth, and fit (and burned).
That scene expresses how you feel, and that's one entertaining way to communicate it, and that's fine.
But I hope we all agree that the scene doesn't constitute competent debate of the merits of feeling that way?
angst · 7h ago
also, "lack of a social media profile could prompt US visa denial"
That is really sad, especially for people here, because the kind of people who dwell on HN are likely to specifically avoid creating much of a public profile on account of their increased knowledge and perception of these systems.
Time to go study in Europe, folks.
TZubiri · 2h ago
Not even a linkedin? Bluesky,A google maps thingy? Not even an FSF subscription and GNU social account?
You have the freedom to be off the grid, but the states have the freedom to reject your entry.
riedel · 1h ago
I think nobody is screaming here that this particular action is illegal, as I read the comments. However, there is many things governments can do, that can be considered (under different subjective considerations) unethical, following a hidden agenda or plainly stupid. My personal decision at the moment is that I do not travel to the US. Which means that at times our papers are not presented at US conferences because my PhD students don't get visa (even unrelated to the current ban). I think the US will survive this particular loss though.
intended · 1h ago
Strawman.
No one is saying states don’t have the right.
States can go even further. They can decide to exit economic unions, trade agreements, etc. You have sovereignty.
Everyone knows you have freedom to play cards as you see fit. Everyone who understands how the game is played, will also make moves accordingly.
There’s nothing to be defensive about.
colinbartlett · 6h ago
Absolutely insane. Until recently, I had none. Now I at least have a LinkedIn account. My mother has no social media at all.
wombatpm · 3h ago
New business idea- AI powered burner profiles. Company starts building generic profiles that follow acceptable account, occasionally likes some or posts some lame LLM generated posts. Some point in the future company sells you access to the account.
aitchnyu · 1h ago
In India people are going around asking to buy Telegram accounts. Not exactly a centralized operation.
lanstin · 3h ago
And a self-hosted version where it can be fed some personalized info as basic prompt.
TZubiri · 2h ago
That's against ToS, you are on the wrong ethical side. This is the technology and behaviour patterns that fraudsters use, you would be indistinguishable from an enemy .
wombatpm · 1h ago
What’s the violation again? Automating account activity? Liking stupid cat pictures? Following mid tier influencers? Having vanilla posts?
I’m not engaging in click fraud or attempting to monetize an account illegally. And it’s certainly doing what anyone could do on their own. Or is everyone 100% honest on social media all of the time?
areyourllySorry · 29m ago
the very legally binding novel-sized tos? the tos they change as often as they like to benefit only them? nobody is ethical here - they abuse us, we abuse them
Alupis · 6h ago
So you have no HN account? No YouTube Account? No Reddit Account?
These are all forms of Social Media.
energywut · 5h ago
I create and delete HN accounts every... 80-200 karma. I don't have a youtube account. I don't have a reddit account.
Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people here who view social media as a harmful thing they try to mostly avoid?
ninjin · 3h ago
If the world is heading the way the US is heading, I may be inclined to start doing the same. This is the only "social media" account I have left, but if my freedom of expressing myself will be impaired by governmental stalking like this I will sadly have to "adapt". Losing my ability to help filter and manage by upvoting and flagging blows though.
FireBeyond · 3h ago
> I create and delete HN accounts every... 80-200 karma. Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people here who view social media as a harmful thing they try to mostly avoid?
I don't know that "resetting my account" is the solution to "harmful and I want to avoid". I get why you're doing it in your mind (and there's validity to some parts), but to me "I see social media as harmful" means "I don't go on social media", not "I keep going on it, just with different credentials every so often".
redczar · 5h ago
I’ve been on HN since the beginning. I’m on my 12th or so username. Like you I don’t have a Reddit, Facebook, etc. account. Social Media is a plague on society.
TZubiri · 2h ago
I think at this point the onus is on you to provide some form of alternative. Can you provide to the officers at port of entry some proof of employment, or whatever?
If you are just going to blindly be indistinguishable from bad actors and do no effort in distinguishing yourself., then yea, don't travel to that country.
maeil · 2h ago
It's become very hard to tell whether this is sarcasm. I sure hope it is, though.
fc417fc802 · 5h ago
Speaking for myself I have an HN account but why would I want those other two? And I certainly don't have any "social" accounts under my legal name.
I'm not even comfortable with ICANN based DNS given that the identity requirements amount to an impressum. That's fine for business dealings but interpersonal communications (including the metadata) should be private from outside observers.
checker659 · 6h ago
What’s stopping someone from using LLMs to create a alt account? Imagine a bot that takes stuff from you actual a/c and posts the mirror opposite posts on the alt one.
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
> What’s stopping someone from using LLMs to create an alt account?
For the applicant? Visa fraud rules. For people fucking with third parties? Absolutely nothing.
koakuma-chan · 6h ago
Don't post pictures of yourself on the internet (and don't let your relatives do that), and you can say it wasn't you.
sneak · 3h ago
Most large social networks now require biometric authentication of identity to prevent alts.
Even Uber requires facial biometrics for an account now if you try to sign up using a prepaid card and VPN.
koakuma-chan · 7h ago
What? And which social medias am I required to have a profile on?
wombatpm · 3h ago
Truth Social
felineflock · 6h ago
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.
DigitallyFidget · 6h ago
My only tip isn't really useful. Just avoid going to that hostile country for now. Unless there's a specific necessity. And if that's the case, then change all your social media accounts info, change the name, change birthdates, missmatch as much info as possible. Delete photos of yourself/family. Then for 'burner' accounts, make them on a different social network, like bluesky, myspace (they're still around), and then use an AI to generate ideas for posts and just make those as posts for the next while. The problem will be making a realistic timeline/history for new accounts. Alternatively "your kids aren't allowed to use social media", and that clears up a lot of work. But honestly just avoid the risk of traveling there in the first place, is it worth the risk of being detained?
somenameforme · 2h ago
PRISM [1] says hello. He may have fallen out of the news cycle, but he's not only still around but bigger, badder, and more invasive than ever. That phone you used to set up 2FA online with? Well that conveniently ties your real name, address, and more right to specific accounts. And he's collected it and passed it along for storage, in perpetuity.
I've been to China a lot while also being critical of it sometimes on Facebook, and have never been refused a visa, even a work Z visa. Either they aren't looking or can't look because Facebook is blocked in China. My guess is simply that they aren't looking.
lucubratory · 2h ago
They generally only look on Weibo & other Chinese-exclusive social media, and they do it all the time, not just while you're in customs. For something on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook etc it would need to be something really, really egregious (and you would know about it) like organising or raising funds for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or something similar. It wouldn't be enough to just express a political opinion that the US State Department has expressed, like "China is committing a genocide of the Uyghurs". Maybe if you're saying it in Chinese it's more likely that would lead to issues because that's what they're used to dealing with, but I think it's unlikely. They care about what their nationals are doing, and they care about what's happening on their own social media networks; that's mostly it.
My general advice for people travelling to China is to not talk about politics on Chinese social media, or if you do just talk about the domestic politics of your home country & keep in mind that Chinese people might disagree with you. That's also my advice for people travelling to any country, but it's more important in China.
