Twitter, internet group oppose U.S. rules requiring visitors to disclose social media info

WASHINGTON: Twitter Inc, Reddit and a group representing major internet firms backed two documentary film groups that have challenged the Trump Administration’s 2019 rules requiring nearly all U.S. visitors to disclose social media user information from the prior five years.

In court papers filed on Thursday, the social media sites and the Internet Association, representing Facebook, Amazon.com, Alphabet and others, said the rules force foreign nationals “to surrender their anonymity in order to travel to the United States” and “chill a vast quantity of speech and associational activity.”

The Doc Society and the International Documentary Association filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in December. They said they regularly collaborate with non-U.S. filmmakers and warn that visitors must “consider the risk that a U.S. official will misinterpret their speech on social media, impute others’ speech to them, or subject them to additional scrutiny or delayed processing because of the views they or their contacts have expressed.”