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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'm planning to visit the US ever again, but if I did, what would count as social media? Does HN count? Does my blog? IRC nickname? Github and Bitbucket accounts? I've never had a Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn account.

The only thing I guess unequivocally counts as social media is my Mastodon accounts.

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GitHub is explicitly listed as "social media" on the optional question that is on the ESTA [1] form since 2016. If I remember correctly, the wording is relatively broad, so I would guess that HN and Reddit count as well.

[1] https://www.evisaonline.com/en/usa/esta.html

Since when did GitHub stop being a code repository and start becoming a social network? Am I using GitHub wrong?

What do you think commits are?

git commit -m -S “just having my 4th Oreo milkshake haha”

Isn’t GitHub’s motto “social coding” or something similar?

It has stars and accounts, so there is a social aspect

Just an FYI - that website (evisaonline) isn’t an official government site. They seem to be some third party who provide some sort of ESTA application service. The official site is at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

Thanks, my fault. Just pasted the first link Google returned.

Yeah… so annoying it confused me for a while.

These were on my ESTA application last summer:

ASKfm

Facebook

Flickr

GitHub

Google+

Instagram

JustPaste.it

LinkedIn

Tumblr

Twitter

Vine

VKontakte (VK)

YouTube

Other

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