All that said, if you must discuss politics on Chinese social media while you're there, the thing the censors really have an issue with is calls for action, explicit or implied. More than one very pro-PRC heritage speaker who went to China has had their Weibo posts raging against America or Japan censored because they thought the criteria were "Posts have to be pro-China", when really the criteria is "Posts can't be a call to collective action that wasn't started by the party". What the party is actually concerned about is just stopping any sort of organised mass movement that they didn't start. The CCP's point of view is that mass movements are inherently unpredictable & could lead to civil disorder (even if they're nominally "pro-China"), so they're too risky a tool to let anyone other than the state use - important context to that is that Chinese culture, similar to some other East Asian cultures, puts way more value than we do on civil order, harmony etc.
Also if your posts do get censored, it's not as big an issue as it would be here. Where I live, the government deleting my social media posts would feel approximately as serious as armed police rappelling through my windows, and if the former happened I'd at least think about the possibility of the latter happening shortly afterwards. Think something like the Christchurch shooting live feed. It's not like that in China; it's completely normal, for example, that you get angry & post something that gets deleted by a censor, & that is literally the last you ever hear of it, a lot like tweeting something against ToS. If you continue posting about it or try to get around the censorship, eventually a police officer will visit you and talk to you over tea about why you have to stop doing that, and if you keep going that's when the actual legal consequences like deportations or arrest start.
maeil · 2h ago
> I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.
Don't go to the US. That's the tip.
frollogaston · 5h ago
There's no need. Just make some accounts, upload a pic, leave it alone. The only purpose of that is to avoid any extra restrictions they may later place on new accounts. Like, I have 10 Gmail accounts from before they wanted a phone number, plus a few burner Facebooks. I made one new Gmail recently, and it was banned without explanation.
Marsymars · 3h ago
> Like, I have 10 Gmail accounts from before they wanted a phone number
I do too, but they won’t let me log in without putting in a phone number.
tenpies · 5h ago
What method are you using to predict what future governments won't find offensive/illegal?
Short of time travel, this seems impossible.
decimalenough · 3h ago
This. I have a watermelon costume purchased years ago for a fruit themed costume party, but today it's code for supporting Palestinians/Gaza and a picture of me wearing it might get me banned from entering the US.
felineflock · 4h ago
Yes, it is not possible. We can't predict but can follow the trends.
Governments tend to want to be seen as a god-like entity protector/judge of all.
So they hate satire or anything that means they're not being taken seriously.
Just recently Brazil decided to jail a comedian, for instance.
kortilla · 3h ago
Bo produced a guide to this called “white womans instagram”.
Does anyone think this is about anything other than stamping out criticism of Israel?
Arubis · 3h ago
Of course it’s for more than that. It’s a fabulously oppressive tool that’ll get used for whatever the hell power-hungry folks want. That’s not to say it won’t be used for your proposed purpose! Just gotta think bigger.
mattnewton · 3h ago
That’s the trial balloon.
GuestFAUniverse · 1h ago
Congratulations not one, but _multiple_ Gestapos.
DHS, ICE, ... all doing whatever they are told from the new "above the law".
southernplaces7 · 30m ago
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.
godelski · 2m ago
Just an FYI for anyone reading, according to the constitution, the first amendment applies to everyone, not just citizens. It specifically says "the people" rather than "citizens". Courts have ruled time and time again that citizen rights are specifically those with the verbiage "citizens" and rights like these apply to everyone.
Not that that exactly matters to this administration, who is happy to act first and let the courts figure it out never
irrational · 3h ago
I don’t use social media. Is the assumption that everyone does use social media?
lurk2 · 3h ago
You’ve been posting here for nearly 10 years.
Biganon · 59m ago
Forums are not "social media", this gotcha needs to stop. They've existed for longer than the web itself, we're pseudonymous, we hardly share anything about our private life, this has nothing to do with the commonly accepted definition of "social media" unless we're being overly pedantic for the sake of it.
lurk2 · 4m ago
> we’re pseudonymous
Reddit and 4chan are different from Facebook and Instagram, but they are still social media.
Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
The categorization you’re relying on dates back to the early 2010s; it equates social media with Facebook-style platforms centered on a main feed, profiles, connections, messaging, and other ancillary functionality. This was 15 years ago; YouTube doesn’t have a messaging system anymore, but you would probably still consider it to be social media. Most of the reels you see on Instagram are not from accounts that you follow, and hardly anyone uses their real name to post there, so by your definition it would not qualify as social media, but it plainly is.
I’m familiar with the attitude because I see it all over on 4chan, Reddit, and Hacker News. Someone who posts here claiming they don’t use social media is like someone claiming to be a vegan who eats beef; it’s a clout thing among the strange anti-social subcultures that developed on these platforms used to indicate that the user doesn’t use platforms that involve something as shallow as talking about his personal life.
mahkeiro · 1h ago
But HN is not a social media, you don’t publish and are not linked to anyone (I cannot subscribe to your comment) on this site. Your definition of social media is almost equivalent of the internet.
lurk2 · 25m ago
I know I’m being pedantic here but take a look at Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
Forums satisfy all of these requirements. The key factor is not what kind of content users can post but that users can post, and more importantly that they post with the primary intention of interacting with other users. This covers Hacker News and other forums but excludes guest books and contact forms.
irrational · 1h ago
I don’t consider an anonymous link aggregator with a forum bolted on top to be social media. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never read a comment from the same person (assuming they are people and not bots) in more than one post. Strangers passing in a pitch black room a single time is hardly social.
lurk2 · 45s ago
> I don’t consider an anonymous link aggregator with a forum bolted on top to be social media
You are describing Reddit.
tempodox · 1h ago
The bureaucrats deciding on your visa just want sources for doing a colonoscopy on your opinions. If they say HN is social media, what are you going to do?
mitthrowaway2 · 31m ago
I'll tell them my HN comments are all set to "public"
userbinator · 4h ago
I have no social media associated with my real identity.
That should've always been the norm, yet unfortunately it isn't.
Well that's one way to end run around searches you're not legally allowed to perform.
tempodox · 2h ago
I wasn't aware that this administration gives a shit about legality.
Edit: Even if it weren't for that, non-citizens do not have any rights and are not protected by the constitution or anything else.
te_chris · 1h ago
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.
skybrian · 3h ago
Won't be too long before people will have scrubbed profiles under their real names and use temporary alts for private group chats.
zenonu · 3h ago
... and then there's a falling out in your friends circle, and someone is reported.
xdennis · 18m ago
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".
akmarinov · 1h ago
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 can’t board a plane.
And now I can’t get a visa :(
justahuman74 · 7h ago
I guess students will have to delete all social media before applying?
kergonath · 7h ago
Until an empty account is seen as a red flag. The thing is, they do not need a reason to reject visa applications. This will just provide more pretexts and more power trips for border control agents and embassy bureaucrats.
theendisney · 7h ago
Ohh thats a whole new dystopian formula! We all thought instagram was optional but soon it Will be required to show off your beach body. While drinking the correct drink. Enhance with the right ai and catefully edit out your chinese Mexican and african friends.
The gaming quality on yt and twitch can be measured with ai to check if you are not pretending. The immigration interview full of questions about grand theft auto.
HN born as a place for founders to pretend to be civilized and knowledgable can extend to cover everyone. I mean, I wouldnt give a visum to the guy writing this comment.
morkalork · 3h ago
Don't blur your friend's faces, that's suspicious. But if you leave the in their profiles will be matched up and checked too. You think the House Un-American Activities Committee was bad? The future will be 1000x more intense.
frollogaston · 6h ago
This is why I made an unused Facebook account filled with normal stuff before applying to college, back when that was the popular thing.
