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by felineflock·1y ago·view on hn ↗
I will spend this weekend creating burner social media accounts for my kids as a precaution. Each one will be crafted to look like they've never had a controversial thought in their lives.

Just lasagna pics, birthday cakes, kittens, golden retrievers, baby goats, maybe an artsy photo of a leaf with #blessed.

Everything I can do so that an AI running immigration background checks might match my kids to the profile of a low threat, emotionally well-regulated, consumer-minded citizen material.

Absolutely no pictures of Winnie the Pooh to keep China travel option open too.

I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.

8 comments
My only tip isn't really useful. Just avoid going to that hostile country for now. Unless there's a specific necessity. And if that's the case, then change all your social media accounts info, change the name, change birthdates, missmatch as much info as possible. Delete photos of yourself/family. Then for 'burner' accounts, make them on a different social network, like bluesky, myspace (they're still around), and then use an AI to generate ideas for posts and just make those as posts for the next while. The problem will be making a realistic timeline/history for new accounts. Alternatively "your kids aren't allowed to use social media", and that clears up a lot of work. But honestly just avoid the risk of traveling there in the first place, is it worth the risk of being detained?
PRISM [1] says hello. He may have fallen out of the news cycle, but he's not only still around but bigger, badder, and more invasive than ever. That phone you used to set up 2FA online with? Well that conveniently ties your real name, address, and more right to specific accounts. And he's collected it and passed it along for storage, in perpetuity.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

> I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.

Don't go to the US. That's the tip.

I've been to China a lot while also being critical of it sometimes on Facebook, and have never been refused a visa, even a work Z visa. Either they aren't looking or can't look because Facebook is blocked in China. My guess is simply that they aren't looking.
They generally only look on Weibo & other Chinese-exclusive social media, and they do it all the time, not just while you're in customs. For something on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook etc it would need to be something really, really egregious (and you would know about it) like organising or raising funds for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or something similar. It wouldn't be enough to just express a political opinion that the US State Department has expressed, like "China is committing a genocide of the Uyghurs". Maybe if you're saying it in Chinese it's more likely that would lead to issues because that's what they're used to dealing with, but I think it's unlikely. They care about what their nationals are doing, and they care about what's happening on their own social media networks; that's mostly it.

My general advice for people travelling to China is to not talk about politics on Chinese social media, or if you do just talk about the domestic politics of your home country & keep in mind that Chinese people might disagree with you. That's also my advice for people travelling to any country, but it's more important in China.

All that said, if you must discuss politics on Chinese social media while you're there, the thing the censors really have an issue with is calls for action, explicit or implied. More than one very pro-PRC heritage speaker who went to China has had their Weibo posts raging against America or Japan censored because they thought the criteria were "Posts have to be pro-China", when really the criteria is "Posts can't be a call to collective action that wasn't started by the party". What the party is actually concerned about is just stopping any sort of organised mass movement that they didn't start. The CCP's point of view is that mass movements are inherently unpredictable & could lead to civil disorder (even if they're nominally "pro-China"), so they're too risky a tool to let anyone other than the state use - important context to that is that Chinese culture, similar to some other East Asian cultures, puts way more value than we do on civil order, harmony etc.

Also if your posts do get censored, it's not as big an issue as it would be here. Where I live, the government deleting my social media posts would feel approximately as serious as armed police rappelling through my windows, and if the former happened I'd at least think about the possibility of the latter happening shortly afterwards. Think something like the Christchurch shooting live feed. It's not like that in China; it's completely normal, for example, that you get angry & post something that gets deleted by a censor, & that is literally the last you ever hear of it, a lot like tweeting something against ToS. If you continue posting about it or try to get around the censorship, eventually a police officer will visit you and talk to you over tea about why you have to stop doing that, and if you keep going that's when the actual legal consequences like deportations or arrest start.

> It wouldn't be enough to just express a political opinion that the US State Department has expressed, like "China is committing a genocide of the Uyghurs". Maybe if you're saying it in Chinese

In 2025 if you are a public person saying it you will get consequences. See Hobhouse case.

There are other people like John Cena apologizing for saying something "wrong" in English but no idea if they were threatened by CCP or by their managers

>In 2025 if you are a public person saying it you will get consequences. See Hobhouse case.

Yes, if your criticism of China is in the news they might not let you in. That doesn't apply to many people but it's still a helpful clarification.

>There are other people like John Cena apologizing for saying something "wrong" in English but no idea if they were threatened by CCP or by their managers

Managers, and the reason isn't out of fear of legal consequences but fear of boycotts. Chinese have often felt like those in the West are talking down to them or being condescending, and they've never in their life had the ability to affect those doing so. Now that people really want access to the Chinese market, it's the first time ever for many Chinese people that they feel they can have any impact on how Westerners talk about China or the Chinese people. As a result (and because China has domestic equivalents of everything), Chinese people can be very boycott happy. The government can stop Chinese people from organising boycotts & very often does so (once again, they have an issue with any sort of mass organising by default), but the government can't force people to buy tickets to John Cena's movies & they didn't view it as appropriate to censor the videos of him screwing up what he meant to say. An organic boycott by the Chinese market is the worst nightmare of a lot of businessmen because the future of their business relies on selling in China, so they'll be even more strict on their people than the Chinese government would to try to avoid that.

What method are you using to predict what future governments won't find offensive/illegal?

Short of time travel, this seems impossible.

This. I have a watermelon costume purchased years ago for a fruit themed costume party, but today it's code for supporting Palestinians/Gaza and a picture of me wearing it might get me banned from entering the US.
hopefully with enough time everything will be code for something and therefore nothing will.
Yes, it is not possible. We can't predict but can follow the trends. Governments tend to want to be seen as a god-like entity protector/judge of all. So they hate satire or anything that means they're not being taken seriously. Just recently Brazil decided to jail a comedian, for instance.
There's no need. Just make some accounts, upload a pic, leave it alone. The only purpose of that is to avoid any extra restrictions they may later place on new accounts. Like, I have 10 Gmail accounts from before they wanted a phone number, plus a few burner Facebooks. I made one new Gmail recently, and it was banned without explanation.
> Like, I have 10 Gmail accounts from before they wanted a phone number

I do too, but they won’t let me log in without putting in a phone number.

> Just lasagna pics, birthday cakes, kittens, golden retrievers, baby goats, maybe an artsy photo of a leaf with #blessed.

Now you have to hope that 20 years later people on social networks won't suddenly decide that "golden retrievers" is a dog whistle for something bad, which would make your accounts retroactively problematic.

Bo produced a guide to this called “white womans instagram”.
Sorry, that'll just get them flagged for mustard stains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrQyMrmRBsk