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.
chasd00 · 1h 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...
keernan · 30m 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.
angst · 2h 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.
colinbartlett · 2h ago
Absolutely insane. Until recently, I had none. Now I at least have a LinkedIn account. My mother has no social media at all.
Alupis · 2h ago
So you have no HN account? No YouTube Account? No Reddit Account?
These are all forms of Social Media.
energywut · 1h 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?
redczar · 45m 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.
fc417fc802 · 1h 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 · 2h 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 · 1h 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 · 2h 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.
koakuma-chan · 2h ago
What? And which social medias am I required to have a profile on?
Havoc · 2h ago
Oh that's easy. Buy one of the gaudy gold trump phones and sign up for the presidents social media platform. Maybe buy some of his shitcoins too. And use the phone to snap some pics of the allegedly upcoming Trump instantpot [0] for your social media profile.
...and then conclude this has to be a simulation because this is too insane to be reality.
Is reality supposed to be less insane than this? Is this even insane in the first place?
krapp · 1h ago
Yes, and yes.
koakuma-chan · 53m ago
Well, the guy was elected democratically, and democracy is supposed to work, right? Where did things go wrong? Why do people elect someone and then complain the person is bad? How do people choose who to vote for? What is even the point of complaining, what are you going to do? Elect someone else next time, so that the same thing happens? Revolt? Good luck with that.
What makes you think the world has ever been sane? Tell me what I'm missing, please.
bhouston · 2h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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.
throwawayq3423 · 1h ago
I've never seen self-reported principles be more quickly abandoned than then self-styled "free speech" crowd once they got power.
No, it set off the flamewar detector. I'll take a look and figure out how to merge the threads.
WarOnPrivacy · 2h 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.
sys_64738 · 49m ago
This might be against the ToS of the social media account.
Well that's one way to end run around searches you're not legally allowed to perform.
King-Aaron · 1h 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 · 27m 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
energywut · 1h 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 · 37m 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.
energywut · 29m 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.
__loam · 2h ago
This is a gross violation of some of our most sacred principles.
throwawayq3423 · 1h ago
Yep, and all by the "free speech" crowd.
buckle8017 · 1h ago
Can you be specific which principles this violates?
Historically visas could and were denied for completely arbitrary reasons.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Can you be specific which principles this violates?
The right to free speech. Even in its restrictive First Amendment form.
lesuorac · 1h 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.
jkaplowitz · 45m 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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.)
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.
I doubt that. I would honestly be shocked if anyone with anti-Trump posts would 'pass' DHS screening.
source https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/now-lack-of-a...
Time to go study in Europe, folks.
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'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.
...and then conclude this has to be a simulation because this is too insane to be reality.
[0] https://www.semafor.com/article/06/16/2025/home-goods-compan...
Is reality supposed to be less insane than this? Is this even insane in the first place?
What makes you think the world has ever been sane? Tell me what I'm missing, please.
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.
Then they include in the violation bundle they sell to State.
It’s always been authoritarian for those that don’t look right
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.
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.
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.
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.)