ASinclair · 7h ago
Simple, just use AI tools to generate fake profiles that seem normal enough to pass inspection by some random State Department employee.
makeitdouble · 6h ago
And that's kind of the point: have social media mostly filled with apolitical or at least non controversial content.
As other pointed out, border control is already an area where an agent can stop basically anyone without any provable justification. More that this specific rule, the whole social climate needs to change to ever get back to a balanced situation.
userbinator · 4h ago
How about no account at all? Don't forget that the Amish exist in the US.
chii · 3h ago
The amish dont require visa in the US...at least atm. But if they end up needing a visa, which would get renamed to social credit score...
LightHugger · 39m ago
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..
sys_64738 · 5h ago
This might be against the ToS of the social media account.
WarOnPrivacy · 7h ago
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.
AIorNot · 3h ago
Social media screening - so America is policing people’s opinions on a large scale
Just like Turkey huh? Love that America is still called the “land of the free”
This is a gross violation of some of our most sacred principles.
throwawayq3423 · 6h ago
Yep, and all by the "free speech" crowd.
buckle8017 · 6h ago
Can you be specific which principles this violates?
Historically visas could and were denied for completely arbitrary reasons.
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
> Can you be specific which principles this violates?
The right to free speech. Even in its restrictive First Amendment form.
lesuorac · 6h ago
I'm not sure 1FA applies to non-US individuals on non-US soil.
Once they're in the country, sure.
----
Not that I think it's been demonstrated that this policy will improve US security or etc. Wonder if the APA applies here.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> not sure 1FA applies to non-US individuals on non-US soil
Textually, it does. (The President acts without force of law when he restricts “freedom of expression.”)
Intent-wise, for those seeking entry to America, it does—our republic was formed, in part, to restrict the executive from excluding religious minorities he doesn’t liked
Legally, however, you are right.
jkaplowitz · 5h ago
The First Amendment indeed doesn’t apply to non-US individuals abroad, as much as I wish it were otherwise (and many other countries do take a more inclusive approach on such matters).
But the First Amendment does apply to the many US citizens and permanent residents who are being indirectly surveilled, profiled, and chilled in their speech as a result of the extra scrutiny of the foreign visa applicants with whom they interact and connect on social media.
lucyjojo · 5h ago
there is a giant split between people.
some people only consider their in-groups as worthy of having rights.
others consider all human beings as worthy of having rights.
you see that schism in play everyday almost everywhere. i fear it is not a resolvable tension (without some kind of mass severe brainwashing). it is a core beliefs kind of thing.
energywut · 5h ago
I'd go further. Discrimination against some people is axiomatically part of having a nation and a border. There are no nations, to my knowledge, that permit every person residing within their borders to vote and permit any person who wishes to reside in their borders entry.
The assumption of discrimination is therefore baked in to every national project -- there are people who wish to participate in the nation but are barred from doing so. It's uncomfortable for many people to consider this, because it runs counter to the idea that their nations are welcoming places, but it's important to remember this discrimination occurs (even if you think it's a good idea.)
FireBeyond · 3h ago
Yeah, it's becoming more and more pervasive that you have to have "earned" those "inalienable" rights, by virtue of being a citizen. If those rights are great, what's one reason why they shouldn't be extended to all.
intended · 1h ago
This is moving the goal posts.
You can point out that the constitution is for Americans only etc. etc.
The thing is, that the right to free speech, as defended by court cases and by precedence, is about the market place of ideas being functional, and allowing society to figure out what it considers “true”.
This is the spirit of the clause, and the purpose behind the freedoms Americans enjoy and used to uphold.
The reading that it applies “only to American citizens, and visitors on US soil”, is an after the fact reinterpretation to win arguments online.
Free speech in America has always been about the government not being able to decide what can and can’t be said, especially when it comes down to deciding which nations can and can’t be spoken about.
Your argument, can only be built on the ruins of the American free speech experiment. Because it accepts the death of the spirit of the idea, the a marketplace of ideas as a way to address the unknowns of reality, with a centralized, and enforced way of safe topics.
For what its worth, you only reach this level of banana republic, after your information and idea markets are compromised or overwhelmed.
I’m simply pointing out that your argument on procedural merits, takes the spirit of the law to the back of the shed, and shoots it.
0n0n0m0uz · 1h ago
The internal Israeli left / opposition themselves are much more free to speak and have a more robust debate than permitted in the USA.
vjvjvjvjghv · 7h ago
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.
lucubratory · 2h ago
It's not intended to detect crimes, it's intended to detect pro-Palestinian political sentiment & deny entry to anyone who has posted that way.
foogazi · 1h ago
A purity test
0xbadcafebee · 3h ago
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.
linotype · 7h ago
You’re naive if you think they’ll stop with foreign students.
princealiiiii · 7h ago
It's all done to chill free speech, especially "antisemetic" protests of Israel.
duxup · 7h ago
They already asked Harvard to monitor students for “viewpoint diversity” and make adjustments to admissions based on a government selected third party’s instructions.
When they refused Trump started trying to force the to comply.
They're already trying to reach the same thought police type activity with American students.
lmm · 3h ago
Why? Blatantly unconstitutional searches at the border have been going on for decades under administrations from both sides. The US public very evidently doesn't care about the rights of people entering the country. Trying to do the same thing to citizens away from the border will be a different story altogether.
Hnrobert42 · 1h ago
The US Supreme Court has long held that the border mitigates "reasonable" in the 4th amendment such that warrantless searches at the border are constitutionally sound. [0]
That said, this isn't a search. It is the presumption of guilt if a search is refused. I agree with you that it's bad policy, but it's not unconstitutional.
Just because both sides might do it doesn’t make it right.
Mountain_Skies · 7h ago
True. After seeing how the tech companies, media, and Biden administration acted during the pandemic, you should be worried about how quickly this can spin out of control.
foogazi · 1h ago
Yeah - what about Brandon ?
rsingel · 7h ago
Lol. The Biden administration who simply asked platforms to enforce their own terms of service?
Maybe you're better example is the Trump administration saying it's going to withhold transportation funding from cities because citizens their dared to protest him, issued presidential orders against law firms that represented people suing him, pulled the security clearances of people who dared to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, and threatened trees and charges against a former DHS official who wrote an unflattering op-ed in the Washington Post.
One of these is not like the other
foogazi · 1h ago
It’s the classic walrus what about- pay no heed
frollogaston · 6h ago
I think the other comment is referring to Biden administration coercing social media companies on covid19 content ranking until a judge stopped it. Idk if this was related, but YouTube had covid19 vaccine videos promoted to a special place on its front page for over a year.
rsingel · 4h ago
Flagging content that's against terms of service, foreign interference or illegal (like voting by text scams) is hardly coercion.
The article you linked states that it was thrown out for technical reasons. Multiple lower courts sided with the plantiffs so it's clear that the actions taken are far from uncontroversial.
frollogaston · 3h ago
And scotus struck down his vaccine mandate
frollogaston · 3h ago
It wasn't about foreign interference or scams.
ulfw · 2h ago
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.
duxup · 7h ago
Thought police.
seanmcdirmid · 5h ago
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).
FabHK · 3h ago
Your WeChat is already shared with the Chinese government, so you're just sharing with one more.
seanmcdirmid · 47m ago
But the American government doesn’t have a special account, they want it to be “public.”
lmm · 4h ago
WeChat still has user profile pages (and probably public posts on there?), even if most people don't use them much. Probably a case of making that public.
