New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles

Another of the thousand reasons people should delete their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

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.)

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.

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.

Now that we are there, deleting social media presence for privacy concerns, you will need to keep a "Stub" account to access the parts of life that require social media accounts: marketplace, local groups, immigration.

I 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.

if having an instagram/tiktok/facebook/etc is a hard requirement for entering the country, we've truly reached peak clown world

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.

Being unreasonable seems like half the point.

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.

If 99% have the account then rejecting the 1% seems like a good way to not let different weirdos (like me) enter the country?

And the irony is that this would reject only those who properly did the paperwork and won't stop the people who prefer different methods of entry.

> Does HN count?

Social media is where one shares ones social life (it's in the name!). Technical discussion forums are something entirely different.

Naturally, there is sometimes crossover (I'm thinking of a motorbike forum I frequent), but to suggest the likes of HN is social media is demonstrably false.

Not at all, many friends have at least tried to cancel FB account, even when those assholes are making it a very lengthy and painful process. We talk about doctors and surgeons here in their 30s and 40s, wife is a doctor who waits for second year to get her FB account deleted so these are our social circles.

Its sort of a mark of upper class (or just having a class) in more developed societies these days.

Sidenote - all folks here working for meta - shame on you. I get the greed part, but then you define what sort of human being you are and what your legacy is.

"Github" is on the drop-down list of social media identifiers for a US ESTA (visa waiver) application.

Under your definition Reddit and Twitter/X aren't social media either, since you're mostly interacting with strangers. I believe your definition doesn't reflect how the term is used.

I killed my accounts with fire some time back and have yet to come across a single instance where I've felt that I've needed some kind of "stub" account. YMMV, however.

Bizarre response.

One can share ones social life with strangers!

In fact Reddit is a prime example of a site with crossover between technical discussion forums, social media forums and mixed ones.

Thats some semantic pedantic gymnastics. Even if you could persuade me to agree with you (and I very much do not) it does not matter. The only definition that matters here is the governments, and they LOVE overreach.

Nobody is illegally entering the country and then beginning graduate studies at Harvard, so if you understand this as an attack on universities and an attempt to essentially “close” the country then it makes perfect sense. That JD Vance interview where he went on about “we didn’t need immigrants to get to the moon” is probably the clearest statement of their outlook.

> Thats some semantic pedantic gymnastics.

Ummmm. No. It's a statement of fact.

> The only definition that matters here is the governments,

No. It's the courts.

This is really not a convincing argument. Plenty of people put social information in their profile on this forum; there is clearly some social aspect to commenting and I’d argue the social aspect is the reason to comment and read comments. There are comments that are automatically more interesting to read because of the name in front of it.

> demonstrably false

Surely not “demonstrably” false. How would you demonstrate it? You may believe that it’s not social media but there’s no reason for you to think I should not believe it is social media.

Saying that Github is social media (!) does not make it true!

Simple solution: have 2 accounts, the real one and the public one, which only has like 3 posts in the last 10 years about the weather.

It makes it social media for American law regarding visas, which is the relevant context here.

Or create two accounts for each. One with your full name, where you only share kitten videos, another one pseudonymous that you will actually use. Unlock the official one for the officers.