I'm Italian, my wife is Russian and my sister lives with her family in California. I've always been pretty vocal online about my dislike for Putin, and since the war in Ukraine started, I became very worried about visiting Russia, just in case they needed some random Italian guy to extort concessions from the Italian government. So, I stopped going (we were planning a family trip right in the Summer of 2022).
For this Summer we wanted to visit my sister, so we bought tickets last December. I've always been pretty vocal about my dislike for Trump too. Well, for the first time, I'm worried that, when traveling to the US, some overzealous TSA agent could ask me to get access to my social media accounts, and that I could be refused entry, or even get sent to one of those wonderful privately owned jails; you know, for lèse-majesté. I reckon that the risk is too little to warrant us canceling our trip, but honestly, if I didn't have my tickets already, I would probably not have bought them now.
I literally do not have any social media accounts (does HN count?), and I'm concerned that would immediately mark me as a suspicious individual (although I can eloquently justify this to the nth degree if required).
Having said that, weigh up the benefits and drawbacks of scrubbing your social media accounts to minimise that particular concern?
I don't have any, so I don't know what I'd be losing, but I can say that I feel sorry for some family members of mine who have been sucked in to the social media dopamine addiction farm. They'd be better off without it and having more time to be their own selves and live their own lives rather than other people's.
I have always only listed GitHub as my "social media" for ESTA since I don't use any of the other options. It has never been a problem, including with the current administration.
Strikes me there's a new AI service in there: aged social media accounts. Run by bots for at least 2 years and available for purchase to give you a plausible looking online footprint when needed.
(A similar service exists for Cayman Island holding companies IIRC)
>I've always been pretty vocal about my dislike for Trump too. Well, for the first time, I'm worried that, when traveling to the US, some overzealous TSA agent could ask me to get access to my social media accounts, and that I could be refused entry, or even get sent to one of those wonderful privately owned jails;
I've been a vocal Trump supporter on social media. By this measure they should give me a green card if I'll ever plan to visit US.
For this Summer we wanted to visit my sister, so we bought tickets last December. I've always been pretty vocal about my dislike for Trump too. Well, for the first time, I'm worried that, when traveling to the US, some overzealous TSA agent could ask me to get access to my social media accounts, and that I could be refused entry, or even get sent to one of those wonderful privately owned jails; you know, for lèse-majesté. I reckon that the risk is too little to warrant us canceling our trip, but honestly, if I didn't have my tickets already, I would probably not have bought them now.
This is the craziest timeline.