Simulacra · 6h ago
I don't understand why the social media companies are not fighting this? This is ridiculous.
acdha · 6h ago
They’re telling everyone that you need to use their services to be allowed into the United States. Some managers are going to be so excited about those engagement numbers!
maeil · 2h ago
I'm not sure how to phrase this within the rules of HN, but I don't understand how anyone on HN 1. can not understand why Meta and Microsoft aren't fighting this 2. can still be remotely surprised by any of this 3. can act this has a single thing to do with security or even with Israel - neither of which remotely factor into the reason behind this policy.
Genuinely, have people been living in Bikini Bottom? I'm so tired of this cognitive dissonance, not wanting to face the reality. As tired as I am of these developments themselves, really. I'm too tired to still be nice. I thought people here were bright.
0n0n0m0uz · 1h ago
So delete them
betaby · 6h ago
Like it is today in Russia and Belarus.
SuperNinKenDo · 6h ago
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.
olalonde · 4h ago
Even China doesn't do this. I've crossed the border hundreds of times and was never asked to hand over electronic devices - in fact, they barely asked any questions at all. In contrast, my few experiences crossing the U.S. and Canadian borders were much more invasive (I'm Canadian).
forgotoldacc · 3h ago
Yeah. They basically just ask if you're a journalist when applying for a visa there, and if you're not, they don't care. You're basically auto-approved so long as you pay the fee.
I shittalked the government for a long time and got caught up in the various memes against the country before I decided to visit. I was afraid I'd be rejected (or worse, approved and arrested) and upon googling for similar experiences saw countless people freaking out about the same thing before going there.
Turns out they either don't check at all, or do check but aren't nearly as stringent as the US.
This ignores edge cases of popular Youtubers who lived there for years, made a career out of complaining, then were surprised when the government asked them to leave. Which still beats an El Salvador prison.
Hnrobert42 · 1h ago
Possibly because they don't need to ask.
hearsathought · 3h ago
> At least when China does this kinda thing there's not so strong a stench of hypocrisy.
This kind of thing? When has china demanded access to foreigners' social media accounts so that they can check for anti-israel comments? Never. You think china cares what people say about foreign countries? You think china will block someone from their country because they criticized the US? Of course not. They ban you for criticizing their own country.
You are not appreciating the level of pathetic debasement we are experiencing. We are not checking for anti-american comments from foreigners. We are checking for anti-israel comments. The US government is acting like a guard dog for israel.
bhouston · 6h ago
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.
bn-l · 5h ago
There’s just one political leaning they care about. Weirdly it’s about one country (that recently massacred, by firing machine guns into a crowd, 60 civilians collecting international food aid).
energywut · 5h ago
If you openly criticize genocide and settler colonialism by Israel, you are probably the kind of person who might openly criticize the imperial efforts of the US. Especially once they become even more oppressive.
They know exactly what they are doing.
vixen99 · 38m ago
Accepting this and purely as a logistic problem, how would you deal with Hamas who have in their basic charter made clear they don't want Israel to exist?
Should they get the chance, their intention to repeat October 7th has been clearly stated - it's in their charter. What does anyone do under those circumstances? For those who argue that Israel is an illegitimate State, I guess the practical question is where should the 9.5 million colonialist Israelis move to? And who would accept them?
That's probably a totally separate discussion, but in my opinion they should try to win back the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and thereby totally undermine Hamas. Which would certainly not be easy at this point.
throwawayq3423 · 6h ago
I've never seen self-reported principles be more quickly abandoned than then self-styled "free speech" crowd once they got power.
No comments yet
blotfaba · 3h ago
Principles such as... slavery, white supremacy, bigotry, genocide, tyranny..
King-Aaron · 5h ago
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.
amazingamazing · 4h ago
This country enslaved blacks for hundreds of years, slaughtered the natives and put the Japanese into camps and nuked them twice.
It’s always been authoritarian for those that don’t look right
intended · 55m ago
This is too easy a criticism and the unhelpful form of cynicism.
America also made efforts to recognize that those events counted as screwups and failures of their own value systems, and struggled against the forces that allowed such situations to happen.
This isn’t to say they succeeded, or that these situations wouldn’t happen again.
Its to say that theres a difference between pushing against the current, and flowing with it.
defrost · 25m ago
Just as a heads up; the currents, for native americans, are flowing backwards at present:
A member of Spirit Lake Nation was elected to North Dakota’s legislature for the first time last fall thanks to a redistricting lawsuit filed by Jackson-Street’s tribe, alongside the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The suit claimed that the districts drawn by North Dakota in 2021 violated the Voting Rights Act, and the tribes’ initial success in court triggered a new map and increased representation in 2024.
But last month, a federal appeals court tossed out their victory and declared that only the federal government can sue over violations of the Voting Rights Act, a devastating blow to the ability of these tribes—and others in the region—to seek legal recourse.
There are numerous other examples but an increased inability to complain about unfair and discrimmanatory voting practices highlights the present direction of 'progress'.
Der_Einzige · 23m ago
Nukes were definitely justified. The Japanese almost succesfully coup'd their own emperor to force the fight to go on in spite of them.
They were fanatical and willing to fight to the last man.
Thuggery · 36m ago
That's pretty lame criticism considering many of those things were contemporary SOP for all countries. The USA remind abnormally libertarian despite this. Now it's getting abnormally authoritarian.
energywut · 5h ago
Quickly? This has been the path we have been on for at least 30 years, probably longer. Plenty of folks have been calling this out for longer.
When you have two parties in control, and they are both staunchly pro-capital, anti-worker parties, one party will push conservative and the other will ensure "nothing fundamentally changes".
Obama, Biden, Bush, and Clinton all had parts to play in empowering the executive, normalizing political violence, demonizing and silencing the left (the actual left -- socialists, workers parties, anarchists, etc.), and ramping up the militarization of the police.
This isn't some sudden moment, it might be the first time it's affected people you know, but this has been happening for awhile now.
Herring · 4h ago
I think it's actually kind of a miracle it didn't happen earlier. This country has been all about getting rich since slavery. Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg lobbying, campaign finance, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few.
boroboro4 · 3h ago
It didn’t happen earlier because before gilded age the US (among whites..) was actually quite good with equality, and then every time we were getting close the opposite force was taking over: once in the beginning of 20s century with worker rights / antitrust and once in 1930s with FDRs New Deal. Interestingly both times things were getting quite good afterwards for the people.
Not sure it’s gonna happen time though.
energywut · 4h ago
I think too many people are too enamored with their "team" to really dig into the policy proposals of presidents and senators. Like, for so many people being a Democrat is purely about being Not A Republican (or vice versa).
I want more people out here who are willing to vote (or withold their vote) for a candidate based on the policy positions. This "Vote Blue No Matter Who" (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) mindset leads to candidates who don't have to hold coherent positions or perform their duties. They simply need to not be the other guy.
While being "not the other guy" they will get courted by capital interests, because they need that money to run their campaigns. It's really not hard to connect the dots between these politicians and the donors who buy them and mysteriously get policies that make regulatory capture and capital concentration easier. It's not even conspiratorial -- it's pretty much out in the open these days.
I'm so tired of hearing, "But not the democrats" or "but not the republicans" -- my friends, stop treating the people you vote for like part of your identity. Expect more from the people who represent you, be harshly critical of your own party to help it grow.
o11c · 1h ago
Don't forget, it's not unique to the US either.
In 1985, France launched a terrorist attack against a protest in New Zealand.
infotainment · 7h ago
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.
