Will speech for visa access become a global phenomenon?

AllAfrica

10 hours ago

Last week, the US Embassy in Bangkok posted an image to its official Twitter/X and Facebook accounts instructing people who wish to apply for visas to set their social media accounts to 'public.'
It sent a chill down my spine. This wasn't an isolated move – similar content has appeared on US Embassy pages around the world.
Throughout my career I've worked on advancing democratic governance, freedom of the press and the fundamental rights of opinion and speech across Asia, including for a while in places as authoritarian as China.
What the embassy and the Department of State now broadcast runs counter to everything I once stood for – and everything the US claimed to represent. This action feels more Chinese than American. More Russian than American. More authoritarian than American.
The image announced that applicants for F, M, and J visas must set their social media accounts to PUBLIC.
These visa categories include: F visas – for academic students.
M visas – for vocational and non-academic training.
J visas – for exchange visitors, researchers, educators and cultural participants.
Previously, applicants only needed to list their social media usernames, but now they must adjust their privacy settings to make their profiles publicly viewable – and thus accessible not only to US officials but also to AI agents and other invasive tools being employed by authoritarian regimes – and failure to disclose and make public social media properties is grounds for visa rejection.
Yes, the US has been collecting social media handles from visa applicants since 2019. If you didn't list your accounts – or lied about them – you could be denied. That's already a deeply problematic demand. But it was at least carried out quietly, as part of background vetting.
What's happening now is different. Now, US embassies are demanding that applicants make their accounts accessible to anyone in the public – regardless of the political environments in which individuals live and work. This is not just disclosure when applying for a visa. Public. This is the public framing and normalization of surveillance, rather than its use as a background security measure.
And it's happening against a backdrop of increasing state violence: ICE agents in balaclavas, unmarked vans, no IDs – raiding American communities and disappearing people. That's the climate in which we're being told to make ourselves more visible, more compliant, more searchable.
The embassy notice claims this is to 'establish identity.' But that's a lie: The US has plenty of tools at its disposal to establish identity. Identity, in this context, is clearly code for ideological profiling.
This isn't about who you are or even if you're a terrorist or criminal – it's about what you believe, what you share, who you follow. And I harbor no illusion that these visa categories are the end of this story. They are just the beginning.
If left unchallenged, this practice will likely extend to business travelers, academics, family members, refugees and asylum seekers, thought leaders and journalists. It is a dangerous new threshold for entry: Show us your thoughts, or be branded a security threat.
At its core, this policy is about punishing speech. It replaces the presumption of openness (and the freedom of speech, opinion and expression) with the presumption of suspicion. And while it may seem targeted and technical (after all, its just three visa categories, right?), its implications are sweeping. Not only domestically in the US, but for us in the rest of the world. Especially for us in the rest of the world.
The US risks creating a 'speech-for-access' visa model – in which participating in global mobility requires surrendering digital privacy and political expression. This undermines not only free speech but the legitimacy of American democracy on the world stage. It undermines our human rights.
For five years, I led public policy for Facebook during a period of authoritarianism around the region. I also worked closely with human rights defenders and grassroots activists from across Southeast Asia. They endured digital surveillance, online harassment, state-backed doxxing and gendered disinformation campaigns designed to silence them.
We worked tirelessly to help ensure safer spaces – on the very platforms now being used as border checkpoints.
When the US mandates that these individuals expose their networks and opinions publicly, it does nothing to 'establish identity.' What it does is increase risk, undermine digital safety, curtail human rights and send a signal: Your dissent disqualifies you. It squashes critical thinking that would have otherwise surfaced had people not been in need of access to the United States.
Just weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on foreign officials who censor Americans, stating:
'Free speech is essential to the American way of life — a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.'
Yet, under this new policy, the US government is doing to others exactly what it condemns: compelling individuals to reveal their speech, political views and associations in exchange for mobility.
