Credit: Rachel Hurley Substack.

I never thought we’d get to a place where handing over five years of your social media would feel like the least invasive part of entering the United States as a tourist, but here we are.

The Department of Homeland Security is proposing new rules for people using the ESTA system. These are visitors from places like the EU, the UK, Australia, Japan, and the rest of the Visa Waiver countries. People who currently don’t need a visa. And the list of what they’ll be required to hand over reads like something ripped from a security state fever dream.

Tourists would need to turn in: • Every social media account from the last five years • Full biometrics: face, fingerprints, iris scan, and yes, DNA • All phone numbers from the last five years • All email addresses from the last ten • IP addresses and metadata from any photos they submit • Names of immediate family members • Family members’ phone numbers from the last five years • Their dates and places of birth • Where they live • All business phone numbers from the last five years • All business emails from the last ten

And that’s just to come here on vacation. If you’re someone who actually needs a visa, I’d brace for something even more extreme.

This isn’t rumor or speculation. It’s right there in DHS documentation.

The Carrington Event - 1859

Yeah I thought the same, I was going to post Major record labels shareholders urge Spotify, Apple Music and others to raise subscription prices amid inflation concerns. As someone else said, fuck Spotify.

“Major record labels urge Spotify, Apple Music and others to raise subscription prices amid inflation concerns.” Wouldn’t this be the opposite of what consumers need when affected by inflation?

Thanks and yes I’m comfortable with English as my first language. I was trying to post my comment with respect for OP. A QWERTY keyboard has the U and I together, my phone keyboard sucks for sure.

Hey just a heads up, you added an extra “to become” in your title. Anyway great question, I’ve always wondered this, hopefully someone knows better.

Perhaps the growth of everyone placing files on clouds these days may be contribute to its inpopularity, or simply because the name just got lumped together with copyright infringement.

Well it came from a substack which of course it doesn’t prove that it’s real or AI, most probably he uses AI in some capacity to embellish or edit before his content is published, but I don’t see it in this piece in an overt way personally.

Here is a great writeup by Brent Molnar.

The Great MAGA Bot Unmasking and Why X Suddenly Flipped On Its Own Army of Fakes…

Let me take a deep breath before diving into this swamp, because what just happened on X is not a glitch and it is not random. It is the political equivalent of kicking over a rotten log and watching thousands of beetles scatter into the light. The new “About This Account” feature exposing where profiles are actually based is already revealing that many of the loudest MAGA screamers are not in Ohio, not in Texas, not in Florida, and not in any diner Fox News pretends to interview. They are overseas. They include accounts registering from Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and other low-cost troll-farm regions.

And no, this is not a surprise to anyone who has been watching this ecosystem since Trump stepped onto that escalator in 2015. The only surprise is that X finally let the public see it. The question is why. The answer takes us through the economics of bot amplification, the politics of foreign influence, the global regulatory environment closing in on Musk, and the fact that even the biggest con artists eventually realize they have to show a little transparency if they want to avoid getting hauled into court.

The first thing to understand is that X has been under growing international pressure. The EU’s Digital Services Act has been tightening the screws on platforms that fail to disclose bot activity, foreign influence, or coordinated political campaigns. X is already being investigated by Brussels for disinformation failures. This transparency feature is not a gift. It is a survival maneuver. Musk can tell regulators that he provided the tools. Whether users fall for foreign propaganda or not becomes “their problem.”

Next comes the advertiser problem. X has been hemorrhaging ad revenue. Most major brands do not want their name appearing next to a flood of anonymous accounts screaming about “civil war” or cheering for authoritarianism. By showing where accounts are actually based, Musk can claim the platform is safer, cleaner, and more accountable. Advertisers love the word “accountable” almost as much as they love avoiding lawsuits.

But here’s the real core of it. The feature exposes something Trump’s movement desperately needs to hide. Much of its online enthusiasm has always been artificial. The volume never matched the number of real humans willing to say these things in public. The trolling, the pile-ons, the artificial virality, the coordinated amplification of Trump’s worst rhetoric, the constant harassment of journalists and critics, the sudden explosion of identical talking points across thousands of accounts in minutes. Real humans do not behave like that. Bot networks do. Troll farms do. Foreign political influence operations do.

And now ordinary users can click a button and see that the loud “America First” account screaming about patriotism is posting from Moscow. The guy demanding “DEFEND OUR COUNTRY” is posting from the Philippines on a six-cent-per-hour content farm. The account accusing Biden of corruption is registered in a country run by oligarchs who would like nothing more than to put a puppet in the Oval Office again.

The next question is why Musk would risk blowing up the ecosystem that props up Trump’s movement. The answer is timing. It is late 2025. Elections are coming around the world. Regulators are circling. Evidence of foreign influence has been publicly documented again and again. Musk knows that if he does nothing, X becomes the center of the next major election interference scandal. If he adds the visibility, he can shrug and say, “We told you where they were. What more do you want from us?”

This is liability management, not integrity. It is legal positioning, not enlightenment. It is cover-your-ass insurance disguised as transparency.

And here is the final twist. The Trump regime is now directly tied to foreign actors in ways that are getting harder to hide. We just watched a “peace plan” for Ukraine circulate that appears to have been drafted by Kremlin-adjacent figures and laundered through U.S. political channels. We just saw senators admit that proposals they thought were American actually came from Russia. We just saw Trump take public positions that map perfectly onto Moscow’s demands.

Now imagine what happens when the public can see, in real time, that much of the social-media support for these positions comes from accounts not based in the United States at all.

The timing is not a coincidence. The pressure is not imaginary. The exposure is not accidental. The authoritarian ecosystem that helped build Trump’s movement is suddenly visible. The “America First” crowd is being revealed as one of the most foreign-amplified political factions in modern American history. And the panic on the right is already loud enough to hear through the screen. The darkness is being dragged into daylight. And daylight is not kind to parasites.

A subscription or donation is the only thing that keeps this voice standing. They want pages like mine erased and your support right now is the firewall that stops that from happening. If this work matters, this is the moment it genuinely counts. I left the corporate grind to speak the truth without permission, but independent media has no protection and the platforms are actively suppressing it every day.

By Trump’s thinking and current stance is that the Epstein files are really all full of Democrats, and that’s why we shouldn’t talk about them.

Wait, what?

If they’re full of Democrats, wouldn’t you want everyone screaming about them from the rooftops? The logic doesn’t logic. But that’s where we are.

A month ago Patel and Bondi were saying there was no files, so they lied underoath. But, obviously there’s no accountability under this administration.

So, what changed in a month? Everything of substance has been scrubbed from the files. We’re not going to get any justice or accountability. Par for the fucking course

Interesting, I’m also feeling a bit disenfranchised. Why all the downvotes on this post? Wait, let’s check who these evil downvoters are… Yeah case in point, I see the problem here as this could lead to malicious trolling and the start of an undesirable platform.

Edit: lemvotes throws a 404 not found so did the fediverse dodge a bullet?

deleted by creator

Dick Durbin (Ill.) Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) Maggie Hassan (N.H.) Jackie Rosen (Nev.) Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) John Fetterman (Pa.) Tim Kaine (Va.) Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats

deleted by creator

Thanks! It was cooked on a 72 hour sourdough crust in an Ooni oven. I’ve been working on the recipe for years at this point.

Well when the blackberries eclipse the size of the egg yolks I guess you can eat guilt free.

Wow, now I’m craving the delicious flavor sensation of fresh berries, sweet potato, avocado and fried egg with chili flakes all on an impeccably clean plate, 100% looks real. Should we call this style the “moonluna”?