FabHK · 2h ago
People in the US are free to say whatever they want.
But not everyone can just come to the US, and looking at what they've said is part of deciding whether they can.
nathanaldensr · 7h ago
Some of this goes beyond party. "Anti-semitism" is an AIPAC carve-out and AIPAC owns both parties.
> You are free to say whatever you like, as long as your words do not contradict Official Party Ideology.
“There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Idi Amin
fallingknife · 7h ago
Rights don't apply when you are entering another country. Americans have the right to bear arms too, but good luck with that argument when get caught at the border with weapons.
nielsbot · 7h ago
Are you ok denying visas to students based on the contents of their social media profiles?
SoftTalker · 3h ago
I'm a bit skeptical that students are a big source of trouble. The vast majority come here, pay universities a lot of money, spend additional money in the local community, get their degrees, and then go home or maybe stay and work in generally high paying jobs, continuing to contribute to the local economy.
All that said, nobody has a "right" to come to the USA to study. It's something we allow, for a lot of good reasons, but there are doubtless a small number of people that we would not want here.
ImJamal · 4h ago
If the contents of their social media would be a crime in the US I would have no issues with denying visa to students.
Mountain_Skies · 7h ago
>Gays are vile and should not be allowed to exist.
Would you be ok with that social media poster being granted entry into the country?
ilya_m · 6h ago
Do I think it's the best use of taxpayers' dollars (ie, mine) to screen for objectionable content on social media? No.
Do I trust the government to police opinions? No, especially when there's no accountability and appeals process.
Do I believe the overall benefits that harassment-free international travel brings to this country outweigh the costs of letting in some visitors whose views I disagree with? Yes.
kennywinker · 6h ago
They’d be welcomed with open arms in ~30% of the country. Screening for thought crimes isn’t a slippery slope, it’s a frictionless plane.
vkou · 4h ago
I wouldn't exactly be jumping for joy over it, but that's a juice that's not worth the squeeze.
frollogaston · 6h ago
Yes
mlindner · 6h ago
You're expected to be truthful in your visa application, and not being truthful is grounds for visa rejection.
nielsbot · 1h ago
That’s different that policing social media tho
impossiblefork · 7h ago
Rights always apply, always. This is the thing about human rights enshrined in human rights laws in places like the EU, or about your constitutional rights (although the latter only applies to US citizens and to people physically present in the US).
However, countries may, depending on their laws, choose to not let certain people in on conditions that would otherwise violate guarantees on freedom of speech etc.
However, you do have your constitutional rights at the border etc. There is an exception concerning searches.
kloop · 3h ago
That depends a lot on the constitutional right. They're, generally, phrased as restrictions on the federal government (assumed to apply to state governments under incorporation post civil war).
There are a lot of times the government is limited even dealing with foreigners abroad (in legal theory anyways, ymmv in reality).
TZubiri · 2h ago
Makes sense to me, at least personally.
If I'm travelling under a visa, and 100 people from my country broke their visa conditions, I want to show that I won't break my visa conditions. People breaking visa conditions, or in general promising to do one thing and then doing another, are not my allies and I don't want to protect them by giving them an alibi in the name of privacy.
Here you go sir, this is my social media account, lots of pictures from my country as you can see, if you find a picture in the US, you'll find it's for short periods of time and the purpose is in line with my assigned visa. Thank you for letting me in your country temporarily.
intended · 47m ago
Your argument only makes sense, when you jump through the hoops, squint, and crucially - add in your bits to make it make sense.
The bit you added here was “99% of people from my country broke visa conditions”.
This is something that is added by you, to make it make sense. What you are unaware of, is that the current visa process already accounts for this. I know of people who had visas rejected, because freelancer with their own training business are counted as flight risks. They get rejected at the interview stage itself. And it seems that wait times for tourists visas are years long.
Now, you might be the kind of person, who by nature either tries to see the good in something, or takes a contrarian position. The question is, did you dive beneath the ice with knowledge of what arguments are too far?
eesmith · 2h ago
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." (Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu; disputed.)
The more information given, the more likely there will be a false positive.
"You say you didn't visit the US but here's a picture of you in Vegas." "That's the Eiffel Tower. In Paris." "No, it's Las Vegas - I saw it last month. Entry rejected."
foogazi · 1h ago
Good dog!
0dhhhhd9 · 3h ago
Damn, I guess I shouldn't have asked for that jet from the single biggest supporter of anti-Israeli protests.
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.
> Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
There are plenty of dual citizens that would proudly admit that their first loyalty is to Israel.
Other examples from the document use the term "Jews as a people", whereas this example seems to apply to accusing any individual.
Although perhaps a generous interpretation of the example, is that it excludes Israeli dual citizens, because Israel would be one of "their own nations"
This is legitimately debatable. If your allegiance is first to a foreign state, in my view, you should have to relinquish your American citizenship.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
I have one or two friends in that situations, and they want to do that. But it also cost a $2,350 fee to give up your US of A citizenship.
Hence debatable.
Let me escalate: I think such a bill would find bipartisan support. Right now might be a good time to attempt it.
I hate the idea of revoking citizenship. But a question about swearing, on naturalisation, that your supreme allegiance is to America should be incredibly popular to secure.
And despite the difficulty of revoking US citizenship, the rate of revocations has increased over the last decade or two. If there was such a simple way to toss out that old rag, I'm sure there would be many more (and a little less tax revenue).
So I'm afraid* the USA is much more transactional than you think, at least regarding citizenship.
*I must admit this is sarcasm. Thank god the US is transactional rather than so stubbornly patriotic about citizenship.
I know more born citizens with a second nationality than naturalised ones who gave up their first.
Also, to be pedantic, you don’t have to have citizenship of a foreign country in order to have a greater allegiance to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_loyalty#Jewish_Believers
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/jews-disloyal...
In general, you should be wary of "forms of antisemitism" (or similar "forms of x-ism/x-phobia/etc"). Such things usually consists of the defensible but vacuous notion that "doing X in an antisemetic way is antisemetic", while attempting to imply that doing X is antisemetic in general, regardless how it's done, or at the least that doing X is suspect. But the only proof that has been provided in such cases is that X has ocassionally been done in an antisemetic way, which you could say for just about anything. Since X in these cases is not per se anti semetic, it is more helpful to identify what antisemetic thing has often been done alongside it, and be on the lookout for that, instead of for X.
You specified that. The excerpt did not.
I admit the phrasing of the excerpt does look vague out of context, but it is about the collective of Jewish people. That is suggested by the except saying "Jewish citizens" rather than "a Jewish citizen". It should also become more clear if you click through to the original and see all the other examples are about the Jewish people as a collective too. So yes, this text is specifically about the "because of" even if the excerpt doesn't make that explicit. It is not saying that any accusation of disloyalty is inherently antisemitism. For example, if a Jewish American citizen was arrested with real evidence of them being an Israeli spy, there would not be a serious discussion of whether the arrest was an act of antisemitism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil
It's on all the US embassy sites, although it says "are requested":
Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States under U.S. law.
https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/
https://ca.usembassy.gov/visas/
https://in.usembassy.gov/visas/
etc.
The smart ones won’t sign to it. The dumb ones will take too long to arrest and charge.
Imagine if DHS said they are going to ban anyone who criticizes china or russia or saudi arabia from traveling to the US? Both the republicans and democratics would be raising hell. Why the silence when it comes to israel?
