The proposed requirement for visitors to the US, including Brits, to give up five years’ worth of social media history, per their Electronic System for Travel Authorization applications to go there, may see both a fall-off in people traveling to the US – ‘Why should I/How can I do that? What happens to the data?’ – and/or a flurry of deleting such histories or accounts.
It raises many, many questions, not just what social media is to be handed over, what will happen to it, issues of privacy, data ownership, transfer, security, where it’ll all end up, with what consequences? If the US authorities found something they didn’t like, would they turn your visa application down? Let you come to the US so they could ‘quiz’ you all the more? Give up the data and concomitant thoughts to allies worldwide – the Five Eyes, Hungarian immigration – and see what they do with it?
Deleting your data in the face of this, essentially a suspicious activity in its own right, is arguably long moot, considering laws like the 2001 Patriot Act that enabled the US government and intelligence services to attain data accrued by US firms’ in their ops – with some hurdles and rebuffs within the US, but anything goes offshore, like whatever Britain-based users of Meta (Facebook, Instagram) upload; or whatever the US National Security Agency spent decades harvesting with zero accountability whatsoever (the agency essentially refused to confirm it even existed until its activities were exposed by alarmed worker, Edward Snowden) and now no doubt continues to do so with as much probity – yet by that I feel better about the devil I barely know than the social media giants who profess to know me.
But the proposal has come from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which under MAGA are in-your-face, ‘constitutional protections don’t even apply to American citizens’, increasingly lawless federal law enforcers.
Locked out
For some months I’ve been locked out of LinkedIn, and for some weeks Facebook and, by extension, Messenger. I’ve remained locked out because both LinkedIn and Facebook want me to submit ID to get back in, not the usual verification by email, or by a code sent to my mobile (which if they have I’d must have unwillingly or lazily given up as they weren’t initial sign-up requirements).
LinkedIn want a ‘government-issued ID’ which their ‘identity verification provider’ called Persona will verify (how?), to whit they want ‘a clear photo of your valid government issued ID card, driver’s license, or passport,’ and probably ‘a photo of yourself to verify that your face matches your ID portrait’. Data will be collected ‘pursuant to Persona’s policies’ – which are? – with information then shared with LinkedIn only with consent (wait, what of my consent for sharing with Persona?), re Verification result, name, DoB, home city, et al, with LinkedIn ‘generally permanently’ deleting the data – ‘generally’ unless what? – within 14 days of submission.
Stuff that. But the other options are circular and dead-ended, and on the simple ground that I don’t like my data being held to ransom for ID that I never agreed to, and if their issue is it’s been hacked or the like I ain’t trusting them with more sensitive data – I can find no direct option to delete its data, close the account, or contact them.
What had I been doing? Arguing a lot more with hydrocarbon industry types, and reposting from academics and rights’ groups criticising Israel’s genocide in Gaza, MAGA excesses, Reform. It’s a site that American professionals had told me was hailed for its cool professionalism as a networking and showcasing site, but I’d seen it become much testier, barbed, abusive, brawlier, with more of the ‘agree’ and ‘spot on’ cascades signifying bots and fake accounts as on Meta and X. Now the chief editor of a US-based global newsletter I work on passed on concerns about my posts, so I deleted reference to that employer. But out I am.
In the last month I’ve been locked out of Facebook, and Messenger. Facebook wants me to ‘confirm my identity through a video selfie’, in which I have to move my head ‘to help us capture your face at different angles.’ I’d picked up and posted feeds from the openly antisemitic, Hitler-cheering American far-right MAGA pundit Nick Fuentes. Why? As I put on my profile background, to show how hideous this rising MAGA star is, and that Facebook is platforming him, its algorithms promoting him. Is his free speech worth more than my free speech criticising it?
I came off Facebook and Twitter in 2018 in Berlin and for the first time in whatever I could concentrate, I felt positive, I got stuff done, broke the 2 a.m. dopamine doom loop of rowing with bots. I only reprised Facebook when back in the UK to counter the far-right wrecking enterprise Brexit, accumulated 1,000s of followers, 100s of friends, and Twitter to track the absolute blizzard of lies there – pre-Musk days, too.
Shortly after Trump 2.0 began, my other editor, American, told me she’d been clearing out all her social media, and advised me to, a pithy, single-line advice from a very learned, versed correspondent that you know you should follow without question.
But wouldn’t the corps of the tech corp. giants, Bezos, Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, wouldn’t they do more to demand their users’ data be held sacrosanct lest they lose users instead of acquiescing to all this, or did their attendance at Turmp 2.0’s indoors inauguration alone demonstrate wholly other rationales, agendas, and interests are in play?
I’ve been locked out of Twitter and X too many times to go back, and despite losing impressive archives of psychotic tweets from Brexit and Covid, I’m way happier, but losing Messenger is very hasslesome, and moreso in this (dis)information global society in which being off-grid is also deemed sus. With the same profile pic and name on Meta-owned Instagram I may not last long there. I like Bluesky, but my output is more staid than on Facebook – profile pics notwithstanding. I’m also happier without the epic data-scraping and manipulation these platforms engage in, but too late, and when did I agree for my data and profiles to be ransomed by such ID methods? When was this applied, and applicable to us, here in the UK? Does GDPR protect us or not?
It feels we’re obliged to censor ourselves as much as are being censored. And as much as I have been advised to censor myself, if I don’t already, or am being censored by being locked out or tracked and surveilled if let in, I seriously suspect Fuentes is still on Facebook, as free speech doesn’t apply to all. His star continues to rise, click after click after click.