So what will US officials be screening for? Opposition to genocide in Gaza? Advocacy for DEI or trans rights? Criticism of powerful US tech monopolies or climate inaction? Or affiliation with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement?
Rubio has already said they will screen for anti-semitism – but when 'anti-Semitism' is so vaguely defined that protest against Israeli policy and action itself becomes suspect, and when criticism of US allies becomes grounds for exclusion, the line between foreign censorship and domestic repression collapses.
This policy gives authoritarian regimes a convenient justification for their own surveillance: 'Even the United States does it.'
It emboldens governments to target foreign activists, suppress dissent, and erode international norms of digital freedom. The global civil society networks that hold power to account – power in the forms of corporations, militaries and tech platforms – are now at risk of fragmentation, surveillance, muzzling and exclusion.
And the targets are clear: critics of extractive capitalism, whistleblowers, climate activists, independent scholars and advocates for the global majority.
Most alarmingly, what happens when other countries – especially those that are arguably not democracies – implement similar requirements?
What we will see is the rapid elimination of critical speech on democracy, human rights, inclusion, diversity and a host of progressive human rights issues we have become accustomed to in the 21st century. Will silence – the absence of any criticism – become a staple requirement for being able to move around the world?
Surely this will not remain limited to the United States, especially as the technological threshold to quickly surveil public social media becomes easier and easier. The risks and the implications are profound.
What happens when soft authoritarian regimes try out this new policy, enforced with AI-driven tools, to prevent criticism of their own actions? How will this filter out academics, civil society leaders, business leaders and others who want to attend conferences, seminars or meet up with their networks?
Will speech-for-access become a global phenomenon?
At a time when humanity faces profound questions around frontier technologies – AI, surveillance, disinformation, platform power – we need broad, diverse, global participation. Yet so much of the discourse still happens in New York, Washington, or Silicon Valley.
Who will now be absent from those rooms? Who will self-censor rather than risk exposure? What vital warnings, critiques and new paradigms will be lost?
By requiring public digital exposure for entry, the US limits not just who can speak but who gets heard.
What we're witnessing is more than just a misguided visa policy. It is a fundamental redefinition of who gets to participate in the global discourse – on democracy, rights, technology and justice. When the United States, once a self-proclaimed defender of civil liberties, begins to demand access to private digital lives as a condition for entry, the signal it sends is terrifying: our speech is conditional and our dissent is suspect. And, importantly, our access is political.
This policy doesn't only shut the door on critics – it systematically excludes the very people we need most: activists, academics, artists and advocates with the insight and courage to challenge dominant power structures and reimagine the future. And it emboldens authoritarian regimes by giving them democratic cover. 'If even the US does it,' they will say, 'why can't we?'
If we are not careful, we will wake up to a world in which only those who conform – politically, digitally, ideologically – get access and a seat at the table. Those who raise uncomfortable truths, who question hegemonic power or who come from marginalized communities will be locked out, one algorithmic judgment or one social media post at a time.
We must prevent 'speech-for-access' from becoming acceptable under any circumstances.
1. Speak up. Don't let your passport be a shield for silence. If you are a U.S. citizen, use that privilege to call this policy what it is: surveillance-driven censorship.
2. Decentralize global discourse. Call on international institutions, conferences, and networks to host gatherings outside the US and into countries _ like those in the EU, Canada and in areas of the global majority – where freedom of expression remains protected.
3. Hold American diplomats accountable. They are not passive bystanders. They are actively implementing this policy. Until they resist or speak out, they represent a system that betrays its own professed values.
Make no mistake: history will remember who stood for open societies – and who opened the door to repression.
Michael L. Bąk is a Thailand-based expert on civic participation and democratic governance of frontier technology and a non-resident senior fellow (cyber policy) at NYU Center for Global Affairs; co-founder of Sprint Public Interest, a research agency; and an advisor at the Centre for AI Leadership in Singapore. He served with USAID in Southeast and East Asia and was head of public policy at Facebook. He works with civil society, governments and academia as countervailing forces to big tech's accumulating, private power. He has lived most of his life in Southeast Asia.