What Homeland is DHS securing? The US or Israel? Why is it that so much of our political class openly and unabashedly act like agents of israel? Doesn't matter who you vote for. Republican or democrat. As soon as they are elected, they all grovel for israel. How many wars are we going to fight for israel? How many american colleges are we going to attack for israel? How many people are we going to censor for israel? Just doesn't make any sense.
Or this is the story line that US politicians have bought and unpacked after being hand delivered by AIPAC with a brief case of money plus a set of blackmail love letters waiting to be leaked if they don’t take it.
I am convinced that our govt never had spine to stand up for freedom unless Israel/lobbyists were behind it. They quarrel amongst themselves because of Israel and agree in large numbers because of Israel.
There are more Jewish people in the US than Israel. I guess this is what they're securing against?
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incid...
Or who knows, maybe they ban Trump critics or commies from entering the US? I will definitely avoid travelling to the US due to the Trump Administration's hostility towards immigrants. These screening policies will probably remain in place under the next administration.
Surely you aren't suggesting political power is just about the numbers? That one group of 6 million people has the same political sway as any other block of 6 million?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=74ZA-GdeQP4&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
Also
https://x.com/aipac/status/1800947317173784973
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=74ZA-GdeQP4&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
There are more chinese in the US than jews. So is DHS going to ban anyone who makes anti-china posts? We have a lot of arabs and palestinians. Why isn't DHS protecting them? Shouldn't DHS check every israeli's social media for anti-palestinian comments?
> Or who knows, maybe they ban Trump critics or commies from entering the US.
What does that have to do with israel and "antisemitism"?
I'm not sure the DHS is protecting anyone other than the Trump Administration's narratives at this point.
> Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor
> Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
> Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
...
Many of the examples make sense, but these four above are absurd.
(It's usually difficult to decisively prove that someone is applying a double standard, but I think here we're assuming that was somehow firmly established.)
But I could have double standards for all type of countries! I tend to hold the US at a higher standard than most countries for almost anything, and I think everyone holds Germany to a much higher standards with respect to minority rights (particularly, Jews) than other countries.
I think people overindex on Israel as "the only Jewish state", and less as "just another country". I wish we could entirely separate the identity of the Jewish people and the state of Israel at least in the discourse. It would make everything healthier.
While I think there's quite a lot of antisemitism out there, I find it questionable trying to deduce antisemitism. Explicitly expressed antisemitism itself is something else. I also find it very questionable to redefine the term that it includes deductions.
I doubt that. I would honestly be shocked if anyone with anti-Trump posts would 'pass' DHS screening.
> “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
In IHRA’s defense, this definition was never intended for legal use. But here we are.
> Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
The reasons given are extremely broad, so it makes nuances like this largely irrelevant. If an immigration officer perceives their duty (or maybe it's just their own personal opinion) to be to reject applications which are critical of Israel, then that's exactly what they're going to do. And you have no ability to appeal decisions, not that you'd even know what caused those decisions.
FWIW the people I'm referencing were also completely upstanding, educated individuals with high competence in English. It's a great way to make one loathe the double standard given to people who just illegally cross the border. Even moreso when you consider that each of these applications costs hundreds of dollars in places where that's often a rather substantial sum of money (just as it would be in most places in e.g. South America).
> Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
One does not entail the other. You can support our right to self-determination while not supporting Israel's apartheid-style policies, but this sentence conflates them.
> Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
This is pure whataboutism. Israel is actually given incredible leeway by America, and I usually see this trotted out to shut down legitimate criticism. There's a good discussion to be had about why we don't criticize China, or why we ignore atrocities in African countries, but none of that absolves Israel from its misdeeds.
> Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Call it "sparkling ethnic cleansing" then. Ironically, actual genocide scholars have pointed out that when the Shoah is your metric, then almost nothing can compare, rendering the word useless.
Not quite. Don't confuse criticism of Netanyahu with criticism of Israel. Many dislike Netanyahu for various reasons, but are still broadly supportive of Israeli policies.
More importantly, most Americans don’t care about foreign policy.
The decades-long failure by the American left has been projecting Vietnam-era protests against the draft to modern foreign policy.
It's going to be impossible to get reliable polling on Iran right now because Israel's going extremely authoritarian with domestic 'information warfare.' But it's fairly certain that most Israelis will oppose what's happening, once they can speak again. For instance in early 2024 Israeli decided to destroy the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing multiple generals amongst others. This led to a largely performative counter-strike by Iran. And here 74% of Israelis opposed continued escalation if it harmed security alliances. [2]
And the Israeli government decided to carry out the recent invasion when global support for Israel is already at record lows, which means it is obviously going to hurt security alliances, especially in the mid-term (double entendre intended). Search my post history and you'll find I've been notably favorable towards most Trump policies. If an election was held tomorrow I'd happily vote against him (and anybody else who supports this stupidity), a million times over, if he drags us into another forever war. And I think that corresponds to a sizable chunk of his support. People think "we" wanted out of Ukraine out of preference to Russia. In reality "we" just want the US to stop getting involved, and wasting money (to say nothing of lives), in stupid wars all around the world, period.
[1] - https://www.timesofisrael.com/69-of-israelis-54-of-coalition...
[2] - https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-74-of-israelis-oppose-cou...
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.
“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.
One you see that extortion works, you tighten the screws to see how much you can get out of it before it flops.
i.e. "I don't have a social media"; "Sureeeee buddy"; "I really don't, I deleted it"; "We'll wait here until you do"
Some scary variation above.
When it’s common to have deleted your accounts due to widespread privacy impacts, it won’t be such a showstopper.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
(Sorry, I mean this to read as a question, not an assertion.)
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.
Gay man here. Multi-ethnic, world travelled.
American evangelicals are up there with the mullahs in opposing both free society and everything Christ preached.
And do you think permanent residency or citizen applicants should be screened for their beliefs?
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/dec/07/einstein...
even for jewish nobel laureats in physics
why it should be different for more serious things like residence or citizenship?
Not happening, never happened. Please curate your social media feeds more wisely and try not to swallow the antisemitic propaganda.
Of course, your scenario is a big ol’ straw person, as those beliefs are not what they are screening for.
Non-LGBT front line.
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.
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.
If someone has "bad" ideas and they keep them to themselves by having private social media accounts, it's crazy to think it's a risk to society.
Countries already have rules to deal with hate speech, inciting riots, etc.
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.
What do you think happened in a trial where a not guilty verdict is reached?
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).
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?"
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 think economic freedom is a powerful motivator. Unlocking a social media account is hardly a deterrent.
These instructions are symptoms that show that the institutional fitness is degraded.
Good planning would be to come to America, take advantage of the increase in pay or opportunity, and several years later, leave once the inevitable co-morbidities become too much.
The stance of the US on illegal inmigration has always been clear, and the process for requesting a B1B2 visa is like a rite of entry where it is made even clearer (interviews, seriousness). My father explained it to me when I was young, I must have thought the process was a bit too harsh, "going to their country is like going to somebody else's home, you need to follow their rules, and it's a privilege not a right, to enter".
From what I read, the rules haven't changed, rather they are being enforced. My perspective as an outsider is that the people that complain are mostly leftist extremist from one of the most left leaning and inmigrant heavy states (CA).
I know a lot of people from my country that consider breaking rules and laws as part of natural life and they see visa rules as some other rule to be broken, lots of people that overstay visitor and business visas to work and live in the states or other countries.
