Let’s say you’re a U.S. tourist, planning your dream vacation to a historic European locale, such as Germany. In the course of filling out travel forms, you are asked to provide usernames for every single social media account you operate. You’re told that every post you’ve made for the last five years on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and beyond will be scrutinized by customs for any material or opinion deemed unsavory. You’re also asked to provide the location and contact information of all your immediate family members, presumably so they can also be researched. Do you immediately comply, and hand over five years worth of personal information, opinion and family data? Or do you recoil from the idea that so much of your online activity is about to be pored over by anonymous officials (or A.I.) in a foreign country? Because this level of invasive information gathering is what the U.S. is about to start requiring from every single foreign tourist planning to enter the country for any reason … even tourists from countries like the United Kingdom and Germany, from which we don’t require full visas for entry.
According to a notice published this week in the Federal Register, which you can read here, full social media history is just one more element of the Donald Trump administration’s increased scrutiny of anyone entering the country, scrutiny that will almost certainly result in fewer total travelers (and tourist dollars) coming to the United States, given that no one who cares about privacy would be likely to submit to these rules. As the notice puts it:
In order to comply with the January 2025 Executive Order 14161 (Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats), CBP is adding social media as a mandatory data element for an ESTA application. The data element will require ESTA applicants to provide their social media from the last 5 years.
The immediate, obvious logistical question is how this social media history will actually be surveyed and critiqued. It seems beyond obvious that there’s no way an actual human being could be assigned to every applicant, to pore through years of banal Facebook rants or Instagram feeds. That leaves the likelihood of some kind of digital algorithm being employed by Customs and Border Protection as the most likely form of enforcement of said policy … and you know that they’ll likely jump at the chance to employ A.I. in some capacity to actively “root out threats” to national security. Of course, “threat” may well be defined as “anyone who has criticized Donald Trump,” among other things, for all we know.
Surely, the only way to check the multiple social media accounts of millions of potential visitors to America is by using AI. This will undoubtedly result in countless errors, with legitimate visitors and tourists being refused entry. How to decimate the US tourist industry in one go…
— Lord Jeffrey of Sherwood #FBPE (@onemoregoodman.bsky.social) Dec 10, 2025 at 4:54 AM
It is especially notable that this rule will apply to foreign tourists and visitors from every country, including those where visas are waived. Currently, a British tourist is required to complete the U.S. Electronic System for Travel Authorizations to visit the country, and the social media disclosure would presumably be added directly to this process. However, according to the same notice, foreign travelers will also be expected to surrender other information as well, including all email addresses and phone numbers used in the last five years, as well as the physical addresses, names and contact information of family members. The U.S. public theoretically has 60 days in which to “comment” on said proposal according to the notice, though it’s unclear how these “comments” would have any bearing at all on its going into effect.
This announcement is part of a pattern, in which the Trump administration is seeking ever more personal information from noncitizens entering the U.S. for various reasons. Back in June, the State Department stated that it would require visa seekers to change their social media profiles to public, if they are private, and that it would also surveil the social media/”online presence” of both H-1B applicants and their dependents. For tourists, meanwhile, the issue is likely to become all the more visible in 2026, when the U.S. is one of three host nations (alongside Canada and Mexico) of soccer’s World Cup, an event that will draw huge numbers of global travelers.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties/digital privacy advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s stated social media data-gathering operation a “dangerous push to surveil and suppress foreign students’ social media activity,” designed to limit any negative free expression about the country or the administration. They pointed out that the U.S. State Department even indicated that a total lack of participation in social media in general could be construed as an attempt to evade the requirement or hide anti-U.S. sentiment, which could result in those travelers being discriminated against in the approval process by Customs and Border Protection.
“The administration is penalizing prospective students and visitors for shielding their social media accounts from the general public or for choosing to not be active on social media,” wrote EFF. “This is an outrageous violation of privacy, one that completely disregards the legitimate and often critical reasons why millions of people choose to lock down their social media profiles, share only limited information about themselves online, or not engage in social media at all. By making students abandon basic privacy hygiene as the price of admission to American universities, the administration is forcing applicants to expose a wealth of personal information to not only the U.S. government, but to anyone with an internet connection.”
So you thought you could avoid the mess by simply not bothering with social media at all? Sorry, the United States demands that you get on Facebook immediately, so it can start weighing the threat assessment of your family photos.
