[BLKNSLVR]

What of those who have virtually no footprint?

Almost the only thing I have is LinkedIn, which is always only as up to date as the last time I changed jobs, which I don't do often.

No Facebook, insta, snap, twitter, tiktok. I subscribe to maybe five channels on YouTube.

My HN account isn't linked to my main 'identity' email address so I could hide it just by having a clean phone (which I do for international travel anyway).

I feel like I'd be suspicious due to the lack of traceability. I've had work colleagues say that they couldn't find a trace of me online (although that was a while ago now, and not colleagues who are adept at online sleuthing).

My age may be just enough to be believably not terminally online.

[M95D]

> What of those who have virtually no footprint?

Those people wouldn't want to travel to a police state anyway.

[tavavex]

Some people have to travel for work. For Canadians, lots of international flights connect through the US (especially if you're flying on the cheapest routes), and there's no way to transit through without "properly" entering the country. While the thing in the post doesn't yet apply to Canada (due to us not requiring an ESTA), it very well could become a thing soon. That would be pretty awful for everyone.

[raw_anon_1111]

Does any country require you to have entry rights for a layover?

[bigfatkitten]

US does. You have to clear immigration, exit the terminal and then come back into the terminal just like a local passenger.

[mdhb]

This is literally a data collection scam run by US intel / law enforcement to collect biometrics with some “plausible” reason. Now it’s a chance to grab your passwords and private conversations too. Act accordingly,

[jamesponddotco]

But they might have to.

I’m on the same boat and told management at work that I won’t be traveling to the US while Trump is in power, which they seem to be fine with, but who knows if that’ll last.

[ericmay]

> Those people wouldn't want to travel to a police state anyway.

I fall into this camp (little to no social media besides LinkedIn) and I've had no issues traveling to the EU or UK or really any other police state for that matter. Plan to do more this upcoming year.

[netfortius]

Wouldn't an HN account need to be mentioned, once this platform is made visible enough, so that the bozos in charge, in the US, take it seriously? A social media ICE would love to dig into such.

[rsync]

I don’t consider hacker news to be social media… And I wouldn’t expect others to, either.

[perihelions]

For what it's worth, HN is on ICE's list of surveilled sites (which it pays a tech contractor to crawl),

https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-co... ("The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring")

https://archive.is/Lldzh

[workfromspace]

Here's the actual list from the article for anyone like me (404media has paywall and archive.is doesn't work from Baltics):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VyAaJaWCutyJyMiTXuDH...

[bell-cot]

I'd bet the actual list of surveilled sites is far longer, and actually kept secret.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Why not? Anything where user interaction is a primary portion of the site's content is social media. The term "social media" predates algorithmically-driven parasocial feeds, though it does postdate things like BBSes and PHPBB.

[belter]

If you have advocated for Linux you must be a communist....

[nh43215rgb]

"It warns that if any social media information is not listed, it could lead to both current and future visas being denied."

[rayiner]

Then just say that. Customs has some list that's automatically generated based on a Google search or something like that, and all they're doing is trying to catch you lying. Like the TSA, this screening is done by the lowest common denominator of government employee to catch the lowest common denominator of terrorist or foreign subversive.

[embedding-shape]

> to catch the lowest common denominator of terrorist or foreign subversive

My guess from the outside, is that none of these actions are actually meant to "capture" or even "detect" any of those things, the methods are likely to inefficient and small to be able to do so.

What they're trying to do, is make those people not even consider going to the US in the first place, because they're scared of getting caught. Same as a lot of the ICE actions and other things going on. They're not meant to be efficiently solving some concrete issue with their action, they're meant to scare the rest of the populace into being docile and accepting more and more control over time.

[vinni2]

They have managed to scare me off at least. So I will spend my money elsewhere.

[embedding-shape]

Same here, have had to cancel meetings, conferences, events and more because me and others don't feel like taking the risk of ending up in a detention center and sent to a foreign country. I'm guessing all of this is working exactly as they intended it to work.

[rayiner]

Good thing international tourism counts for only about half of a percent of U.S. GDP: https://wttc.org/news/us-economy-set-to-lose-12-5bn-in-inter...

[soco]

Right on, who needs those puny half percents or the jobs related to them, when we have megacorps covering for the rest of the gdp (and exporting it to Cayman).

[DFHippie]

A lot of things will be harder for the US to do if everyone in the world hates us. Letting people come here and see that most Americans aren't monsters pays dividends beyond the dollars they spend.

The Trump Administrations actions read like a checklist of things you'd do if you wanted to destroy the US's power to protect itself and its allies and promote the well-being of its people.

[raw_anon_1111]

> Letting people come here and see that most Americans aren't monsters pays dividends beyond the dollars they spend.

40% of the population still support Trump.

If you have 10 friends and ask them where they want to meet for dinner and 6 say let’s go to a Mexican restaurant and the other 4 say “let’s kill Bob and eat him”, you still need to be concerned about your friend group.

[vinni2]

Who said I visit US for tourism?

[raw_anon_1111]

No it’s meant to make sure you don’t say mean things about people Trump likes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/state-department-vi...

[BLKNSLVR]

How could this be weaponised against someone you don't like?

How easy is it to set up a <any social network> account under someone else's name, post a bunch of inflammatory opinions, AI some photos of them at a Free Palestine rally, and then sit back and await the inevitable border crossing horror story?

Mental note: Research yourself (and your traveling companions) thoroughly before visiting the US.

[rayiner]

Yes, significant potential for such mischief with this system.