I see these changes in enforcement as positive to me, as they do not restrict me in any way except in false positives, as I was already complying with the law and my visa terms. If anything, I am benefitted, as the benefits that are given to law abiding people are becoming exclusive to those that abide the law, instead of also those that disregard it.
It reminds me of this scene from mad men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4FC1VU_uO4
The bootlicker ethos thoroughly explained
I think TZubiri was speaking narrowly, of specific rules. And of their personal general law-abiding view, which one can respect.
I think they weren't speaking more broadly, of all the rules, conditions, and actions that currently apply to immigrants.
For example, I imagine they'd be surprised if, obeying all the rules, as far as they knew, they were suddenly grabbed off the street. Would they feel wronged? I don't think they're addressing that in the narrow comments here.
Regarding the part about thinking of themself as a guest, it's unclear at what point they have (in their view) earned additional rights -- by following rules, and contributing to US society -- and can start to think of it as their home, with additional rights and responsibilities, rather than as still only a guest.
Of course, if someone were framing an issue disingenuously, that might rate strong terms, but I'm trying to follow HN guidelines here, of trying to use the best interpretation of what someone said.
I think that's a nice Mad Men scene in some ways. But we can agree that the writer used weak, stoned, strawman hippie characters for dramatic effect, so that Don Draper could be cool and reinforce the character. The closing line was especially smooth, and fit (and burned).
That scene expresses how you feel, and that's one entertaining way to communicate it, and that's fine.
But I hope we all agree that the scene doesn't constitute competent debate of the merits of feeling that way?
source https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/now-lack-of-a...
Time to go study in Europe, folks.
You have the freedom to be off the grid, but the states have the freedom to reject your entry.
No one is saying states don’t have the right.
States can go even further. They can decide to exit economic unions, trade agreements, etc. You have sovereignty.
Everyone knows you have freedom to play cards as you see fit. Everyone who understands how the game is played, will also make moves accordingly.
There’s nothing to be defensive about.
I’m not engaging in click fraud or attempting to monetize an account illegally. And it’s certainly doing what anyone could do on their own. Or is everyone 100% honest on social media all of the time?
These are all forms of Social Media.
Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people here who view social media as a harmful thing they try to mostly avoid?
I don't know that "resetting my account" is the solution to "harmful and I want to avoid". I get why you're doing it in your mind (and there's validity to some parts), but to me "I see social media as harmful" means "I don't go on social media", not "I keep going on it, just with different credentials every so often".
If you are just going to blindly be indistinguishable from bad actors and do no effort in distinguishing yourself., then yea, don't travel to that country.
I'm not even comfortable with ICANN based DNS given that the identity requirements amount to an impressum. That's fine for business dealings but interpersonal communications (including the metadata) should be private from outside observers.
For the applicant? Visa fraud rules. For people fucking with third parties? Absolutely nothing.
Even Uber requires facial biometrics for an account now if you try to sign up using a prepaid card and VPN.
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.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
My general advice for people travelling to China is to not talk about politics on Chinese social media, or if you do just talk about the domestic politics of your home country & keep in mind that Chinese people might disagree with you. That's also my advice for people travelling to any country, but it's more important in China.
All that said, if you must discuss politics on Chinese social media while you're there, the thing the censors really have an issue with is calls for action, explicit or implied. More than one very pro-PRC heritage speaker who went to China has had their Weibo posts raging against America or Japan censored because they thought the criteria were "Posts have to be pro-China", when really the criteria is "Posts can't be a call to collective action that wasn't started by the party". What the party is actually concerned about is just stopping any sort of organised mass movement that they didn't start. The CCP's point of view is that mass movements are inherently unpredictable & could lead to civil disorder (even if they're nominally "pro-China"), so they're too risky a tool to let anyone other than the state use - important context to that is that Chinese culture, similar to some other East Asian cultures, puts way more value than we do on civil order, harmony etc.
Also if your posts do get censored, it's not as big an issue as it would be here. Where I live, the government deleting my social media posts would feel approximately as serious as armed police rappelling through my windows, and if the former happened I'd at least think about the possibility of the latter happening shortly afterwards. Think something like the Christchurch shooting live feed. It's not like that in China; it's completely normal, for example, that you get angry & post something that gets deleted by a censor, & that is literally the last you ever hear of it, a lot like tweeting something against ToS. If you continue posting about it or try to get around the censorship, eventually a police officer will visit you and talk to you over tea about why you have to stop doing that, and if you keep going that's when the actual legal consequences like deportations or arrest start.
Don't go to the US. That's the tip.
I do too, but they won’t let me log in without putting in a phone number.
Short of time travel, this seems impossible.
DHS, ICE, ... all doing whatever they are told from the new "above the law".
Not that that exactly matters to this administration, who is happy to act first and let the courts figure it out never
Reddit and 4chan are different from Facebook and Instagram, but they are still social media.
Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
The categorization you’re relying on dates back to the early 2010s; it equates social media with Facebook-style platforms centered on a main feed, profiles, connections, messaging, and other ancillary functionality. This was 15 years ago; YouTube doesn’t have a messaging system anymore, but you would probably still consider it to be social media. Most of the reels you see on Instagram are not from accounts that you follow, and hardly anyone uses their real name to post there, so by your definition it would not qualify as social media, but it plainly is.
I’m familiar with the attitude because I see it all over on 4chan, Reddit, and Hacker News. Someone who posts here claiming they don’t use social media is like someone claiming to be a vegan who eats beef; it’s a clout thing among the strange anti-social subcultures that developed on these platforms used to indicate that the user doesn’t use platforms that involve something as shallow as talking about his personal life.
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
Forums satisfy all of these requirements. The key factor is not what kind of content users can post but that users can post, and more importantly that they post with the primary intention of interacting with other users. This covers Hacker News and other forums but excludes guest books and contact forms.
You are describing Reddit.
That should've always been the norm, yet unfortunately it isn't.
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3376
Edit: Even if it weren't for that, non-citizens do not have any rights and are not protected by the constitution or anything else.
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".
Today - visa interviews, tomorrow - citizens in the US.
Went to a No Kings rally? Ooops, -2000 points, now you can’t board a plane.
And now I can’t get a visa :(
The gaming quality on yt and twitch can be measured with ai to check if you are not pretending. The immigration interview full of questions about grand theft auto.
HN born as a place for founders to pretend to be civilized and knowledgable can extend to cover everyone. I mean, I wouldnt give a visum to the guy writing this comment.
As other pointed out, border control is already an area where an agent can stop basically anyone without any provable justification. More that this specific rule, the whole social climate needs to change to ever get back to a balanced situation.
Then they include in the violation bundle they sell to State.
Just like Turkey huh? Love that America is still called the “land of the free”
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/20/turkiye-detains...
Historically visas could and were denied for completely arbitrary reasons.
The right to free speech. Even in its restrictive First Amendment form.
Once they're in the country, sure.
----
Not that I think it's been demonstrated that this policy will improve US security or etc. Wonder if the APA applies here.
Textually, it does. (The President acts without force of law when he restricts “freedom of expression.”)
Intent-wise, for those seeking entry to America, it does—our republic was formed, in part, to restrict the executive from excluding religious minorities he doesn’t liked
Legally, however, you are right.
But the First Amendment does apply to the many US citizens and permanent residents who are being indirectly surveilled, profiled, and chilled in their speech as a result of the extra scrutiny of the foreign visa applicants with whom they interact and connect on social media.
some people only consider their in-groups as worthy of having rights.
others consider all human beings as worthy of having rights.
you see that schism in play everyday almost everywhere. i fear it is not a resolvable tension (without some kind of mass severe brainwashing). it is a core beliefs kind of thing.
