Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed.
When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment.
I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade.
I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome.
A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk.
With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.
For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech.
The answer may be to have more than one set of social media - one with your real ID you keep clean and upbeat for work, immigration etc and others in a modified name for other stuff.
My solution is simply to not go to the US. I'm sorry. I know it used to be a great country, and there are still many great people living there, but I'm afraid the US dropped below China on the list of countries I'd like to visit. There are a hundred countries I'd feel safer.
I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen?
> Piker, a U.S. citizen who streams on Twitch under the name HasanAbi, said in a live stream that he was taken aside after landing at Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Paris on Sunday — despite being enrolled in Global Entry, a CBP program that is supposed to give expedited clearance to “pre-approved, low-risk travelers” returning to the U.S.
> Piker said he was brought to a detention room inside O’Hare that had “fluorescent lightbulbs, the whole nine [yards]” and where a CBP agent questioned him for about two hours about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.
Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.
I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.
If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.
Readit News
refs: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agenc...
https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-haras...
https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-devic...
A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk.
With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.
For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o
[1] https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-touris...
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-73572/us-resumes-visas-f... : All students applying for a visa will need to set their social media profiles to "public," according to a post Wednesday on the State Department's website
My understanding is that he was stopped for other reasons, and that meme was questioned while he was being already detained.
However, there's NO doubt this is not the America I grew up in.
I do all my actual online activities with handles as God intended back in the good old days.
Social media’s goal of connecting everyone with real names never was for our benefit and we all should stop giving them this data.
Or is there some absurd news story I missed?
You've missed several, here's a good summary (while it's still online): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...
What a bizarre article! It always refers to illegal immigrants as "humans" as if that's the crime.
Is this a new trend in the euphemism treadmill? Have we moved from "undocumented immigrant" to "human"?
> Piker, a U.S. citizen who streams on Twitch under the name HasanAbi, said in a live stream that he was taken aside after landing at Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Paris on Sunday — despite being enrolled in Global Entry, a CBP program that is supposed to give expedited clearance to “pre-approved, low-risk travelers” returning to the U.S.
> Piker said he was brought to a detention room inside O’Hare that had “fluorescent lightbulbs, the whole nine [yards]” and where a CBP agent questioned him for about two hours about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.
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I sort of feel if you're only figuring this out now you've been willfully/woefully ignorant.
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