The assumption of discrimination is therefore baked in to every national project -- there are people who wish to participate in the nation but are barred from doing so. It's uncomfortable for many people to consider this, because it runs counter to the idea that their nations are welcoming places, but it's important to remember this discrimination occurs (even if you think it's a good idea.)
You can point out that the constitution is for Americans only etc. etc.
The thing is, that the right to free speech, as defended by court cases and by precedence, is about the market place of ideas being functional, and allowing society to figure out what it considers “true”.
This is the spirit of the clause, and the purpose behind the freedoms Americans enjoy and used to uphold.
The reading that it applies “only to American citizens, and visitors on US soil”, is an after the fact reinterpretation to win arguments online.
Free speech in America has always been about the government not being able to decide what can and can’t be said, especially when it comes down to deciding which nations can and can’t be spoken about.
Your argument, can only be built on the ruins of the American free speech experiment. Because it accepts the death of the spirit of the idea, the a marketplace of ideas as a way to address the unknowns of reality, with a centralized, and enforced way of safe topics.
For what its worth, you only reach this level of banana republic, after your information and idea markets are compromised or overwhelmed.
I’m simply pointing out that your argument on procedural merits, takes the spirit of the law to the back of the shed, and shoots it.
On the other hand, maybe this will lead to people putting less stuff on social media. This would probably be a net positive.
When they refused Trump started trying to force the to comply.
They're already trying to reach the same thought police type activity with American students.
That said, this isn't a search. It is the presumption of guilt if a search is refused. I agree with you that it's bad policy, but it's not unconstitutional.
0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
Maybe you're better example is the Trump administration saying it's going to withhold transportation funding from cities because citizens their dared to protest him, issued presidential orders against law firms that represented people suing him, pulled the security clearances of people who dared to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, and threatened trees and charges against a former DHS official who wrote an unflattering op-ed in the Washington Post.
One of these is not like the other
The Supreme Court threw out the case.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c100l6jrjvno
The Twitter files were a nothing burger
I hope we can finally let all that propaganda of 'freedom' and 'free speech' go to rest now.
Genuinely, have people been living in Bikini Bottom? I'm so tired of this cognitive dissonance, not wanting to face the reality. As tired as I am of these developments themselves, really. I'm too tired to still be nice. I thought people here were bright.
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.
I shittalked the government for a long time and got caught up in the various memes against the country before I decided to visit. I was afraid I'd be rejected (or worse, approved and arrested) and upon googling for similar experiences saw countless people freaking out about the same thing before going there.
Turns out they either don't check at all, or do check but aren't nearly as stringent as the US.
This ignores edge cases of popular Youtubers who lived there for years, made a career out of complaining, then were surprised when the government asked them to leave. Which still beats an El Salvador prison.
This kind of thing? When has china demanded access to foreigners' social media accounts so that they can check for anti-israel comments? Never. You think china cares what people say about foreign countries? You think china will block someone from their country because they criticized the US? Of course not. They ban you for criticizing their own country.
You are not appreciating the level of pathetic debasement we are experiencing. We are not checking for anti-american comments from foreigners. We are checking for anti-israel comments. The US government is acting like a guard dog for israel.
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.
They know exactly what they are doing.
Should they get the chance, their intention to repeat October 7th has been clearly stated - it's in their charter. What does anyone do under those circumstances? For those who argue that Israel is an illegitimate State, I guess the practical question is where should the 9.5 million colonialist Israelis move to? And who would accept them?
"There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity". https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
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It’s always been authoritarian for those that don’t look right
America also made efforts to recognize that those events counted as screwups and failures of their own value systems, and struggled against the forces that allowed such situations to happen.
This isn’t to say they succeeded, or that these situations wouldn’t happen again.
Its to say that theres a difference between pushing against the current, and flowing with it.
* https://boltsmag.org/threats-to-voting-rights-act-section-2/
There are numerous other examples but an increased inability to complain about unfair and discrimmanatory voting practices highlights the present direction of 'progress'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
They were fanatical and willing to fight to the last man.
When you have two parties in control, and they are both staunchly pro-capital, anti-worker parties, one party will push conservative and the other will ensure "nothing fundamentally changes".
Obama, Biden, Bush, and Clinton all had parts to play in empowering the executive, normalizing political violence, demonizing and silencing the left (the actual left -- socialists, workers parties, anarchists, etc.), and ramping up the militarization of the police.
This isn't some sudden moment, it might be the first time it's affected people you know, but this has been happening for awhile now.
Not sure it’s gonna happen time though.
I want more people out here who are willing to vote (or withold their vote) for a candidate based on the policy positions. This "Vote Blue No Matter Who" (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) mindset leads to candidates who don't have to hold coherent positions or perform their duties. They simply need to not be the other guy.
While being "not the other guy" they will get courted by capital interests, because they need that money to run their campaigns. It's really not hard to connect the dots between these politicians and the donors who buy them and mysteriously get policies that make regulatory capture and capital concentration easier. It's not even conspiratorial -- it's pretty much out in the open these days.
I'm so tired of hearing, "But not the democrats" or "but not the republicans" -- my friends, stop treating the people you vote for like part of your identity. Expect more from the people who represent you, be harshly critical of your own party to help it grow.
In 1985, France launched a terrorist attack against a protest in New Zealand.
You are free to say whatever you like, as long as your words do not contradict Official Party Ideology.
But not everyone can just come to the US, and looking at what they've said is part of deciding whether they can.
“There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Idi Amin
All that said, nobody has a "right" to come to the USA to study. It's something we allow, for a lot of good reasons, but there are doubtless a small number of people that we would not want here.
Would you be ok with that social media poster being granted entry into the country?
Do I trust the government to police opinions? No, especially when there's no accountability and appeals process.
Do I believe the overall benefits that harassment-free international travel brings to this country outweigh the costs of letting in some visitors whose views I disagree with? Yes.
However, countries may, depending on their laws, choose to not let certain people in on conditions that would otherwise violate guarantees on freedom of speech etc.
However, you do have your constitutional rights at the border etc. There is an exception concerning searches.
There are a lot of times the government is limited even dealing with foreigners abroad (in legal theory anyways, ymmv in reality).
If I'm travelling under a visa, and 100 people from my country broke their visa conditions, I want to show that I won't break my visa conditions. People breaking visa conditions, or in general promising to do one thing and then doing another, are not my allies and I don't want to protect them by giving them an alibi in the name of privacy.
Here you go sir, this is my social media account, lots of pictures from my country as you can see, if you find a picture in the US, you'll find it's for short periods of time and the purpose is in line with my assigned visa. Thank you for letting me in your country temporarily.
The bit you added here was “99% of people from my country broke visa conditions”.
This is something that is added by you, to make it make sense. What you are unaware of, is that the current visa process already accounts for this. I know of people who had visas rejected, because freelancer with their own training business are counted as flight risks. They get rejected at the interview stage itself. And it seems that wait times for tourists visas are years long.
Now, you might be the kind of person, who by nature either tries to see the good in something, or takes a contrarian position. The question is, did you dive beneath the ice with knowledge of what arguments are too far?
The more information given, the more likely there will be a false positive.
"You say you didn't visit the US but here's a picture of you in Vegas." "That's the Eiffel Tower. In Paris." "No, it's Las Vegas - I saw it last month. Entry rejected."